Timeshare Buyer or Victim?
Yesterday, I spoke to one of my friends after a long time. I found out that he had just purchased one of those Hilton timeshares that I had mentioned in an earlier post.
He was taken in by the high pressure tactics and the temptation of exotic vacations! He’s now suffering from buyers remorse.
Like they say, “Invest in haste, repent at leisure“.
Well if any of you are interested in spending $20,000 on a hotel room, let me know. I’m thinking of putting together my own version of a timeshare.
We buy a small house in Nicaragua for around $120,000. Its atop a mountain next to a nature preserve with lovely ocean views. It has running water and solar power. Its no Hilton with conceirge, but instead of 52 partners, you might only have 12. Plus you get to deduct the cost of your surfing vacations, because you’ve bought an investment property! It should rent out sporadically to cover the cost of maintenance. If Nicaragua does a quarter as well as Costa Rica, it should atleast double in value!
Or if you really want to buy your own timeshare for as low as 1 cent on the dollar, check out my Timeshare store for the cheapest deals.
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November 11th, 2006 at 10:48 am
So who maintains the property, deals with Nicaraguan bureaucracy etc? We have a PhD student here who wants to do research on the trend for expatriates to invest in Nicaraguan property. Her husband is Nicaraguan and she spent much of the last two years there. I think she doesn’t approve of the trend though
November 14th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
I absolutely hate timeshares, they are the worst investment.
November 24th, 2006 at 3:22 am
funny post. I have had a few friends who make these mistakes.
People should learn that investment is something you expect to get money from. Anything else is just an expenditure.
(Nothing against expenditures, just we have to label and understand them correctly).
November 24th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
I still contend it’s not always a bad deal. If you are justifying it as an “investment” as Jose says, then yes it’s bad. However, I buy food and clothing and they are not investments either. When I go on vacation, it’s not about the investment.
However, if it saves money that would have been spent elsewhere (and that’s debatable) that’s valuable to consumers. Since it’s a deedable property, it has the POTENTIAL for appreciation as well. If you were to go spend money on a hotel room, it doesn’t have that potential.
That said if you are looking for a timeshare, look into the resale market. I think you can usually get something at 60-80% of the price of the chains’ price. Another idea is look at RedWeek.com where you can pick up other people’s timeshares on the cheap.
December 10th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Timeshares are the worst of the worst. You can say there’s no investment value, and that’s absolutely true, but there’s also no enjoyment for 90% of TS owners, either. It’s never what the sellers say they are, facilities and locations are awful, maintenance doesn’t happen despite all those maintenance fees, and you’re still paying local taxes for something you can’t even use much of the time because your week is unavailable. I know all this because I once sold timeshares — I know, it’s horrible, and I’m saying all this right now to try to absolve myself. A lot of timeshare owners get so sick of it that they try to sell it and can’t, they have to pay TimeShare Relief to take it off their hands, which is better even than donating it because if you donate one you’re still responsible for all the fees.
So I hope that was a joke about starting up a TS in Nicaragua. You could probably do it and rake in the cash, but you probably won’t be able to sleep at night, either.