Limit your expense
The first rule of selling a timeshare is quite simply, don’t pay a fee to sell it. The company may package the fee as being for an appraisal, market research, advertising or marketing cost, give it some other name.
Regardless, that fee is not going to be refuyndable and you should not have to pay it in order to sell your timeshare.
Many timeshare owners get desperate and believe the company when they state that they have a buyer waiting to purchase your week and all they need is a fee from you. Even if they claim to have a money back guarantee, don’t pay it.
These companies know how desperately you want to believe their sales pitch. For this reason you should not believe it! Quite simply, there is no buyer already lined up. Once the company has taken your money, they will have no significant incentive to do any further work for you. Despite their guarantees and other promises, you will not get any of your money back even if you complain!
So just to repeat. Never pay an upfront fee beyond a small listing fee of $15-30.
Assessing the value of your timeshare.
In order to sell your timeshare you will need to figure out just what it’s worth. We discuss some methods of pricing a timeshare in our guide to renting article.
Pricing well is key to selling your property in a timeley manner. Realize that your timeshare is not likely to sell for anything close to what the resort company sold it for. It may not be a fun thing to realize, but the sad truth is very few timeshares are even worth 30% of the price they were initially bought for from the developer.
One of the most important things one can do before selling a timeshare is realize that the inflated purchase price they may have paid for it has absolutely no corrolation to the actual value of the timeshare on the secondary market. Timeshare companies don’t give out free vacations out of the goodness of their heart; they make huge profits from selling timeshares at a huge markup.
As Dave M. so eloquently put it on the TugBBS forums:
The key is to bury forever any thoughts that because you paid (let’s say) $12,000 for your week, someone else will be willing to pay the same amount. They might, if you were putting on the same glitzy sales presentation that some high-pressure salesperson did when you bought, including giving free incentives for attending the presentation. But you don’t have that luxury. So do your homework and set the price at the right level. It will sell.
Once you realize and calculate the realistic price at which your timeshare can sell, take a look at our list of places to sell your timeshare.
