Owners find they can't unload timeshare vacation baggage

Timeshares are tough to sell, even in the best of times. Now a perfect storm of trouble has turned some of those slices of paradise into albatrosses, making the shared vacation properties and their hefty annual fees nearly impossible to unload and breeding a horde of scam artists preying on motivated sellers.

Nearly 8 million people -- about 7 percent of U.S. households -- own a timeshare, which is basically a vacation property owned by many people who take turns using it. While it's unclear how many are owned by Minnesotans, experts say it's likely even a larger percentage given that people in colder climes, eager to escape nasty winter weather, are more likely to own timeshares.

The down economy and the fact that the first generation to buy timeshares some 35 years ago has been retiring means many people are looking to sell. Craigslist, eBay and specialized listing service Redweek are chock-full of offerings.

But how much they're worth is a different issue. One Florida listing service estimates that most timeshares are selling for no more than 10 percent of the original price. Some owners are lucky to get pennies.

"We've never seen the resale market where it is now," said Brian Rogers, head of the Timeshare Users Group, a consumer advocacy group in Jacksonville, Fla., that runs the listing service. Most owners "huff away mad" when told their timeshare has depreciated like a Yugo, he said.

Then there are the scams.

Resale scammers feeding on desperation have run so rampant that the Better Business Bureau last month named timeshare resale swindles one of the top rip-offs of 2010. The Minnesota attorney general's office last week issued its own consumer warning, saying it has been fielding complaints over the past few months.

Florida has launched a statewide crackdown on timeshare resale fraud. Its Attorney General's office already has sued 11 companies, including at least one that has been active in Minnesota, Gold Crown Property Management Inc. It has investigations open on at least a dozen more.

Even the top industry group, the American Resort Development Association (ARDA) in Washington D.C., has issued five consumer advisories on resale scams in the past six months. "In a down market they come out of the woodwork," said president and CEO Howard Nusbaum.

Indeed, timeshare sales plunged 35 percent to $6.3 billion in 2009, the latest year for which data are available, according to ARDA. Sales have dropped 40 percent from the 2007 peak.

Owners continue to fall behind on timeshare loans, although overall default rates are down from their peak in January 2010, when one in 10 timeshare owners was in default, according to Fitch Ratings, which tracks securitized timeshare loans that are bundled up an resold to investors. The annualized default rate was 8.51 percent in December.

Nusbaum blames the current trouble on the recession and credit freeze, as well as the demographics of retiring baby boomers. Not only have cash-strapped consumers cut back on luxuries, but resort developers have found it harder to line up the credit to offer consumers. Most new timeshares are sold directly by resort developers such as Hilton, Marriott, Wyndham and Starwood, who provide their own financing.

There are just not as many consumer protections in the secondary market, where timeshares get resold, he said. "We're kind of where the used car industry was in 1962," he said.

Investment or fun

Some desperate owners try to hand timeshares back to the resort developer under a so-called quit claim deed. But resorts won't take them unless they think they can resell the property, experts say.

Not all timeshares are equal. The cream -- say a Disney resort -- holds its value better than the rest. "If you bought a converted motel room in 1982 in Gatlinburg, Tenn., for the first week of December ... I don't think it has a whole lot of economic life," Nusbaum said.

People have to give up thinking that timeshares are a financial or real estate investment, he added. It's a lifestyle investment, and its real value is the use owners get out of it.

He's advertised his two-week timeshare on Craigslist for nearly 6 years and marked it down to $5,000, a fraction of the more than $14,000 he paid in the 1980s. He's gotten responses, but only people trying to sell the timeshare for him -- for a fee.

"I'd like to retire," he said. "I'm 72."

Kim Holbrook knows the feeling. The 56-year-old Brooklyn Park resident has been trying for six years to sell the four timeshares she and her husband bought years ago when they lived in the South and the resorts were quick getaways.

Now the children are grown, and she and her husband are spending more than $2,000 a year in annual fees on properties that they don't use like they used to. She can exchange some of the timeshares for stays at resorts in different places, she said, but there are fees for that, too.

Her advice for first-time buyers: Don't. "There isn't a market. You can't resell," Holbrook said. "Everything I've seen ... it's for pennies on the dollar."

Spillane, who co-owns a small manufacturing company, often uses his timeshares to exchange for stays at other resorts. He gives one week each year as a perk to employees and can absorb the $5,000 to $6,000 a year spent in maintenance fees.

"We know if the market doesn't fully recover that we're not going to get a lot of money for some of them," he said. "But we've gotten use out of them for many years."