2. If you are wrong everyone will have forgotten what you
said by the time it happens anyway. Having gotten that
major disclaimer out of the way, let's take a look at the
industry and try to make some sense out of it.
3. The industry really got started almost thirty years ago in
the United States. Many real estate developers lured by
the vision of being able to sell a $100,000 condo for
$500,000 jumped in. Not realizing they were in the
marketing business in which they were inexperienced
rather than the development business they didn't do all
that well and many went under. The few who really
understood what they were doing did very well. Some
built sizable timeshare empires.
4. Then the industry started to mature. The major hotel
chains such as Marriott, Hilton, etc. decided they were
losing way too many of the vacation lodging customers to
timesharing. They also had a perfect vehicle to insure the
brand loyalty they had been spending so much to achieve.
With their huge resources they effectively drove all but a
few of the smaller developers out of the business. The
largest independent developers are still doing very well in
spite of this. Now where does the industry go from here?
5. Prediction #1: The chains and the largest developers will
continue to grow and to offer more widely appealing
products such as points systems and multiple locations.
Their pricing levels will be in the $12,000 to $25,000 range
per yearly timeshare week. The biennial sales (every other
year) will still enable them to also gain the lower end of
this market.
6. In the meantime, the developers overlooked a simple,
logical by-product of their millions of sold timeshares.
That is the resale market. Some of these original
timeshares were sold twenty-five years ago to people who
were in their seventies at the time. They simply cannot
use the product any more. Further, since it was/is a real
estate product which theoretically never dies, there are
many good reasons to have to sell and move on.
7. General real estate brokers took a look at this timeshare
resale market where the whole resale price is about a
third of a selling broker's three- percent commission on a
house and simply ignored it. Owners wishing to resell then
had nowhere to turn. There was no marketing system. As
a result, prices plummeted. People who had not really
paid too much to the developer (after all they didn't really
make a killing) could now sell for only a fraction of what
they had paid.
8. Enter the scammer. These folks who seem to always be
the first into any new arena promised the timeshare
sellers anything they wanted to hear in return for an
advance fee of from $300 to $5,000. If you went for one of
these deals don't feel too bad. So did I and I should know
better. I sent $350 to a company in Florida who put an ad
in the Orlando shopping news for $9. That was the whole
shake of the dice. It was also when I decided to provide
viable solution to the resale problem...namely to provide a
straight-ahead resale brokerage which would get paid
when the timeshare was sold. Fortunately there were
others around the country that thought the same way.
9. The resale business is now developing along these lines.
As more honest brokers get into the resale business, they
will become a group who will drive out the bad apples.
They may even get something like a Resale Multiple Listing
Service together. There are already some indications of
this on the Internet.
11. Years ago, condominiums were in about the same place as
timeshares are today. Eastern lenders wouldn't finance
condos and many brokers wouldn't sell them. After all,
how could you sell or finance part of a building? Now the
same argument is heard in relation to time in part of a
building. It too will pass and the time will come when it is
completely normal. Further, the price of resale timeshares,
which is now at ridiculously low levels, will increase as
they become more accepted. The gap between the pricing
of new timeshares and used timeshares will narrow.
