{"id":904,"date":"2010-11-02T18:24:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T18:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-1199783855.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/02\/5-reasons-not-to-buy-a-timeshare\/"},"modified":"2010-11-02T18:24:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T18:24:00","slug":"5-reasons-not-to-buy-timeshare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/02\/5-reasons-not-to-buy-timeshare\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Reasons Not to Buy a Timeshare"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are over 5 million timeshare owners world-wide, and the most recent survey had 85.6% agreeing that timeshare ownership was a positive experience. But maybe you shouldn&#8217;t buy a timeshare. Here are 5 reasons not to buy a timeshare:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b>Looking for an Investment<\/b><br \/>A timeshare is not a real estate investment. This can be confusing for some people. Legally a timeshare can be considered deeded real estate, you have to pay property tax on it, and in many states timeshares are regulated through the real estate commissioner&#8217;s office. However, a timeshare does not act like real estate. You don&#8217;t own a piece of property, but rather you&#8217;re buying a share of some time to use some property. Think of purchasing a timeshare more like purchasing a car &#8211; it can be listed in your will, it&#8217;s very handy to have, and it will depreciate in monetary value.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><b>You don&#8217;t take Vacations<\/b><br \/>The entire point of owning a timeshare is to make vacationing easy on a routine basis. If you know you&#8217;ll be taking a week&#8217;s vacation every October, and like visiting Maui, then buying a timeshare on Maui for that week will allow you to have a pre-planned vacation every year. However, if you&#8217;re not someone who vacations on a regular basis, then a timeshare won&#8217;t work for you.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><b>Unpredictable Vacation Time<\/b><br \/>Maybe you do take a vacation every year, but you never know when or how long it will be. Many timeshares restrict you to a particular week of the year, and if you don&#8217;t know when you&#8217;ll have time off then, don&#8217;t buy a timeshare. However, there are ways to make your timeshare flexible. Exchanging your timeshare week is an option, as is purchasing through a vacation club that works on points rather than calendars.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><b>Ties up Cash Flow<\/b><br \/>There&#8217;s no getting around the fact that paying an up-front fee on a future vacation limits your cash flow in the present. If you take out a loan you&#8217;ll have interest to pay, and every timeshare purchase also includes monthly maintenance fees, all of which contribute to the amount of cash that is tied up each month.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><b>Scams<\/b><br \/>Disreputable companies and timeshare sellers are no doubt a part of the timeshare world. If you don&#8217;t keep your eyes wide open, do your research, and deal only with businesses that have a reputation for honesty (always check with the Better Business Bureau, or the consumer affairs office your state) you&#8217;ll have a negative experience with your timeshare purchase.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>If you are wondering if a timeshare purchase is right for you, take a vacation with a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redweek.com\/browse\/timeshares\">timeshare rental<\/a> first. You&#8217;ll learn a lot that can help in your decision, one way or the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are over 5 million timeshare owners world-wide, and the most recent survey had 85.6% agreeing that timeshare ownership was a positive experience. But maybe you shouldn&#8217;t buy a timeshare. Here are 5 reasons not to buy a timeshare: Looking for an InvestmentA timeshare is not a real estate investment. This can be confusing for&#8230;","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-origin.redweek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}