Time share salesmen have a greasy reputation, similar to that of used car salesmen or the general salespeople in the auto industry. Their techniques to get a prospective buyer to “buy today” is an example of a classic sales technique that tries in both ways to encourage or incentive a buyer to buy while also creating a high pressure environment.
It seems that in recent years, time share itself, along with its salespeople, has developed into an unhealthy “investment” that most people seem aware of, or at least has been featured as a steady joke in any number of comedies that are on national television statements. Time share is associated with “you’ve been duped” and other sayings.
The origin of timeshare started in England after the second World War. It started with a group of English families who wanted to share a vacation home on the cost of the island. The English families wanted to divide the ownership of the cottage so that it would be rented by one family per season. However, this soon changed.
Entrepreneurs took that initial idea–one family for four quarters of the property, with four families for the full year–to a level that can be deemed by some as either great business or absolutely fraudulent. They divided the property rights into weeks, meaning technically that 52 families could “own” the property for one week out of the year.
Within the early 1970s, the rise of timeshares boomed and more and more people were being roped into time shares that included properties in Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and other places in the Caribbean. This boom attracted entrepreneurs who could transfer ownership to 52 families and gain a mortgage rate of thousands of dollars per week.
Today 25% of timeshare properties are in Florida and it was likely that that was the case back in the beginning. What started as a quick way to make a lot of money for entrepreneurs quickly turned into a regulated industry, at least in the state of Florida, then later the United States federal government.
People found out quickly that it was not a simple “investment.” For one, the property never appreciates in value, which makes it unsound financially for the owner. For another, the maintenance fees are extremely high, to the point that:
66% of timeshare owners cited “too high” maintenance fees as a reason for wanting to get out of their timeshare contract and nearly half (46%) of people who have left timeshare identified maintenance fees as their “most important” reason for leaving. This has been quoted in other sources as well. Maintenance fees cash-strap a lot of owners.
Today, there are 1,547 timeshares located in the United States. 3% of American households own a timeshare. 25% of U.S. timeshares are located in Florida, as has been said above, with many in Hawaii, California, and up the Eastern Coast. The average price of a timeshare is $20,000. The average age of a timeshare owner is about 47 years old.
One of the most difficult issues for a timeshare owner is getting out of the timeshare contract. Many don’t understand that the fees for a timeshare go on for life and that a timeshare gets passed on to your estate and your family. Getting out of a timeshare is extraordinarily difficult.
Timeshare resales are generally a scam. There have been some notes that people try to sell their timeshare on eBAY just for $1 to get out of maintenance fees. It is possible to have a timeshare contract release in the first ten days. After a person gets out of the timeshare pressurized sales presentation, they may have buyer’s remorse.
Selling a timeshare is difficult, though not impossible. However, the most operative way to get out of a timeshare contract is straightforward: Contact an attorney. Timeshare lawyers are lawyers who specialize in getting people out of timeshare contracts. There are many timeshare lawyers, including timeshare lawyers in Florida.
A timeshare rescission letter is possibly helpful for your cause. A timeshare rescission letter is a letter that states your cancellation of the timeshare contract. A timeshare rescission letter can be used for the 10-day period of cancelling the contract or likely further down the road. A timeshare rescission letter can be drafted by your attorney.