can anyone explain timeshares to me..

not sure what they are all about....
any info/recommendations would be greatly appreciated

Re: can anyone explain timeshares to me..

RCI is a big one if you want to google. Basically you are buying a week of using a property. Say there is a house in Florida...you buy a 1 week share. You can go to this vacation home that week every year, or you can trade your week and use someone elses property. This leaves your place open for someone to trade for yours!

Re: can anyone explain timeshares to me..

imo there are good things about it and bad. We have 3 timeshares. 2 are in orlando, 1 in mexico. the two in orlando are on international drive and are points value and the other one is weeks value... which i think gives you more trading power. You want to buy at a desirable place .. one that has some trading power. if you are buying RCI you definitly want a gold crown resort. the only reason we have the timeshares is that we couldn't travel with 4 kids if we didn't . the timeshares make it easy and cheaper with the "condo" style resorts.. (with kitchen). it wouldn't be practical with hotels.

we pay a maintenance fee on all of them but it's considerably cheaper than if we were staying in hotel.. for instance our 3 bedroom in orlando costs us 900 dollars in maintenance a year. that is for one week. plus a booking fee of 129. so for a 1000 dollars we can take our kids to orlando. it forces you to go away in a sense because you HAVE to pay the maintenance whether you use it or not.

i'm not thrilled with a couple of things such as not being able to trade to go EXACTLY where i want to go whenever i want to go... you have to rely on availablility and you have to book at least a year out. (unless you are travelling to your home resort every year) also, the resorts are ok.. even the best ones i've stayed at are not luxury hotels.. they are condos.

hope i've answered some of your questions. FM me if you want to know anything specific!

Re: can anyone explain timeshares to me..

Re: can anyone explain timeshares to me..

because most timeshares are LIFETIME. beyond lifetime, you can give that to someone and they can give it to someone else and so on. (disney is NOT like this) those maint. fees are actually pretty high. and i'm surprised you have to pay a booking fee. my husband's whole family (like aunts, uncles, parents, etc) own at vistana in orlando and their maint. fees are 750 a year, no other fees. his cousin actually bought one for $1 on ebay, had to pay for the maint. fees and processing fee. so basically, her whole "loan" is paid off. she just pays the maint. fees. i'd suggest going on ebay and really looking through the timeshares. you'll get it for a hell of a lot cheaper. i think to buy into vistana, it's almost $20,000.. his cousin got it for $1. haha you do the math. but you definitely have to read them. sometimes they're every other year, or some other hidden things. it's definitely worth it if you go on vacations every year. i don't think my ILS pay for rci anymore. they never went anywhere else and didn't think it was worth it to keep paying for the subscription

Re: can anyone explain timeshares to me..

I met someone on my vacation that has a time share, she has 2 weeks a year in orlando.

She traded it for st. maarten, i met her on the beach there, she said that the condo she is staying in is very nice but not 5 star, she said she had to pay 2 weeks maintence which was 600 a week

But she bought the time share for 40,000 dollars....i duno that just seems like ALOT of money, i asked her if she thought it was a good deal, and she was like "absolutely"

In my mind, it seems like a lot, that is just for hotel, not including any food, activities, airfare, rental cars, and all the other expensese going on vacation brings.

What is good for one person is not always good for another

Re: can anyone explain timeshares to me..

Like PP's family, we have a timeshare at Vistana in Orlando. Our maintenance fees are lower since we have a 1br unit (they probably have a two br unit).

We can go to our home resort or exchange within the Starwood network for free, or pay a $150 fee to exchange within the very large Interval International Network (RCI's competitor).

If you want to go to Orlando or want to exchange the week each year, I recommend Orlando - they have very good exchange power for the price of the units (the other places that have the best exchange power are Hawaii and Aruba but, the units are pricier).

There are a lot of people who are selling their units right now due to the economy - you can get a good deal on a resale.

We bought ours directly through Starwood in 2005 and it's almost paid for itself already (based on what we saved in lodging costs). We've used it to go to Hawaii, Cabo, Aruba, and ILs have used it to go to Puerto Vallarta 2x. We also received a ton of Starpoints for Starwood hotels upon getting the timeshare so we very seldomly have to pay for lodging.

Re: can anyone explain timeshares to me..

we have ours through Mariott, and our home timeshare is in Orlando.. we have a 2 bedroom villa .. and paid a great price .. you can also use 2 weeks a year if you use one half of the villa.(1 bedroom) and the trading power is great because Orlando is one of the top locations..
we trade through Interval.. and the price of the time share was affordable, and the maintenance was not too high either!

Re: can anyone explain timeshares to me..