Smartly Knowing the Real Cost of Timeshare Ownership

Timeshare ownership can be a way to achieve one’s dream vacation. Many individuals opt for this than any other ways despite the reported number of owners who want to get out of their timeshares. This also gives the owner the opportunity to take a vacation in a different resort every year. The timeshare owners don't really own the said property, but only of share of it. Moreover, they can enjoy a new accommodation for a specific period of time every year.

To understand the timeshare system, let’s have an example. For example, one real estate developer buys a resort of 200 rooms. The year is divided into 52 weeks and then the 200 rooms are multiplied by 52 weeks to get the potential number of customers using this facility during one week. The result is 10,400 potential customers. If 10,000 dollars are charged weekly per room, the developer will earn up to 104,000,000 dollars per year as an initial payment.

The common trap for timeshare owners is the fee charged in the name of the maintenance fund. At the beginning, these charges are kept low. Thus, this gives the owner a sense of contentment and relaxation. Unfortunately, this relaxation and contentment generally vanish after a while, as the maintenance charges go up.

It is said that timeshare ownership gives flexibility to the owner. This helps them to change the location and time period. However, this requires membership of an exchange company and this adds another financial burden which is the membership fee of that exchange company. In addition to this membership fee, an annual fee to maintain this membership is also required to be paid regardless of the fact that this facility has been used or not.

Moreover, timesharing as one of the most popular vacation options have many types of visible and hidden charges which increase its overall cost. This includes initial membership, purchase fee, annual maintenance charges, exchange club fee, additional exchange costs. The accumulation of all these costs makes the timeshare cost bigger than what the owner actually thought.