Friday, June 20, 2008

Hurricanes Can Afflict Timeshare Owners

By Julie Bennett from The Wall Street Journal
Hurricane Charley blew the roofs off 110 apartments of the South Seas Plantation Resort on Captiva Island, Fla, ruining drywall, appliances, furniture—and many vacation plans.

That devastated neighborhood is a time-share community, one of the 1,590 resorts in the U.S. in which people purchase vacation units by the week. Florida has 366 time-share resorts with 27,700 units and about one million owners, according to Scott Berman, partner with the hospitality-and-leisure consulting group of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Miami. Sorting out the damage after a hurricane is difficult enough for individual homeowners, but, for the time-share industry, complications can multiply as fast as the pile of soggy mattresses in the South Seas parking lot.

Why Never to Buy a Timeshare

By Ric Edelman From Inside Personal Finance.
I’ve spoken to a lot of people who love ‘em. For a set number of days a year, you have a vacation home you can use as you wish. And the best part is it’s an investment ... until you want to sell it.

I recently took a call from Jim, who epitomizes the time-share investor. He owns one in San Francisco and hasn’t been able to use it during his prearranged vacation times because of work conflicts. This has led Jim to consider getting out of his investment. What can he do?

He can try to swap his property with another time-share owner.  Not only must that person want his property, they must want it for the same week as Jim has it. And Jim must want theirs, too.  A difficult undertaking to say the least.