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Comment by 0xEF | Hacker News Reader

I do not know about other US states, but in mine, it is not uncommon to hear radio advertisements for lawyers who specialize in getting people out of timeshares. We have a large population of 50+ individuals who like to spend a good chunk of the year in Florida and they are absolute suckers for timeshares and other methods that promise them cheap or discounted ways to do so.

It's so bad, I bet some of you can guess which state I live in.

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I don’t know why anyone would want a timeshare. I don’t know exactly how they work. All I know is that I hear way more ads pushing ways to get out of a timeshare than I hear ads for timeshares. So all I know is that people want to get out of them, but can’t!

The basic idea is reasonable enough: split ownership of a vacation home among multiple owners so that they can all efficiently use it for vacations, with each co-owner having a regular time slot assigned. But in practice the contracts around them are often predatory, with excessive financing costs and annual maintenance fees. And since it's a share that you own, you (nominally) can't get out of the fees without transferring your share to someone else. However, since the downsides have become well-known, people have sometimes found that they can't even give away their shares, let alone recoup much of their initial purchase cost.

Yeah. With a lot of assumptions, they can maybe work outside of financial shenanigans. But people often want to travel at the same time. They want to vary locations. If you always want to go to the same location multiple times per year and are pretty flexible about dates? Maybe?

Buy a house, put it on airBnB through a management company, go to other AirBnB’s using rental income from first AirBnB. Or you could not try and run a business and simply invest nominally while paying market rate for a rental.

Sharing informally between friends and family when people have vacation properties in desirable locations works better but the barriers to entry are really high.

My parents had a vacation home in Mexico for a while that they rented out (pre-AirBnB). But, being Mexico, they had on-site staff, my mother was retired, and the whole thing still seemed way more hassle than I would have had any interest in. (Building it was also pretty much a nightmare.)

I do use my brother's second home up in Maine and that works pretty well.

The thing is you can keep your money and spend it on going anywhere you want on vacation later on. It makes no sense.

Group ownership is pretty much a massive hassle. Different people have wildly different visions for things like maintenance and how a house should be outfitted.

I've always taken the philosophy of putting the money in my piggy bank with no cost and obligation. Given certain circumstances, could investing in real estate been a good deal? Almost certainly. But not without risk or future obligation.

They don't have to advertise. Some outfit may gift you a week of timeshare, or a hotel concierge might be in cahoots with timeshare salespeople, and offer you boat rides or whatever in exchange for a sit with the TS salespeople. They push as if their lives were on the line for each sale. It's intense. You can find touts for the salespeople offering goodies at certain airports, lining the only exit aisle.

Only TS I recall unloading was the one in Waikiki that was sold to another corporation. Weeks went poof, but so did the fees.

SF bay radio has lots of "get rid of your timeshare" ads.

> It's so bad, I bet some of you can guess which state I live in.

FL: NY's graveyard.

Growing up in Ontario, a couple of my friends families had timeshares in Florida or Carolina. Are they pretty universally understood to be a bad investment?

After doing basic napkin math I've always thought it was pretty obvious. Buy-in + annual maintenance fees that are pretty close to what a condo rental outside of a contract would be. Then you add in the other factors such that you're locked into certain locations and whatever timeframe is not booked, don't actually own anything other than a lease, and the only way to get out of it is to sell it yourself... no thank you.

They aren't an investment, period. You generally can't sell them. The complex can assess whatever maintainance fee they wish with little to no requirements for justification.

Well, I'm in Florida, and we have the same ads here. Not sure which state you're in. Michigan?

Indeed! Perhaps the ads for lawyers getting people out of timeshares is part of the Great Timeshare Conspiracy between our two states.

Indiana is like this but I'd guess a lot of the Midwest is similar.

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