Okay. You’re ready to sell your timeshare. Typically, your first and natural inclination is to say, Honey, call the resort and see if they have a timeshare resale program to help us. If they do have a resale program and are no longer selling retail, fine. Generally, you can expect to pay around 25% to 40% sales commission. (Unfortunately, a good percentage of timeshare resorts do not offer a resale program for the benefit of their individual owners who want or need to sell.) If your home resort has a resale program but is still selling retail to the public, think about this: When a buyer walks into the resort, which unit do you think the Resort Sales Rep will promote first — an original unit at the higher retail price (where the resort has up to 50% of the retail price in marketing costs), or a unit that an owner has listed for resale, generally at a lesser resale price. Consider the following:
- Common sense dictates that resorts do not sell their timeshares to buy them back later. However, some timeshare resorts will consider buy backs baed on a Right of First Refusal if the selling owner has contracted with a buyer and received earnest money.
- If your resort has no resale program, ask them if they have plans to make this service available.
- If your resort does have a resale program, ask if it is a reload program consisting of POA inventory to be resold to existing owners (typically priced low.)
There are some timeshare resorts that will not transfer special programs from the selling owner to the new purchaser when the timeshare transaction was initiated by a third party. This practice is to deter owners from going to third party resellers and to encourage them to sell through the home resort. This can present problems for the selling owner because one of the reasons the new purchaser elected to buy the timeshare in the first place was to take advantage of the special programs offered by the resort. However, many of today’s timeshare buyers have become more sophisticated and knowledgeable about their timeshare purchase and are savvy enough to compare the savings realized by the resort’s special programs versus the savings achieved by purchasing in the timeshare resale marketplace.
Obviously, this is only a snapshot of selling your timeshare through your Home Resort and isn’t all-inclusive by any means; however, it may contain a few items that perhaps you had not considered if you are planning to sell your timeshare through your Home Resort.
