Question: My husband and I have owned a timeshare since 1993.
While we have enjoyed the use of it in the past when our children were young, now for various reasons, including the rising cost of dues, we don’t want it any more.
It appears we own it until 2023!
It seems unlikely we will be able to sell it, so can we file a quit-claim deed or is there any other way to get rid of it? We don’t want to have to keep paying dues in our old age!
Thanks for any information you can give.
Answer: I hate to tell you this, but in most cases a “timeshare” is not real estate. It is usually just an agreement for a prepaid vacation each year. If you read your papers on your timeshare, you will probably not find anything about fee simple ownership.
“Fee simple” is a legal term that means you have actual ownership of real property. It must be inheritable, transferable and perpetual. When you buy a single-family home or a condominium, you have a fee simple estate because it meets the three criteria of fee simple ownership.
A timeshare can sometimes include fee simple ownership of real property.
For example, four families could go in together and each pay a quarter of the cost of a beach cabin on Hood Canal. The four families could then develop a timeshare agreement in which each family was entitled to use the cabin one week per month on a rotating basis.
The four families would legally be considered “tenants in common” and they would each own a a quarter perpetual interest in the property, which could be transferred or inherited by the heirs.
Another type of timeshare involves “interval ownership” in which the timeshare owner is granted a type of ownership that is legally known as an “estate for years.”
What that means is that it is actually a long-term lease. Like any renter with a lease, you do not legally own the property but you own an exclusive right to use and occupy the property for the term of your lease, or estate, for years.
In your letter, you said that you own the timeshare until 2023, so it’s possible that you have an interval ownership type of timeshare. But more likely, you have a “vacation license,” which is simply a right to use the property for a specific amount of time each year.
Legal ownership of the property is retained by the developer of the timeshare, you do not build up any equity and you have no control over the operations of the property.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get rid of a timeshare that you don’t want. In some cases you can’t even give them away.
And never pay a fee up front to any company that offers to buy or sell your timeshare for you. Many scam operations take advantage of timeshare owners like you who are so desperate to escape the annual maintenance fees of their timeshare that they are willing to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have somebody else take it off their hands.
One online source of useful information is called the Timeshare Users Group at www.tug2.net/.
They have several articles on how to sell your timeshare or donate it to charity. Be prepared to be disappointed. Even if you are ultimately able to sell your timeshare, you will probably only get pennies on the dollar compared with what you originally paid for it.
Steve Tytler is a licensed real estate broker and owner of Best Mortgage. You can e-mail him at features@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
