Timeshares can allow you and your family to spend quality time together and create lifelong memories of days at the beach. But if you find yourself too busy or financially unable to take your vacation each year, a timeshare can quickly become a burden on you and your heirs.
Problems with timeshares include an immediate loss of value at the time you sign the contract, annual maintenance fees, whether you use it or not, and travel expenses to use your timeshare.
If you decide that the benefits of owning a timeshare no longer outweigh the costs, you have a few options available to you.
1. You can simply transfer ownership to someone else as a gift in full. For example, if you want to give your timeshare to your son or daughter as a gift, all you have to do is transfer the timeshare title to your name and submit all the relevant documentation, including the resignation claim deed, with the due authorities.
2. You can sell your timeshare through a timeshare broker and expect to profit from the sale.
A couple of things to keep in mind: Unlike traditional real estate agents, the timeshare broker does not work on a contingent basis. Instead, most brokers charge an upfront fee. This fee is paid even if a buyer is never found.
The timeshare broker may do his best and have the most honest intentions to sell the timeshare, but if there is no market and no one is willing to buy, then the timeshare is still yours, along with all related costs, and You also lose the money that you paid in advance to the broker.
3. You can try to cut your losses and sell directly to a “fake corporation.”
Bogus corporations “buy” the timeshare from you, the timeshare owner. But instead of receiving money from this “sale,” you actually pay the Corporation a service fee to take over ownership of the timeshare.
Why would you want to pay someone to take a timeshare out of your hands? To avoid the ongoing annual fees that you pay again whether you use your timeshare or not.
Once you “sell” it, the timeshare is now owned by Sham Corporation. In theory, the timeshare resort management company will attempt to collect the related fees from the corporation / business entity instead of you.
However, these bogus corporations usually refuse to pay the maintenance fees. But because there is no longer an individual to whom the resort management company can send threatening collection letters or make harassing phone calls, timeshare is in limbo.
The Sham Corporation gets its money from the service fee they charge you when you take over. Obviously, there are enough people willing to pay someone else to take over their timeshare to keep these bogus corporations in business.
Some of the more creative bogus corporations will contact the resort management company to sell them the timeshare. It may be better from a resort point of view to take back ownership and sell it to someone else than to have a timeshare in limbo without receiving the maintenance fees.
Because of this, many resort management companies will no longer accept the transfer of ownership to a business entity such as a corporation or limited liability company. Instead, they continue to hold the previous individual owner liable for maintenance fees even though you have officially transferred ownership to “someone else.”
So keep in mind that this “opportunity” to ditch your timeshare will cost you upfront and might not work out in the end.
The safest way to transfer your timeshare is to gift it to a friend or family member. Deed and Record offers an alternative with genuine and bona fide gifts to friends and family.
