I know that buying a single time share doesn't make a great deal of sense - ever.

But due to the impact of Air BnB on that industry, you might want to to approach a location near you if the time share company is considering pulling out of a location and selling the chain to you.

I spent the week at a Time Share in the lower Poconos when I booked via a back door to resorts dot com. This back door allowed me to stay without owning anything for a whopping $449 for the week. While I was there I chatted with the person at the front desk while getting a fresh set of towels. She asked me for feedback, and I told them that they were very clean but they did have some deferred maintenance. Nothing huge, but it would be time to place the unit into phase maintenance.

I was a bit surprised when she said the owners who use an RCI points system of some sorts, were considering selling the chain the about 30 townhomes located on a main made lake in a country resort area. I sure wish I was closer to that area.

I did reach out to someone I thought was a bit closer to see if he was interested. Unfortunately he is also too far away. That said, for others, you might want to google up time shares next to me and talk to the staff about the longer term plans for their place.

Hope that helps out someone.

Poconos were great BTW.

I've never really understood time shares, but I haven't looked into them that much. I have always heard that they are a bad idea and have never heard anything good about them, of coarse that is from the customer prospective.

Ray, The queen of Versailles is a very interesting movie of a family. David Siegel, a real estate tycoon, behind Westgate resorts. If you have time check it out.

He built a 90,000 sq. Ft. home in Florida.

6er,

What would you do if you could pick up 30 or more town houses that had a view and needed some light work.

The reason why time shares themselves are not an investment - themselves are because they come with annual maintenance fees. The one I stayed at came with somewhere between $800-900 annual fee. So at best they are over paid, prepaid vacations with a dark cloud hanging over your head

I didn't have to pay that, I just paid the $449 fee. What I saw was a dry water spot on the ceiling in one place and some fogged up glass in the patio door where the glass seal was broken and it would cloud up. So these were not earth shattering issues at all for a furnished place. Ice dams happen and glass does go bad.

But I went up to the desk and asked what sorta maintenance schedule they put these issues since they have 30 plus units. That is when the person behind the counter said that that Crown Resorts was not in a hurry in dropping much money into these units as they are considering there options with this destination.

Ray, you're right that there's probably some opportunity in older timeshares. They typically built those in GREAT locations, but once they get looking dated, no one wants to come there any more.

If you bought them up cheap and just got them air and water tight, you could probably create an HOA and sell them off piecemeal to the highest bidder as condos. Turn the front desk building into a retail shop of sort or climate controlled storage.

The traditional timeshare model is to sell each unit 52 times; every week of the year. These are individual deeds so a 30 unit resort could have 30 x 52 individual contracts. 1,560 deeds/contacts. Other than a week at a time I don't see how you could take control of much of anything.

You may have paid $449 for the week but the owner of that week probably had to pay closer to $1,000. Probably sold his week through a broker so he would at least get something for it.

I own several DVC "timeshare" contracts that I rent out and have been very happy with. But Disney does it very differently than almost everyone else. I wouldn't consider buying into any other timeshare than DVC.

As for this sort of opportunity -- where a company wants out of their existing ones... It just seems like it would be very complex to have to deal with the 52+ owners per property. I mean, if they were closing shop and it was just a chance to get a bunch of water-front SFHs or something, then sure, there could be an opportunity there. But wouldn't most of these be situations where they are already sold and you'd have to continue with those contracts and you'd just be "in charge" of handling all of them?

Having one tenant for a year is enough of a hassle. Now imagine having 52 of them per SFH! :)

Some timeshares are deeded, some are "points", some are a blend.

Buying a property is definitely an interesting idea, you would only be getting possession of the 'developer' inventory but you have control...hm...

For cheap vacations and advice on how to avoid the sales pitch for stays, check out the TUGbbs website - Timeshare Users Group. You can rent points or weeks direct from the 'owners' (timeshare participants, not the building owner) for cheap like Ray N PA does. You can buy many points/deeds for "just" a dollar, but as Ray points out check the maintenance fees!

Hey Ray - first, that's really good thinking - VERY interesting idea.

I am told there are various backdoors.

The one I use is because I am veteran. Any veteran however could buy you a gift a gift certificate for anyone so this could be open to anyone. They say you maybe asked to show an ID, but I never have been asked.

AFVClub (dot) com which stands for Armed Forced Vacation Club.

If you need hooked up with a gift certificate I can do that.

I am not sure how to reach out to you though or the price you want to pay. If you go peak season, these can be pricy. If you go off season, it is a piece of cake to get availability

The time shares in the Poconos target the skiers so the price is cheap until you get into December. Most of the Pocono places are along the US 209 near the Delaware River.