Selling your timeshare can be an overwhelming experience. You somehow were talked in to a timeshare, the agent that sold you the timeshare wasn’t honest about the details of the contact and now you have a financial burden that you need to get rid of.
Our team at Lonestar Transfer hears stories like this literally every day. Some people have timeshares that have been passed down to them from their parents that they don’t want and worse can’t afford. Others were just misled by a sales agent about the commitment and price of the timeshare.
Many timeshare owners look to sell their timeshare, but the truth is, selling a timeshare isn’t easy and there are plenty of ways to get scammed along the way.
Continuing to keep the timeshare is also expensive. It is reported that the average timeshare interval or week was $24,140 in 2022. So what does selling your timeshare look like?
Timeshare Listing Service
There are plenty of timeshare listing services available. They provide a listing of your property, much like a real estate listing for a home or commercial property and they collect a fee for them to list your timeshare.
Others may charge a commission for the sell of your timeshare or a listing fee plus a commission if the timeshare sells. These services rarely work out with a sell and the timeshare owner ends up losing money on the listing fee while still owning their timeshare.
In many circumstances the listing is only good for a set time period, so once it expires you have to pay an additional fee to list it again. If the average cost is $500 and you list it three times, that is $1,500 totally wasted on a timeshare listing service. They provide no guarantees that your timeshare will sale, and they already know it probably won’t sell.
Online Market Places
Another popular place timeshare owners try to offload their timeshare is Ebay and sites like Craigslist. Even the Facebook Marketplace will have timeshare properties listed. The danger here is really being scammed.
These listings are searched and crawled by thousands of people looking to take advantage of timeshare owners in a desperate situation. They request a fee to help the owner sell the property or they’ll even request the timeshare owner pay them an upfront cost that will be given back when the property sells.
There are even times when they request the property be signed over to them with the payment to follow. Guess what doesn’t follow…the payment? So now the timeshare owner has given away their property. And honestly some timeshare owners do just want someone to take the property off their hands, but due to the nature of timeshare cotracts, it just isn’t a burden most people want to take on.
On Ebay timeshares are listed for $1 frequently, which shows the desperation for timeshare owners to get out. Even at $1 there aren’t many timeshares sold on Ebay.
Advertising
You can advertise your timeshare for sell at a variety of places. Local newspapers, industry magazines and of course social media are a few common options to sell your timeshare. However, these options also bring a lot of people trying to do nothing more than scam you out of money.
In addition it usually doesn’t provide any real leads of interested parties to sell your timeshare to.
Direct Sells to Friends or Family
Many timeshare owner go to friends or family to sell their timeshare. Selling your timeshare to friends or family may seem easy, but it is still a real estate transaction. Plus, do you want to give that financial burden to someone in your family? I hope not.
This is an option where you already have a relationship established, so there is trust and if you want to sell your timeshare to a person you already know that might be the highest percentage of success. As long as they fully understand the financial commitment they are making with a lifetime of maintenance fees, this could be an option that actually works out.
Our Recommendation
Based on our experience and the over 18,000 clients we’ve helped cancel timeshares, your best option is to cancel your timeshare through a timeshare canceling service. Selling a timeshare rarely works, if it does it takes multiple avenues of effort a lot of stress and time. By the time you list your timeshare on a selling site a few times, you’ve likely paid over 30% of what it would cost for you to legally and permanently cancel your timeshare.
The truth about selling your timeshare is that it is incredibly difficult, prone to unethical offers and incredibly time consuming.
We get you out of your timeshare guaranteed at the price we quote you. Contact us today for a free no obligation consultation.
