I am thinking of renting a week in Hawaii. Not sure yet which island. Do all timeshare rentals go Saturday to Saturday? It looks like it’s easier to get a free airplane ticket, using miles, if I can go Sunday to Sunday.

Mine starts Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. There is much more flexibility in the off seasons especially if you want to split up your week.

If someone could please explain the point system ( ike diamond resorts uses) why it is good or bad. I have heard why the regular timeshare is bad, but the point system seems different. Anyone with personal experience would be great.

Point systems were created because the resorts where running out of things to sell. If they deed weeks they can only sell 50 weeks per unit. Obviously that puts a cap on how much the resort can make. With points there is no limit to how many points they can sell because a point is fictitious and has no value compared to a physical deeded week. Usually they do have a set amount they can sell specified in the resort docs however it is usually always stated that they can increase that amount. The nice part to points is you can use them at many resorts especially if you are talking Wyndham, Diamond, or even DVC. This gives you a lot more flexibility.

If you are looking at Timeshare points as a way to save for vacation I suggest a savings account and renting a timeshare. I rent timeshares a couple times a year and love it. I usually pay $500 to $1000 depending on what resort I am going to. I would suggest you rent a timeshare a few times and see if this is something you want to then buy into. You don’t want to buy it then never use it like most people do. Check out http://www.buyatimeshare.com that is where I get most of my rentals.

We own a few timeshare weeks that we typically rent out. We’re looking for an easy way to track our expenses and income. We use Quicken Deluxe. Neither of us has any accounting experience so don’t know the "correct" way to do this. I tried creating an asset account in Quicken, but when I did a deposit in our checking account with the category being a transfer to the timeshare asset, it came out as a decrease in the asset. Should we just do two transactions instead of trying to tie the them together? Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I don’t think you need the asset account for a timeshare. In my experience, the asset account is good if you have a liability account (loan) associated with it and you want to see equity calculations (asset value minus loan balance) and you want to track increases in value of the asset or sale/disposition of the asset.

The easiest way to track these things is to create categories for your expenses and income. I’m not sure what Quicken Deluxe is missing from Quicken Home & Business (what I use), so sorry if you aren’t able to do what I suggest:

You probably only need a couple of categories – I’m assuming you report income associated with the timeshare on a Schedule E tax form? If so, consider creating a category group called "Rentals" or "Timeshares". Create a category within that group that is in the "Income" group and call it something like "Rent". If you take security deposits, you may want to create a separate asset account for that, or at least a separate category, because those deposits often have to be treated differently, and aren’t considered income until you actually get to keep them. Create a category within the "Rentals" category group that is in the "Expense" group and call it something like "Rental Expense". You can create subcategories within this category or create more categories if you want to track more detail (i.e. cleaning, legal expenses, office expenses, miscellaneous, repairs, etc.).

If your Quicken version allows it, associate these categories to the related tax form (Tax Line Item Assignments) to make reporting at tax time easier.

I created an account called "Undeposited Cash & Checks" to enter any cash or rent checks, etc., that I receive. I assign them one of my rental income categories. When I deposit those into checking, I record it in my checking account as a transfer from Undeposited Cash & Checks. When I write a check for an expense, I associate it with on of my rental expense categories. The same goes if I use my credit card to pay a rental expense.

I hope this makes sense – email me if you need more help…

I have a timeshare in San Diego that I am paying on. There are no black out days which makes it a great deal. But I need to get rid of it. I have been told by several places not to deal with a company that charges to sell, but I can not find any that do not. Any recommendations? Hopefully a company someone has used before.

I made a successful sale of my Mystic Dunes timeshare (Orlando) using sellmytimesharenow.com

Here is the research I did before choosing a company

1. I checked the BBB report on the company
2. I made them provide traffic and offer reports
3. I acted like a buyer on search engines and only inquired with easy to find, top ranked companies
4. I searched online for complaints about the company.

All this took me a couple hours (the final decision took days!)
I also posted on free sites at the same time and recommend you do the same as well.

I have a Sheratin Vacation Resort Timeshare and I want to sell it now? I’ve heard so many horror stories about companies that claim they can sell your timeshare but they want hundreds of dollars upfront. What do I do?

I can tell you my horror story with my timeshare. We bought in Ormond Beach, in 1982. We used our place one time and traded about 20. As you may know it costs about $150 to trade through Interval International and RCI. The rest of the years we had it rented out. We got to pocket about $250 each year we did this.

By the time you figured out purchase price, yearly maintenence fees, special assessments and trading costs, you have spent much more than renting a hotel room.

We tried every means available to sell our unit. We tried the large realtors, who advertise on TV, the little guys, the auctioneers, anybody and everybody.

We could not find a soul you did not want money up front. I they really have a service to sell, they wouldn’t want money up front.

We finally sold oyr unit to the owners of the condo for 10% of what we paid for it. We did this just before the hurricanes hit Ormond Beach in 2004.

Good luck.

I just purchased a timeshare property with my sister who is still in college. I’m just wondering if her name is on the deed if she will have to claim that somewhere on taxes this year?

Not until it’s sold, or if you rent it out and make money from it rather than using your time yourselves.

My Nan is now a widower and has a timeshare she no longer requires. Attached to the time share is 109,000 RCI points. Does any one know the best way to go about this?

Any usefull information will be highly appreciated.

First you want to check with RCI to see if those points are transferable. A lot of what RCI offers does not transfer to another member. If they can not be transferred just cancel the membership and save that money right away. If you can Sell the RCI points you just include them on the sale of your timeshare. You can try sites like ebay or craigslist but you’re going to get very low offers and have to deal with peoples questions, and trust me I tried this method they have a lot of questions. there are websites that deal with just timeshare resale like the company I went with http://www.buyatimeshare.com.

Good luck remember timeshares are not an investment just sell it to get out of it don’t think your going to make money on it

I have a silverleaf timeshare I paid $8,000 years ago. I don’t use any more. It is a red time week 33 at Holly Lake has excape, a campground and includes 7 resorts. What is the best way to sell it or trade for something of value?

With or without losing your shorts…………..?

If i only want to use wyndham/fairfield resorts, are resale points treated any different than the points that i but from wyndham? If I did want to use a different timeshare, how do i trade my points? Can I use my points for other things like cruises, airfare, and rental cars?

Yes — they are different. To trade your points for a different timeshare, you need to belong to a timeshare broker organization, such as RCI or II. For a fee, they allow you to exchange your "points" for other properties, get airline miles, rental cars, etc..

Have a timeshare for Orlando Week 51 I have tried to sell for a year through two listings to no avail. How do I get out of the maintence fees which continue to rise? I do not want this burden anymore as I have health issues.

how about an insurance fire!!!