Selling Timeshares
REM # F597
By Ilyce R. Glink
Summary: An estate includes various timeshares. Ilyce gives the seller resources for listing her timeshare.
Q: I am the Administrator of my late mother's Estate. Included in her assets were four weeks of timeshares at three different vacation resorts.
I have had little experience with timeshares but have read that they are very difficult to resell. I have contacted each of the resorts and none of them offer resale services. I have also tried listing them on Ebay, but to no avail.
Do you have any recommendations on how to sell these timeshares? Are there any services or brokerage companies that you would suggest?
A: Let me first offer my condolences on the death of your beloved mother. Tackling an estate isn't fun, particularly when you have to unload timeshares.
Unfortunately, there aren't any good ways to get rid of timeshares. You can offer them to a charity, which can then turn around and offer them as a fundraiser. You can try to sell them back to the developer (this almost never works, and as you’ve discovered, your developer doesn’t even have a resale service).
Or, you can go to the timeshare and try to find other owners of timeshares of the property who might be interested in purchasing yours. (The management company might be able to help you here.) A final option would be to simply give them back to the developer (he might not buy it, but might take it back out of pity).
You can try to auction them off, or simply give them away, on Ebay.com, but unless you have a high-priced unit in a fancy development, you won’t get much traction. One new site I recently heard of is Tug2.net, which is a timeshare users website. You can place a “for sale” listing on the site for a small fee. Timeshares.com is another website that might offer some help.
Just make sure you stay away from agents who offer to sell your timeshare if you pay them an upfront fee. Unfortunately, those offers are mostly scams or ineffective.
One final thought: As trustee, you can simply transfer ownership of the timeshares to the heirs of the estate and let them use them or unload them.
NOTE: This column is distributed by Real Estate Matters Syndicate, PO Box 366, Glencoe, Illinois, 60022. This column may not be resold, reprinted, resyndicated or redistributed without written permission from the publisher.
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