Part One: Online Timeshare Classified Ads versus Licensed Real Estate Brokers

If you are thinking of selling a vacation timeshare you've no doubt found that the Internet is literally cluttered with websites offering the seller the opportunity to place an online timeshare classified ad to sell their timeshare.
To the untrained and unsuspecting, the come-on sounds quite enticing:

Advertise your timeshare here for a fee, and you keep all the money. No real estate broker fee to pay. The seller pockets more money, the buyer gets a lower price. It is a win-win situation, right?

Wrong. The problem is that in the real-life timeshare resale, for both the seller and the buyer, the scenario just doesn't work out that way in the vast majority of cases.

1. Sellers will NOT necessarily net more money by selling on their own compared to using a real estate professional. A trained timeshare broker who is experienced at sales techniques and skilled at negotiating offers from buyers can often get a higher price or structure a better deal for sellers than the inexperienced seller could obtain independently.

2. Buyers will NOT necessarily be able to buy at a lower price directly from a seller. Sellers on their own usually price their units way above fair market resale value. Brokers can assist buyers by showing comparable sales to the seller, and factually justifying an offering price that is at fair market value even if it is less than the asking price.

That broker in most cases can actually get a better price for the buyer and the seller wins too because a formerly unsellable listing becomes a sold listing. Since the typical buyer is not experienced, an offer for less than the asking price, with no factual market experience to substantiate the offer, will usually serve only to anger the seller and subsequently that buyer completely loses the opportunity to buy the timeshare at all!

A buyer and seller who go through a licensed timeshare broker have a professional who is responsible in seeing that there are no surprises in what is being sold, as to unit description, fees, and all terms of the sale that would not otherwise be verified.