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Re: Selling Vacation Club Membership

[Q=paulom15] I was going to sell my timeshare in about 15,000.00 because it was the price I bought about 2 years ago in Orange Lake Resort. I think it is a fair price because the resort became much better now and it has almost doubled resort options. But I have been looking as if I wanted to buy a membership and there are memberships selling even at 0 and they could not sell them. Why could it be? What do you recommend me to do?[/Q] It's good that you have come to realize the hard reality of reselling timeshares and that you will never get back what you paid into it. Sadly, many people who fall for these resale scams don't realize this fact. They insist that their units hold or even go up in value. That's where the scam artists swoop in. Even more sad is that the sales person at OL convinced you (probably through a lot of lies and half-truths) that what you were buying was hot. There are many reasons why some can't even sell for zero. Simply put, there is far more supply than demand for timeshares. Especially in Central Florida, there is a glut of timeshares. Take a look at the Red Week classifieds. Also, many owners don't use them anymore and want to dump them before the next maintenance fee bill comes. Seeing that we are nearing the end of the calendar year (when most maintenance fee bills come), there are probably going to be a lot more listed for sale or giveaway. Another reason is that many owners realize that the rental value at OL rarely meets the maintenance fees. So in other words, you can probably rent a week from an owner for less than what he is paying in maintenance fees and, if you are an owner and you want to rent it out (that's if you can in fact find someone who wants to rent), you will have a hard time recovering your maintenance fees. Does that sound like something anyone would want to buy or own? The reasons are many why such units are having a hard time even being given away but at least you are forearmed with the knowledge of such and can avoid any of the scams aimed at timeshare owners like you.