Why not just rent rather than buy

[tonyg Goomba & Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close tonyg]

Rental availability is at or near a high right now, but as things change (and they always do) rentals may not get you where you want to go when you want to go. And even at this time, there are a few places you can't get at certain times. In the event of timeshare closings, shut downs of resorts would just decrease availability. I do not see things getting so bad that timesharing would come to an end, but an extended severe recession or depression could possibly be a death knoll.

[PigsDad Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close PigsDad]

Would there be a rental available ?.. You are then limiting your choices to our people's listings.
I don't think you would be able to plan a 2 or 3 week road trip using rentals.

Colin

You don't sound like a person who has searched timeshare availability for where and when they want to go almost every day since 1997, and documented availability dwindling, and then totally disappearing.

http://www.timeshareforums.com/forum...s-on-the-Beach

Colin -- JLB's blog on RCI exchange availability over the years probably demonstrates that there is an inverse relationship of exchanges vs. the rental availability for timeshare properties. Less people are giving their weeks to RCI and RCI is skimming those weeks they do get to rent them out. Both of those trends reduce the exchanges available and, at the same time, increase the number of rentals available to the general public.

It may have been tough to find good, quality rentals at timeshare resorts in the past, but now the rentals are much more prevalent. Not only from RCI, but also from other online places like redweek, VRBO, etc.

Kurt

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

OK, has an alien invaded your body?

CL has copious rentals at Wilderness Club @ Big Cedar, as an example, in timeframes many of us have documented as simply being unavailable through exchanges.

Of course, 11/16/10 reduced what is available, for what it takes to get it, even if it is available, for somewhere around 1/2 of RCI members (according to our highly-informal poll).

The best selection is via rentals, IMHO, somewhat documented by years of watching.

Let's say it this way . . . if you don't own a timeshare, today you can more for less, and, if you own a timeshare, today you get less for more, than, say, five years ago.

As an owner, we're paying $650 in fees for our peak summer (Week 28) Branson 2-bedroom, highly touted, Gold Crown. As a renter, the family renting it from us paid $499, a good deal for us compared to the $350 being advertised by other owners.

At the same time, the industry is still selling stuff in town for thousands of dollars, and struttung about it.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

To be fair, while at the same time doing my best to be honest, we have been receiving two-five emails a day from RCI, touting all the stuff they do have, which, bascically, is stuff where we own, which was touted at the time of purchase as being the best-of-the-best, and that could get you anything, any where.

We all know it was, that that's how it's sold, so why try to smooth that over?

What's puzzling to me is that the Internet has shown the misrepresentations of TS sales, yet nothing much has changed. Ebay, CL and the jillion of independent sales and rental sites have shown the virtual worthlessness of TS, yet they are still being sold like they were 20 years ago.

It's similar to some RE agents ignoring the existence of distressed properties the last few years.

It appears that PT Barnum was right.

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

CL has copious rentals at Wilderness Club @ Big Cedar, as an example, in timeframes many of us have documented as simply being unavailable through exchanges.

tonyg has a point, though. Right now, a lot of BG owners who can't use their points are trying to rent them out, and the savvy ones go for prime weeks at the Wilderness Club @ Big Cedar. Plus BG owners who aren't sure where they'll be financially in eleven months are less likely to grab Big Cedar weeks. But if the economy improves enough, more owners are going to be using their own points, and more owners will be confident enough to reserve at eleven months out, both of which likely mean less Big Cedar time on the rental market.

And a lot of stuff that can be tough to get through RCI -- Wilderness Club at Big Cedar, The Suites at Hershey, Wyndham Old Town Alexandria, Little Sweden -- is easy to get if you're in that points system (or can get at it with your points through another points system, as with the agreement between BG and Shell or the connection between Wyndham and WorldMark). I think a lot of the changes at RCI the last five years or so are adjustments to the market changes caused by the points systems, or caused by the expansion of the Internet. There are more BG owners now than five or ten years ago, plus it's a lot easier for those owners to find out what resorts are most popular, meaning the popular resorts are going to be hit harder, both by owners who want to rent and by owners who just want to see for themselves what all the fuss is about.

The Internet is changing the rental situation, too, but I think it takes as much savvy and some of the same tolerance levels needed to be happy renting TSs as it did to be happy with a weeks ownership some years back. Points systems have a security factor that weeks systems never did (multiple choices for the same yearly price; availability doesn't change whenever RCI gets a new idea; you always know who to contact with your complaints), and with points you don't have to stick with week-long vacations (it's easier than it was to get partial-week rentals, but weeks are still pretty standard outside of points systems). People who enjoyed finding the best deal trading in their week also enjoy finding the best rental deal; people who prefer knowing the points price ahead of time and getting the best use of their points within those long-standing variations are less excited by all that.

Renting is riskier than any other option, which is to the benefit of those willing to rent. The best deals are direct rentals, but most people are going to compare broker prices to owning, because realistically, they know they'd be using a broker if they rented. The biggest risk with owning is not being able to get rid of the TS when you don't want it, which is a risk well in the future. The biggest risk of renting is you get there and don't have a unit, or the unit is unlivable -- either way, your upfront payment is usually gone for good. The kind of people who love the challenge of finding that terrific deal, and are good at doing it, seem to be the same ones less intimidated by that particular risk. Could be those of us who like wrestling with points that don't change every year also tend to prefer the safety of a points system.

If money is your only criteria, or getting the "best" by the standard definition of the phrase (i.e., most popular resort or location, or most luxurious), then I agree that renting is the way to go -- I know people who love to rent who got great deals even before TS sales tanked (although some of them used methods I wouldn't). I'm not yet convinced it's the best way to go if money is an important, but not the ultimate, criteria.

EDIT:

TS sales have always depended on people buying without bothering to do any homework. If most customers weren't looking for information in the first place, why would more, or more easily accessible, information change that?

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

For the boomers who appear to be turning against their TS ownership, and in significant numbers, the internet, google, forums, etc., were not available when they purchased.

Finding contradictory evidence in 3, or 5, days, was problematic.

The assumption, for us and I assume others, was they cannot say those things if they were not true.

The truth is the did say them and they weren't true. & they still are.

Again, we all know that.

An example, in our first presentations, I spoke openly about securing exchanges and then placing Want Ads in local papers to rent those exchanges, as if I had stumbled upon a great way to make money. I spoke openly because there was nothing said, or written, preventing that, and no one ever corrected me. So those tours were with some rum-dum, outta-the-way companies? Yeah . . . Orange Lake, Vistana, Westgate . . .

But, that is just one of many things we all know are distorted.

What was the question again . . . rent or buy?

rent

& even if you get screwed, you won't be screwed forever.

And it's not like nobody ever got a Confirmed Exchange taken back.

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

For the boomers who appear to be turning against their TS ownership, and in significant numbers, the internet, google, forums, etc., were not available when they purchased.

I guess I was raised on the "too good to be true" principle. Plus I would never sign a contract for anything until I did my homework, and the harder the sell, the more reluctant I was, so maybe I was raised not to trust salespeople as well. Even boomers in the late seventies/early eighties had access to a library or a publication like Consumer Reports and thus could do their homework; my parents are pre-boomer and they knew how Timeshares worked (they were also getting good deals renting other people's TSs by the early eighties). So I still think it's more about the buyer's attitude than the accessibility of information.

I have run across a lot of high-traffic Internet sites that I think could only survive if the "they cannot say it if it wasn't true" approach isn't alive and well. Second son was just diagnosed with high blood pressure, and one of the first people I mentioned it to recommended the Weston A. Price approach, specifically warning me of the evils of canola oil. Yet another reason I argue that access to the right information isn't enough -- some people still manage to track down some "expert" saying what they want to hear.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Yeah, I'm not a smart as a lotta youse.

I guess some of my outlook is based on the ten years I spent in direct sales after graduate school. Funny, the first thing we did with every prospect (peep as they were referred to), was hand them a piece of paper with a little blurb entitled "Too Good to be True."

Yeah, I studied every ex-spurt on how to get the job done, and I recognize the TS industry for what it is. The movie Tin Men would be a good study.

Of course, it was way before Al Gore invented the internet, so my peeps didn't have much of a chance.

[JWC Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close JWC]

Would there be a rental available ?.. You are then limiting your choices to our people's listings.
I don't think you would be able to plan a 2 or 3 week road trip using rentals.

Colin

In most cases it is just as easy to plan ahead using rentals as it is with exchanges.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

In most cases it is just as easy to plan ahead using rentals as it is with exchanges.

I'm chuckling, because back in the day, when we actually could get exchanges where we wanted to go when we wanted to go there, I always started two years out, while we there.

You think maybe I wouldn't have to start to look for rental quite so far out?

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

Yeah, I'm not a smart as a lotta youse.

I think it has more to do with attitude or belief system than intelligence, myself.

Although whenever someone talks about intelligence, I remember this Mensan who scoffed at a friend of mine. For a bit of pertinent background, Mensa membership is only open to people whose I.Q. is in the top two percent, and there are maybe 56,000 members in the U.S. This guy, being a Mensan, asked my friend what her I.Q. was, and when she told him, he said, "You're lying. If you were that smart, you'd be in Mensa." So this guy's a member of Mensa, so smart -- but once you involve his ego, he can't do basic math. I dunno about you, but I'm thinking his brains aren't going to help him much against a TS salesperson who knows how to exploit people's weak points.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

I think it has more to do with attitude or belief system than intelligence, myself.

That clears it up, owning a timeshare has nothing to do with intelligence.

[tonyg Goomba & Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close tonyg]

I still believe in ownership. If the fees are low enough and the trading power is high enough the cost of owning is reasonable enough.
I no longer belong to RCI and that has made things a bit more stable. RCI resorts are easy enough to rent if I need use one of their resorts. I think more of us need to get involved in timeshare management by running for HOA boards.

[JWC Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close JWC]

I'm chuckling, because back in the day, when we actually could get exchanges where we wanted to go when we wanted to go there, I always started two years out, while we there.

You think maybe I wouldn't have to start to look for rental quite so far out?

No. There are usually rentals available from 1 day to several months in advance.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

I'm relatively elated.

I managed to get $499 for our peak summer Branson 2-bedroom Gold Crown in the area's most exclusive gated golf community. That's most of our $650 fee, and $499 more than we got for our other two weeks here this year.

In over-developed areas like Branson, $70 a night for accomodations is pretty steep.

Not so lucky on our Colorado weeks. Zero this year for our two consecutive Spring Break ski weeks , and nothing so far for our summer week. Asking only $350.