When Vacation Clubs Go Broke

Does anyone know what might happen if a Club filed bankruptcy. Would club members have rights if there membership had no real estate deed attached? Would the best resort belonging to the club have to pay for the worst resorts failure. What if you have a deed and other people gave up their deed to belong to the club?

Any protection or first right for the deed holder?

Has this ever happened?

orvillef2 wrote:

Does anyone know what might happen if a Club filed bankruptcy. Would club members have rights if there membership had no real estate deed attached? Would the best resort belonging to the club have to pay for the worst resorts failure. What if you have a deed and other people gave up their deed to belong to the club?

Any protection or first right for the deed holder?

Has this ever happened?

Vacation Clubs, by definition, are "right to use" and have no ownership (and hence no deed, since you have no "ownership" of anything). Only the owners of the properties (underlying club investors) actually have any ownership interest. What YOU would have is basically a "membership", for a clearly specified period of time, while owning absolutely nothing. While such clubs rarely if ever fail, if they did you'd have no further obligation since you really have no ownership of anything in the first place. By the same token, in the event of financial failure, you'd also have little or no recourse for recovery of your "lost" membership costs either. The nature and financial interrelationships of multiple resorts within such "clubs" varies on a case by case basis, with no "one size fits all" situation or answer to that particular part of your question.

Perennial Vacation Club (based in Nevada) is a strong company with solid management and with which I've had direct personal experience, but I surely don't claim to know the status or financial organization of ALL VC's. They are all quite different, the only common feature to all of them being "right to use membership" vs. "deeded ownership".

ken1193 wrote:

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Vacation Clubs, by definition, are "right to use" and have no ownership (and hence no deed, since you have no "ownership" of anything). Only the owners of the properties (underlying club investors) actually have any ownership interest.

I don't think you are right about this. I have an deeded ownership/membership at Sedona Vacation Club. In checking with the Coconino County Assessor's office I have a deed to a 1/8000th (approximately, forgot the exact number) share of the property at the address where the Los Abrigados Resort is located.

The developer (which btw just filed Chap 11), a few yrs after I (unfortunately) bought my TS, stopped selling this kind of ownership and switched to something they called "Premiere Vacation Club, which did not have any actual property ownership attached to it. I don't think they like for people to hold on to their deeded ownerships, because they keep trying to upsell me to the new program. Of course I wouldn't give those crooks another nickel for anything.

It will be interesting to see how their bankruptcy shakes out. If everything goes true to form, the wiseguys who started up this scam will walk away with their Scottsdale mansions and Swiss bank accounts, while us poor schmucks get screwed again.