Читать книгу Do As I Say, Not As I Did - Michael N Marcus - Страница 26

Lesson: As I said before, you can’t eat equity.

Years ago Marilyn and I were feeling cramped in our large condominium home in Westchester County, New York. We bought two nice timeshares so we could escape for vacations on Cape Cod three times a year. Later on we bought a bigger house and no longer felt the need to escape. We also got a dog who was not welcome at the timeshares.

Even though we seldom used the timeshares anymore we had to keep making annual maintenance payments and paying occasional assessments. We ended up having to pay a lot of money to give away our shares.

Lessons: (1) A timeshare is a vacation, not a real estate investment. (2) Very often you can have a vacation for about the same price as the annual maintenance fee for a timeshare. (3) There are always vacation deals available. (4) If you really want to buy a timeshare you can probably save money by buying it from an owner or the estate of a deceased owner—not from the timeshare company.