It took me a year to find out how to sell an inherited timeshare. I must have made a hundred calls. I called the Florida Attorney General’s office several times. They couldn’t help me except to say “Don’t pay for the fee up front – at the beginning.” and “There are a lot of resale scams out there.”
A relative paid $60,000 for a couple of timeshare units several years ago. I saw several similar timeshares selling on Ebay for a few hundred dollars. I had lawyers tell me they could get me out of the timeshare contract – if I paid them a few thousand dollars! (The audacious bastards!)
Westgate – the real owners of the timeshares – offered me no help with the sales other than to tell me they had the right to buy the timeshare back. They had the right of first refusal. In other words, if someone made an offer on the timeshare that wasn’t high enough, they could buy it back at that price and sell it to another.
I was about to give up trying to sell them. I thought they were worthless. Then I took a trip to Florida. I drove around and stopped at every place that offered free tickets or timeshare resales. One told me that they worked for Westgate and couldn’t buy them back and that they most likely couldn’t be sold. Another place would give me $100 if I took two hours to attend their presentation (but my wife and I had to make more than $50,000 a year). I refused the $100 offer.
Then, on my way to buy some cheap tickets, I found the place I was looking for. The were licensed real estate brokers that had been in business for 19 years. They had sold over 15,000 time shares. They could get 50% to 70% of what my relative paid for them several years ago. And best of all, they didn’t charge a commission until the sale was complete. The new owner would assume all closing costs!
Since then I got a call from someone in the “Bureau of Compliance at the Division of Florida Timeshares”. He told me that the correct way to find someone to sell a timeshare was to do an internet search on “Licensed Timeshare Resale Broker“. The key word is broker. You need a licensed real estate broker to properly sell your timeshare. Don’t ever turn the timeshare over to a lawyer. Don’t ever pay the commission up front. You may have to pay for an appraisal, but that is standard in the real estate business.
Good luck. And if you want to rent a timeshare week, click on “Buy Vacations” at the top of the page and I will rent you a week. People that rented them have given rave reviews. One mom told me her whole family kissed her and said “This is the best place yet!”