Wanting to sell timeshare.

I have a paid for Southseas Plantation - Plantation Beach Club (Captiva, Florida) timeshare that I just don't use. It was paid for by my family years ago, and It was left with me when my father passed. What is the best way for me to sell the deed so I don't have to continuously pay maintenance fees and rent out the unit yearly? Do Redweek classifieds really work? Thanks,

stevel688 wrote:

I have a paid for Southseas Plantation - Plantation Beach Club (Captiva, Florida) timeshare that I just don't use. It was paid for by my family years ago, and It was left with me when my father passed. What is the best way for me to sell the deed so I don't have to continuously pay maintenance fees and rent out the unit yearly? Do Redweek classifieds really work? Thanks,

In my personal opinion and first hand experience, RedWeek is probably the best place to advertise a timeshare for sale (or rent). Just make sure that before you place any ad that you are fully prepared to answer potential buyer questions promptly, clearly and accurately. For example, is it a fixed or floating week? If fixed, what week number? If "floating", what is the specific week range that is eligible for owner reservation? Number of bedrooms? Occupancy limit? Reservation procedure? Last maintenance fee amount paid? Next available usage? Who is going to pay the closing costs (and the separate transfer fee)?

I trust that your name is on the current deed. If not, there are going to be some legal complications if you do not actually have the legal standing to be "grantor" to new "grantee(s)".

Last but not least, be sure to price the week realistically. No one cares one bit what your parents may have paid for their week in long ago yesteryear; it's irrelevant. All that matters now is the open resale market value of the week today. Many timeshare weeks are literally worthless (but that's surely not the case for a week on Captiva Island. Look around for "comparables" (eBay, RedWeek, TUG, MyResortNetwork --- and maybe ask the resort itself for a recommended or historical price range for weeks like yours. If you price the week too high, your ad (wherever it's placed) will yield only silence and "crickets".

Last but not least, let a closing company handle new deed preparation, new deed recording, escrow of purchase funds, resort notification after new deed recording. If you have no personal experience in this arena, a "do it yourself" approach will almost certainly lead to procedural errors, creating ownership transfer delays and unnecessary additional costs. Personally, I have used LTT Transfers in Cleveland, GA a number of times. They are a capable, communicative small business --- and yet probably the least expensive around (under $200). Resort "transfer fee", if any, is always a separate cost which is never included in any closing entity's basic fees. Only the resort can tell you what that (gratuitous, but nonetheless mandatory) transfer fee cost will be.

Good luck.

I have decided to sell two timeshares that I own. I have purchased the Full Service option and am currently waiting for the resort to complete the necessary verification forms so the resales can be posted.

What bothers me is that there is no real information on the RedWeek website regarding historical sales and "time to sale". All I've found is a graph that shows sketchy information about asking prices for each week.

Resale posts sit for weeks or many months with no sales reported.

I may have thrown several hundred dollars away.

I own two weeks at Westin Lagunamar that I want to sell. I'm curious about your experience with RedWeek. Have you had any offers?

I have been trying to sell a couple timeshare weeks, and I am skeptical about success. I'm going to post on eBay and craigslist and direct interested parties to my redweek posts. I see people posting resales but I think I've only seen one actual successful transaction.

I'm also going to inquire directly with the timeshare property management about a Deed Back, which is probably not really an option, but after a year of exhausting all attempts, and if I am unsuccessful unloading the properties, I may be forced to just take the hit on my credit rating and simply quit all further payments.

For whatever it's worth, I have successfully sold several different timeshare weeks on RedWeek in recent years while significantly paring down our timeshare ownerships. If your timeshare listing is for a desirable location and season and your pricing is competitive, I personally don't think that there is a better place to advertise than RedWeek. If you overprice your listing and / or try to sell a off-season studio week in East Timbuktu, you will only hear "crickets" anyhow, no matter where you choose to advertise.

Anyone can always advertise on Craigslist for free, but from that site you may well get inundated with inquiries from the clueless, insincere "tire kickers", bargain hunters / freebie seekers and / or the many outright scammers who consistently frequent that site. Personally, I have absolutely no time and no use for any of that --- time is money too!

To each their own, of course.

FREE is the price I've been offering my two timeshare weeks at Vacation Village at Parkway, and I haven't even had a SINGLE inquiry.

I'm also very curious about the posts that make glowing claims about timeshare sales, because my experiences and a multitude of evidence about the lack of a market for timeshare resales demand careful scrutiny of the claims.

@Ken c.: Can you please give the dates, weeks, and prices of your successful timeshare resales?

paul974 wrote:

@Ken c.: Can you please give the dates, weeks, and prices of your successful timeshare resales?

That's frankly none of your business, but I will nonetheless voluntarily provide very specific, itemized information and details on my own (10) successful resales completed during the past few years. None of the resales individually itemized below yielded any "profit", but I never sought to "profit" from timeshares anyhow; we have owned (and still own a few) timeshare weeks to use them and enjoy them --- not to "flip" them. The ten weeks we sold were sold for just about what I had originally paid ( purchased only in the resale market, never from any developer). I usually "broke even" or lost a few hundred dollars when selling. In any event, all ten weeks were sold with relative ease because they were weeks in locations and seasons of some demand.

{ I have now deleted my previously posted detailed list and description of all my (10) itemized resales after leaving that information posted here temporarily. It's personal information that I simply do not choose to leave publicly posted on a Internet discussion forum for all the world to see in perpetuity, just to satisfy one person's doubts and / or "curiosity"}.

paul974 wrote:

....my experiences and a multitude of evidence about the lack of a market for timeshare resales demand careful scrutiny of the claims.

In my own 35+ years of timeshare ownership and experience, I have observed that there is always a market for high demand weeks in desirable locations during times of year where and when demand consistently exceeds supply. For low demand weeks and / or overbuilt locations however, all bets are off.

In overbuilt places like Orlando, FL or Branson, MO, there is a glut of timeshare properties and weeks and supply always far exceeds demand. Likewise for weeks on Cape Cod in the dead of New England winter.

I don't claim to know anything about Vacation Village at Parkway, or even where it's located, nor have you identified the specific week(s) you own there. Demand ultimately rules over all else. Also, fewer and fewer people "buy to trade" anymore, since RCI has become both increasingly expensive and woefully lacking in enough truly desirable inventory into which to "exchange". "Buying to trade" has essentially now become just a futile fool's errand, at least in my personal opinion.

Vacation Village at Parkway is in Orlando. The MF are close to $1000 for a 2 BR lockout (2 one bd room units). They probably are the single largest depositor of Orlando timeshares in RCI and you can often get extra vacations for less than the cost of MF's ($700 or less per 2 BR unit sometimes as low as $300-$400). It's not a bad resort, it might even be a little nicer than average but property tax on Florida's timeshares are quite high driving up the MF's and there is such an oversupply of Orlando timeshares at least 70% of the year it's just hard.

Orlando is a really tough market for anything other than DVC and maybe some platinum HIlton and Marriott weeks.

If you have points and get 92,5000 or particularly good fixed weeks, it may be possible to find someone willing to accept an give away. Unfortunately there are many weeks where you would have to prepay a year or two's worth of MF;s plus pay the transfer if you want to find a new owner.

Timeshares sold on eBay for $1 and probably there for the following reason: An owner has paid thousands of dollars to a company to take the timeshare off their hands, and the buyer pockets the money and then immediately posts the resale on eBay at the $1 price, thus pocketing a bundle with no real work.

Both eBay and craigslist can serve as additional advertising visibility, with ads on both sites referring potential customers to RedWeek where a broker does all the work to conduct the transaction.

Based on the low and practically non-existent resale activity on RedWeek, I have to assume that these additional advertising attempts are necessary to hook a buyer.

paul974 wrote:

Both eBay and craigslist can serve as additional advertising visibility, with ads on both sites referring potential customers to RedWeek where a broker does all the work to conduct the transaction.

Based on the low and practically non-existent resale activity on RedWeek, I have to assume that these additional advertising attempts are necessary to hook a buyer.

I respectfully but strongly disagree. Fwiw, I have never used the broker services offered on RedWeek, nor have I ever advertised on either craigslist or eBay (and I frankly would not even consider doing so). I have no idea on what basis you conclude (erroneously, in my opinion and personal experience) that there is "low and practically non-existent resale activity on RedWeek". With all due respect, it depends on what it is that you are trying to sell, as plainly addressed in the few preceding posts --- and it appears that you are seeking to part company with something in one of the "dime a dozen" areas of excessive timeshare property construction. Out of the 10 specific weeks I individually identified above, all but one was sold as a result of advertising on RedWeek --- and nowhere else. The other one was sold with no advertising at all, to another owner at that resort.

Nonetheless, I wish you luck. You may well have to consider throwing in payment of the next maintenance fee bill and paying all closing costs and transfer fees yourself in order to entice someone to take over ownership of your timeshare in overbuilt Orlando --- even if otherwise FREE. It's all about demand.

RedWeek notifies when resales occur, just as it does when new resales are posted.

Unfortunately, they don't report transaction history. There's a useless graph of going prices on a weekly basis, but no public information about time-on-market or time-to-sale.

ken1193 wrote:

paul974 wrote:

Both eBay and craigslist can serve as additional advertising visibility, with ads on both sites referring potential customers to RedWeek where a broker does all the work to conduct the transaction.

Based on the low and practically non-existent resale activity on RedWeek, I have to assume that these additional advertising attempts are necessary to hook a buyer.

I respectfully but strongly disagree. Fwiw, I have never used the broker services offered on RedWeek, nor have I ever advertised on either craigslist or eBay (and I frankly would not even consider doing so). I have no idea on what basis you conclude (erroneously, in my opinion and personal experience) that there is "low and practically non-existent resale activity on RedWeek". With all due respect, it depends on what it is that you are trying to sell, as plainly addressed in the few preceding posts --- and it appears that you are seeking to part company with something in one of the "dime a dozen" areas of excessive timeshare property construction. Out of the 10 specific weeks I individually identified above, all but one was sold as a result of advertising on RedWeek --- and nowhere else. The other one was sold with no advertising at all, to another owner at that resort.

Nonetheless, I wish you luck. You may well have to consider throwing in payment of the next maintenance fee bill and paying all closing costs and transfer fees yourself in order to entice someone to take over ownership of your timeshare in overbuilt Orlando --- even if otherwise FREE. It's all about demand.

paul974 wrote:

RedWeek notifies when resales occur, just as it does when new resales are posted.

Unfortunately, they don't report transaction history. There's a useless graph of going prices on a weekly basis, but no public information about time-on-market or time-to-sale.

With all due respect (and with ten successful resales under my belt in recent years), I don't think you can blame RedWeek for the difficulty you are encountering trying to part company with a timeshare for which there is basically little (or no) resale market value or demand.

RedWeek doesn't even know resale transaction details, by the way, except for those resale transactions conducted "in house" by their affiliated brokers as "full service" listings. Also bear in mind that a listing price is not necessarily the final selling price either. In my own ten successful resale transactions, there was actually no RedWeek involvement of any sort beyond RedWeek being the site that I used (and paid) to advertise my weeks.

In any event, good luck.

Interested in knowing if anyone has any success in selling week 02 for a 2 bedroom lookoff and a 1 bedroom premiums in the Harborside at the Atlantis. If so, at what was your asking and sold price. How long did it take to sell?