Are Timeshares the Best Way to Vacation?

Condos and cabins are great places to spend a vacation if you can afford it. Though the vacation may be a great time, what people do not notice are the fees that the wealthy must pay in order to maintain the cabins and condos during the times when they are not using them. This makes practical vacations much more attractive. However, businesses try to give the middle class a taste of what it could be like to vacation like the wealthy through timeshare plans. Though time sharing seems like a great idea numerically, it is not a very practical way to spend your vacation.

First of all, a time share is a piece of real estate owned by a single owner or a company. This piece of real estate is split up into fifty-two weeks out of the year, where other people can purchase a week to stay at the property. To make the offer much more attractive, these properties are near exotic vacation areas, such as Hawaii, or winter recreation types of areas. People that sign up for time shares pay for a week, or however long they want to stay, of time plus all of the maintenance fees for that time. The property fills up with time share participants across the fifty-two weeks.

For example, you might sign up to stay at a time share in the Poconos for the first week of June for the next five years. The seaside condo is yours for that week and you can invite whoever you want to vacation with. However, how do you know you will want to stay in the Poconos at the same time for the next five years? Time share contracts work off of their long-term investment schematics. People will pay for five to fifteen years of time plus maintenance fees. This can add up in the long-run, especially if you do not really use the time share.

While the contracts are attractive, people who do not read them fully do not notice what type of yearly maintenance fees they are paying. It is normal to maintain a property. We maintain our vehicles and our properties because it keeps them safe and clean for us to use. Time share contracts often sneak in extra fees and payments within the maintenance portion of their contracts. Since time shares are so expensive and inflexible in the long run, it is a much more practical method to vacation where you want to, staying at a hotel.
By Jerry L Work