A Bundle of Rights or A Smattering of Maybes?

Back in the Dark Ages of the early 2000s when I was fresh faced and completely ignorant of the vast amount of timeshare knowledge that was necessary to fully understand it, we salespeople talked a lot about the “full bundle of rights” that came with the timeshare. 

To refresh your memory, those rights were: use, exchange, rent, sell and will. In my defense, the landscape of timeshare ownership was considerably different than it is now. 

I recently had the opportunity to both sit in on a sales pitch in person as well as view a training video where these rights were still being pitched. 

However, I recently came across this section of a contract of a major developer:

 “The developer has limited your resale rights. Any future purchaser who buys this timeshare interest from you (other than a transfer as the result of a death, divorce or to an immediate family member) will have severely limited opportunity to reserve occupancy in this timeshare plan.”

There’s another developer who requires the secondary purchaser to purchase points directly from them in order to use the points fully. And not just a few points; half of the points in the secondary purchase. In simple terms if you purchase 10,000 points on the secondary market, the developer requires you to purchase 5,000 points directly from them in order to use the full exchange privileges. Adding insult to injury, this developer also restricts the original owner from using public sites to advertise the timeshare for sale. 

While a number of developers have a program in place to take back fully paid timeshares, even though many of them charge a fee to do this, some of these developers don’t offer this option for secondary purchases. I’ve yet to understand this-it’s their own product which they can turn around and sell for double or triple what the original purchaser paid-but they shut the door. 

All of which got me thinking that the so-called full bundle of rights had been diminished to more resemble a smattering of maybes.

Maybe you’ll be able to use it if you can figure out the often labyrinth like reservation system. 

Maybe you can exchange it if you plan 11-12 months out and aren’t too picky about where you vacation. 

Maybe you can rent it if you price it lower than the $399 the developer is advertising a week for. 

Maybe you can sell it if it’s paid in full and you don’t expect much more than $1,000 for it even though you paid $17,000 plus 10 years of maintenance fees. 

And maybe you can will it provided you can find someone to take it from you.

Look, I understand the developers’ need to preserve primary market purchases.  How about instead of taking benefits away from anyone who didn’t purchase directly, they add benefits to those who do?

Vacations are meant to be fun. Timeshare needs to get back to fun.