In this podcast, Dave Denniston talks about a recent client experience and the journey of getting rid of a time share.
Dave shares the following:
– Three great resources to sell your time share (including one to see if it may even be possible!)
– The EASY option to unload your time share and get a tax write-off
– How you could buy more timeshare credits- where to buy and where NOT to buy them
TRANSCRIPTION
This is Dave Denniston & welcome back to my latest Freedom Formula for Physicians Podcast.
Well, I thought I’d tell you guys a quick story & something I’m working on right now. I have a client that is making great money. He is a consultant.
He has been working on for Fortune 500 companies & he just runs this life that is so hard to keep track of everything.
Back about 5 years, he had bought a time share. He and his wife, they are paying hundreds of dollars on a regular basis just to pay the maintenance dues.
They hate it. They don’t use it. They don’t go to Vegas where this time share is.
Me, personally, my wife and I own a timeshare. My family and I enjoy using it. We don’t have any debt on it. We paid cash for it.
I am not against timeshares per say, but I am against them if you don’t use the things and the money is just going to waste.
So, with this particular client, we are looking at two different things.
#1: Sell It.
What do you do with a timeshare when you don’t want it? You sell it!
And one of the things that you first want to look at is on Ebay. On Ebay, you can put up for sale your timeshare. Now, I want to caution you, it depends on how big it is.
The timeshare my wife & I have is called Worldmark. It’s pretty big. It has many different locations and credits. So, that’s much easier to sell on your own if you want to because it has so many different places.
I would suggest not to try and sell units where it is a 1 location property because there are not as many potential buyers for those as they are not many properties to choose from.
So, check out Ebay.
There’s also a whole bunch of dedicated sellers. I’m putting in a couple of links down here below that you can check out at a later time:
Check out www.Sharket.com for prices, Ebay and www.RedWeek.com and Time Share Users Group for selling.
#2: Donation.
The second strategy that I’m actually strongly suggesting for this client in this particular case is to rather than sell, we are going to donate it.
There are certain websites- I’ve listed one of them down here:
You can go & donate a timeshare. What’s so cool about that is that you get a tax write-off for just donating the timeshare. Now, this particular website I’ve listed down here below they will only take on certain kinds of properties. So, they reserve the right to say no. If they do say yes, which by the way, you can check them out on Better Business Bureau.
They’ve sold about $1 million worth of properties and they will turn around and sell it (to turn a profit). So, they essentially will sell it for you & then they send the proceeds to charities.
What I liked about this particular case is that the overhead costs were really relatively low compared to the profits that they reap. You can see that they are donating lots and lots of money they receive so it seems as legit as could be.
(EDITORS NOTE AS OF 12/28/2015: It was recently brought to my attention that Donate for a Cause was the source of a DOJ investigation. You can learn more about the lawsuit in this article)
Final Thoughts
Consider with yourself, do you have a timeshare? Do you want to get rid of it or do you love it?
If you love it, use Ebay or some other source to buy more shares. Don’t go through the developers because they are going to want to charge you thousands upon thousands of dollars when you could advantage of someone else that might want to sell their timeshares.
Check it out you guys and let me know if you have any questions. You can e-mail me at dave@daviddenniston.com. Make sure to check back in again soon.
