What is a timeshare?

Question

How do you get one? What is it for? How much does it cost? I don't know anything about it.

Answer 1

timeshare is the name given to piece of real estate where a number of individuals share ownership in the subject property. As opposed to a standard home where an individual  share ownership

Owners can:

Use their usage time

Rent out their owned usage

Give it as a gift

Exchange internally within the same resort or resort group

Exchange externally into thousands of other resorts

Sell it either through traditional advertising, online advertising or by using a licensed broker

Assign their usage time to the point system to be exchanged for airline tickets, hotels, travel packages, cruises, amusement park tickets

Instead of renting all their actual usage time, rent part of their points without actually getting any usage time and use the rest of the points;

Rent more points from either the internal exchange entity or another owner to get a larger unit or more vacation time or at a better location;

Save or move points from one year to another.

Answer 2

Timeshare at its core is essentially a group of people sharing the cost of a vacation home.

The word "timeshare" has grown over the decades to include a wide variety of vacation products and plans. Also known as "vacation ownership" "holiday ownership" and "interval ownership" , its umbrella covers traditional deeded timeshare ownership, fractional ownership, private residence clubs, points clubs, and more. Some would even broaden the term further to include campground memberships and the " condo hotel" concept, in which a condo is purchased outright but the owner is only allowed to use it for a specific periods of time and it is rented by a hotel management company for the remainder of the time.

Regardless of how loosely or rigidly you choose to define the term, the basic premise of timeshare is simple. You and a group of other people share the purchase cost of a vacation accommodation, in increments of one week (or more) per year of use, thus guaranteeing your ability to use that accommodation during the period of time you choose, either for life or for a specified number of years. Accommodations range from hotel rooms to condos, from cabins to luxury houses and castles, from yachts and cruise ships to RVs and houseboats.Owning timeshare in the traditional sense means a condominium/villa/house/hotel unit, etc. is subdivided into 52 separate units of time (52 weeks in 1 year), and usually sold to a maximum of 51 owners (leaving one week each year closed down for annual renovations and/or maintenance). Each owner would own 1/51 of the unit. Each share repesents one week of vacation. Each owner is entitled to ownership rights and privileges of the shares that they purchased.

This system makes vacation home ownership possible for many people who cannot afford a second home or who otherwise would not be able to enjoy such resort facilities. It is important to remember that purchasing timeshare should never be viewed as a financial investment with the expectation of gaining a profit in either reselling it or renting it to someone else. Timeshare is an investment in lifestyle, in future holidays, in family time together, and when viewed that way it can be a good investment indeed.