renting timeshare

We have not had much success this year with renting our units, which are all premium properties with Marriott. In past years our units rented almost immediately and we got a lot of inquiries via Redweek. Does anyone have recommendations about other sites for rentals? Is airbnd taking the air out of these other rental sites? I personally do not want to rent via airbnb. I found the site chaotic.

You might try TUG. You can view "rentals wanted, for sale, as well as see what others are getting with out joining. I think it's 20.00 to join/respond or place an add. Membership is good for a yr. so is your posting.

karenm699 wrote:

We have not had much success this year with renting our units, which are all premium properties with Marriott. In past years our units rented almost immediately and we got a lot of inquiries via Redweek. Does anyone have recommendations about other sites for rentals? Is airbnd taking the air out of these other rental sites? I personally do not want to rent via airbnb. I found the site chaotic.

By all accounts, airbNb is NOT a good venue to attempt to rent out timeshares. However, the subject of airbnb is directly relevant; many timeshare owners believe that airbNB has had a negative impact on timeshare rentals in recent years.

As you surely know, except for some "points" based systems, most timeshare weeks are pre-defined, predetermined and inflexible (e.g., Friday to Friday, Saturday to Saturday, etc.) and owners cannot change or influence that fact. Because (non-timeshare) airbnb rentals often provide more date flexibility (and sometimes lower nightly costs), some people theorize that airbnb is hurting timeshare rentals. I don't personally claim to know if that theory is true, since I only occasionally rent out any of my (fixed, non-points, deeded) timeshare weeks. Nonetheless, I have certainly seen that theory expressed many times by timeshare "landlords" who report having more difficulty successfully renting out their timeshares.

When it comes to timeshare rentals, your week obviously has to be priced "right", regardless of the advertising site chosen. No renter cares one bit about your "maintenance fee costs". People shop for the best rental deal --- period. For any given week at any given timeshare property, the lowest priced rentals will successfully find tenants and the highest priced rentals may find only "crickets". Any lower priced rentals for the same week at the same place will get rented before anyone will even look twice at the higher priced rentals for the exact same thing.

Bear in mind too that if someone can rent directly from a resort at a price remotely close to that of a private rental, they may opt to rent from the resort instead. Inexperienced people may (understandably) be uneasy about "private" rentals, fearful of somehow being scammed. Such folks may just be more comfortable renting directly from the resort if the rental cost is even remotely comparable.

In any event, I wish you luck in your timeshare rental endeavors.

what is TUG?

Thanks--we have rented successfully on Redweek for the past 10 years--suddenly this year there were almost no inquiries and i noticed that a lot of other owner's units did not rent--so it is not just me. Given that the islands got decimated, i would have expected a lot of interest in FL rentals. People are clearly going to other sites to find what they want.

TUG, is the acronym for TIME SHARE USER GROUP. Lots of useful info, as I noted you view as a guest, check the listings for rentals, resale's. As noted, to communicate with members on rentals and resale's, you have to be a member. 20.00 for a yr. and posting for rental and sales are free. it should also be noted I am in NO WAY CONNECTED WITH OR A PART OF TUG, OTHER THAN A MEMBER OF. In no way am I soliciting for them as I am also a member of Red Week and use both sites for info, to rent my TS's, and have sold TS's on Red Week.

Like William, I too am a long time paid TUG (and paid RedWeek) member, with no affiliation with either site other than as a paid, active member. While there is certainly far more knowledge and experience in the TUG discussion forums compared to these RedWeek discussion forums, I believe that RedWeek is a FAR superior ADVERTISING site for timeshare rentals or sales.

For what it's worth, you can advertise on Craigslist for free but (unlike on RedWeek) on Craigslist you will likely get plenty of unwelcome and time consuming contacts from assorted spammers, scammers, phishers and insincere "tire kickers".

There is another site called MyResortNetwork.com. No paid membership required, pay for each individual ad, very limited space for descripions. MRN does not hold a candle to RedWeek as an advertising venue; I never had ANY success on MRN. I only occasionally rent out any of my timeshare weeks, but in my own experience RedWeek has no equal as a venue for advertising timeshare rentals. You may have to adjust your rental price downward to be competitive with any and all other rentals being advertised for your particular property / unit type / week. If a rental is overpriced, it won't much matter where it's advertised.

@karenm699, what resort are you seeing the problem with? Is it Marriott's Ocean Pointe?

I can take a look at the numbers.

@karenm699, looking at rental performance at Ocean Pointe for January check-ins, year over year, the success rate appears to be up significantly.

Several of your recent postings have received quite a few inquiries (28 for one, 18 for another). Check your message box on the site to make sure you've received them all.

I assume though that the problem week was your Ocean Pointe rental for 1/26 - 2/2? Looks like you received only two inquiries for that one?

We had five postings for those exact dates (including yours). Of those, four of them rented. All of them had significantly lower prices than yours, so @ken1193 may be right that it was just the price (prices ranged from 44% to 15% lower than yours). We should do a better job of showing you competing prices during the posting process.

Note that you won't necessarily see all of the recent "rented" weeks on the inventory pages any longer. We started getting complaints about having to wade through too many rented results, esp. on mobile, so we're truncating those now.

I think pricing is the most likely culprit here, but you may also start seeing the effect of the "RedWeek Verified" postings. That's an optional enhancement that we offer where we independently verify the rental details (and you get the little green banner that says "verified"). That is continuing to gain in popularity (up ~ 100% YoY). So given two equivalent weeks, it's likely a renter will go for the verified one. We're working to make that process as efficient as possible and hope to decrease the price soon (currently $15), so more weeks can be verified.

Also, we've recently introduced RedWeek Payments. We haven't promoted it heavily yet, but it allows renters to book a week in a much more streamlined manner and to pay directly through the site. The goal being to eliminate that potential "unease" that @ken1193 referred to. I noticed that one of the Jan. 26 weeks was rented through that process. All "full-service" rentals use RedWeek Payments now. And all "RedWeek Verified" weeks are eligible, although we're currently phasing that in. Daily bookings through that process have more than doubled since mid December.

The point being that we are trying to differentiate the inventory in various ways to increase renter confidence, and that may, as a side effect, have some negative implications for folks who choose not to add those enhancements.

Anyway, I know that's little consolation after an unsuccessful rental, but I do hope that you'll continue to use us. Let me know if you have questions or have other suggestions on how we might continue to improve the success rate.

As Ken noted, I to believe that I have had more responses in advertising on Red Week. I use TUG for info, have had some inquiries from listings on TUG, but all of my successful rentals and sales have been with Red Week. As Maurice pointed out I to suspect pricing is the problem.

I am very new at Red Week but am impressed with what I have seen so far. Can someone tell me where I may find the information regarding the the risks involved with Renting a week on Red Week. Also I would be interested in the tips which would help me with this project. It is four families that want to be in the same place at the same time.

Thanks, Monica

monicas23 wrote:

Can someone tell me where I may find the information regarding the the risks involved with Renting a week on Red Week. Also I would be interested in the tips which would help me with this project. It is four families that want to be in the same place at the same time.

I've owned a handful of timeshare weeks for several decades now, occasionally renting some out (via RedWeek) but most often using them ourselves. I've been a RedWeek member for over ten years, will offer a few thoughts and observations:

Timeshares advertised for rent on RedWeek are owned by different, individual people with no connection to one another. Some owners allow RedWeek to handle rental details for them, some owners handle their own rental agreements. The big "chains" (like Wyndham, Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, etc.) are not advertising rentals on RedWeek; only individuals are doing so ---- and not all of those individuals advertise their weeks at the same time (or at the same price). My intended point is that you are going to have great difficulty finding and / or "locking in" FOUR separate rental weeks, ALL advertised simultaneously, and ALL of them available at the SAME place for the SAME week, with ALL of them being multi-bedroom units able to accommodate a family. Statistically speaking, four separate but simultaneous transactions fulfilling all of your requirements is a very tough bill to fill.

To find what you seem to be looking for, you might just end up having to contact individual resorts or management companies in order to find four separate multi-bedroom units all available at the very same facility at the very same time. Unfortunately, renting directly from the resorts always means much higher cost (generally at least 25% more, often much more than that) than comparable rentals being offered "privately" by individual timeshare owners.

The good news is that because RedWeek requires paid membership to place (or to respond to) timeshare ads, you are generally assured of dealing with trustworthy advertisers with identities already disclosed and known to RedWeek --- a very beneficial feature which simply does NOT exist on some other advertising sites (like Craigslist, or eBay). That said, your high hurdle will be finding four multi-bedroom units at the same place at the same time and securing ALL FOUR rentals at the same time, all at similar rental prices. Not impossible, but not easy to accomplish.

Anyway, good luck with your rental search.

@monicas23 see also this for some tips on staying safe when using RedWeek: https://www.redweek.com/resources/stay-safe

Thank you for the thorough information. You explained it very well. Monica

ken1193 wrote:

monicas23 wrote:

Can someone tell me where I may find the information regarding the the risks involved with Renting a week on Red Week. Also I would be interested in the tips which would help me with this project. It is four families that want to be in the same place at the same time.

I've owned a handful of timeshare weeks for several decades now, occasionally renting some out (via RedWeek) but most often using them ourselves. I've been a RedWeek member for over ten years, will offer a few thoughts and observations:

Timeshares advertised for rent on RedWeek are owned by different, individual people with no connection to one another. Some owners allow RedWeek to handle all details for them, some owners handle their own rental agreements. The big "chains" (like Wyndham, Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, etc.) are not advertising rentals on RedWeek; only individuals are doing so ---- and not all of those individuals advertise their weeks at the same time (or at the same price). My intended point is that you are going to have great difficulty finding and / or "locking in" FOUR separate rental weeks, ALL advertised simultaneously, and ALL of them available at the SAME place for the SAME week, with ALL of them being multi-bedroom units able to accommodate a family. Statistically speaking, four separate but simultaneous transactions fulfilling all of your requirements is a very tough bill to fill.

To find what you seem to be looking for, you might just end up having to contact individual resorts or management companies in order to find four separate multi-bedroom units all available at the very same facility at the very same time. Unfortunately, renting directly from the resorts always means much higher cost (generally at least 25% more, often much more than that) than comparable rentals being offered "privately" by individual timeshare owners.

The good news is that because RedWeek requires paid membership to place (or to respond to) timeshare ads, you are generally assured of dealing with trustworthy advertisers with identities already disclosed and known to RedWeek --- a very beneficial feature which simply does NOT exist on some other advertising sites (like Craigslist, or eBay). That said, your high hurdle will be finding four multi-bedroom units at the same place at the same time and securing ALL FOUR rentals at the same time, all at similar rental prices. Not impossible, but not easy to accomplish.

Anyway, good luck with your rental search.

Some places are easier than others to get multiple units the same week and some restrict how many reservations the same week can be booked at the same location.

Reaching out @ the earliest booking window is another key factor. (10 to 13 months) to score multiple rentals.

I have points, not weeks so making multiple reservations is not a problem unless they are not available (sold out) Some of our resorts say Panama City beach is small and hard to book. But say Orlando or Myrtle beach would be very doable at the 10 month window when we can reserve.

Dave

I’ve had good results with the following for rentals:

RedWeek

Timeshare User Group (TUG) https://tug2.com

http://www.myresortnetwork.com

I too have noticed a decline in interest to rent my timeshares, which I figured was due to Airbnb. I currently have 3 timeshares listed in Maui the week before Easter 2019 and have only had two inquiries so far. I know I heard about Redweek from a friend, but I wonder how most people know about it, and if some type of advertising would help generate more interest in Redweek. From past experience (I've rented on Airbnb) many of the rentals seem to draw you in with a low price, but by the time the number of quests are entered, and the cleaning fee or other fees applied, the price can go up greatly. Does anyone know if Redweek does, or ever has advertised in anyway?

Rebecca W:

We drive traffic to the RedWeek website through billboards, magazines, search engines, other websites, newspapers, and events. No one can guarantee all postings will be successfully rented or sold, but we do have a very high success rate in the industry.

I noticed you have received several inquiries and I see two possible reasons why you are not receiving more. One may be pricing. I noticed two rentals for the same week and unit size marked as rented with an asking price of $429 per night and you are asking $514 -- so pricing may be one issue.

Another reason may be the effect of the "RedWeek Verified" postings, the optional enhancement where RedWeek verifies the rental details and then flags the posting as Verified. That option continues to gain in popularity, and if a renter is looking at two similar rentals, one verified and the other not, chances are they will first inquire on the verified posting.

You can view the rental history for your resort on our website, by going to this page: What's My Timeshare Worth

Please click on the Contact Us link at the bottom of any page if you have other questions or need assistance.

I am new at using Red Week--even though I rented my timeshare out some 10 years ago. Now I've found one to rent that interests me. They prefer to transact through Paypal, of which I'm a member as well.

Here's my question: once I pay and they receive my money, do I get some sort of confirmation from the resort itself? Thanks.

Paul M.: If you are conducting a private transaction, we recommend a 50% payment to the owner. The owner then has the resort send you a confirmation with your name on it. You would send the remaining 50% as stipulated in your rental agreement. You can view the step-by-step recommendations for a private transaction on this page: Private Transaction Steps (https://www.redweek.com/resources/rental-process/private)

You can also compare the various payment methods here: Payment Comparisons (https://www.redweek.com/resources/payment-method-comparison)