Poll on time share exit options

[SecondCor521]

Hi all,

My father was sold a time share in March of this year. It is a Wyndham annual points thing. The right of recission period has obviously passed, and he now wants to get out of the contract and stop the maintenance fees. He is willing to swallow his pride and not try to get any of his original purchase price back.

I've been investigating over the past day or two and identified four general categories of options for him that seem workable:

1. Hire a local attorney and try to get out of the contract. There were fraudulent but only verbal misrepresentations made by the sales rep, and it is doubtful whether my father was mentally competent to enter the contract. There is an arbitration clause in the contract.

2. Sell it ourselves on the open market. Ads on TUG, eBay, Redweek, etc. We'd be competing with everyone else and their dog trying to sell it for $1.

3. Use Wyndham's Ovation take-back program. He owns it outright (no mortgage), and I have been told by some people with no dog in the fight that his timeshare is among the better ones.

4. Sell it to someone privately. My Dad thinks he got an offer from a broker for $175 to take it off his hands.

Other options that I've ruled out:

5. Stop paying, do a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure. Trashes my Dad's credit, and there may be threatening collection calls, but why should he care?

6. Keep it and use it / rent it out. Not much of a solution unless someone in the family wants it, and I'd worry about the ramifications at Thanksgiving dinner because the new owner would probably regret it too.

7. Donate it. I understand charities take it off your hands, sell it, and keep the proceeds, possibly charging you a fee upfront.

8. Use a third party exit company, like TimeShareExitTeam. I understand they charge $4K-$5K up front and don't always deliver.

 

[RenoJay]

Sorry to hear your dad gotten taken. I've been hearing radio commercials lately about a lawyer who specializes in getting people out of time share contracts. I don't recall the name but it's worth a Google search.

 

[erkevin]

I have owned deeded TS for 23 years. Obviously paid off long ago. The maintenance fees have grown tremendously and continue to do so. I can rent vacation weeks for less than my yearly fees.There is no viable secondary market. Donate, no. Deed-back, already refused.
I havent yet, but not paying my fees is a viable option. I have a fantastic credit score, so a 100-150 point hit will not lose me any sleep. I have enough cash socked away to purchase future cars and other large purchases, so even needing credit is unlikely. This may be my only option.

 

[bingybear]

How about this stupid idea -- create an irrevocable trust and fund it. Sell the time share to the trust and let it deplete the assets.

obviously the best idea is never buy it.

 

[zinger1457]

Have you contacted Wyndham directly and explained your fathers situation (age, mental capacity)? Get as high up the Wyndham chain as you can, the first support contacts are probably low level types. I've been a member of TUG for awhile and a common recommendation there is to never use any company that charges an upfront fee so I would stay away from any of those. If you don't get anywhere with Wyndham I would try and sell it but if they are only selling for $1 then you might as well try given it away.

 

[canuck5]

Do not pay anyone to try to sell it for you. It's a scam. You can't hardly give them away, even to a charity, since they have "lots" of inventory.

I had an Aunt, late 70's owned 2 and when my Uncle passed away, his pension went away, so her income dropped tremendously. She had no interest in using them any more, plus she was starting to fail health wise and contacted "them" and told them she was not going to pay the maintenance fee's any longer, for the reasons stated above. She also said that she was willing to turn the property back over to them.

It probably took 6 months of back and forth and my Aunt stood her ground, saying she wasn't paying the fee's any longer because she couldn't afford it and she couldn't travel any more. Eventually, they sent her paperwork, (she had a lawyer look at it first) and she signed off and never heard from them again. They took the property back.

When my Uncle told me he was going to buy them, I begged him not to. They did use them, but they certainly could've traveled to different places and "seen more places" before he passed away.

 

[COcheesehead]

My sister had one and sold it using the original TS company. She got pennies on the dollar, but she got out of the never ending maintenance payments. Death, taxes and TS maintenance payments.

 

[pb4uski]

I suspect that your best option is to use it IF the fees are less than the value of the resort stays. Offer points for family to use in exchange for reimbursement for the annual fees for those points.

Your post makes me wonder though... when your dad passes, if all the heirs disclaim the timeshare, what happens?

 

[kcowan]

A friend bought a TS for $25000 and hired a lawyer to get out of it. $5000. After paying the TS to sell it for them. Ha Ha.

 

[SecondCor521]

Thanks all for the replies.

Regarding the irrevocable trust idea - clever, but there is language in the contract that the TS company has to consent to the transfer. They are wise to this strategy as it is one commonly used - in fact it's the basic idea behind some of the time share exit companies. Google "Viking ships" if interested.

I haven't contacted Wyndham myself yet. I have a general POA for my Dad so this is something I will do soon. I just wanted to get the lay of the land first to see what his other options might be. Their Ovation take-back program has a reasonably good reputation at redweek.com.

pb4uski, using it is an option I'm considering. Currently it looks like we could get about a week in Hawaii per year - the points seem to be like airline miles where they're worth about a penny a point. But the general pattern seems to be that the maintenance fees grow over time, and there can be special assessments that one is contractually obligated to pay, so if a hurricane blows the roof off, we might have to write a check for $1000 or something.

As far as disclaiming, I actually posted a thread on that idea here a while back. It's a decent idea, but legally the executor (my older sister) would in theory have to get disclaimers from all of my Dad's living relatives, which would take a while, especially because he has a nephew who is sort of a shadow figure (probably involved in the drug trade near our southern border). Maybe someone would take it eventually. But just roughly that would involve over 20 people, and probably more once we thoroughly went through the family tree.

@kcowan, I assume the friend didn't get the original $25K back, since it ended up in a sales situation. My idea #1 is only the first of the options because if we can get the contract voided (an uphill battle, to be sure), then my dad would in theory get his original purchase price back. Since the original purchase price was (too) high, it makes the option worth considering in my view.