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A time share is a name given to a piece of property shared among number of owners. This involves use and cost of maintaining the property. Although the majority of the timeshare properties are condominiums resorts but it will not be a surprise if you find a hotel timeshare or a motor home timeshare or a cruise timeshare or a campground. The choices are increasing by the day. The idea of a timeshare property originated in Europe in 1960s when the property rates were skyrocketing and it was impossible for people to afford a full time vacation house. But by sharing the ownership the burden of maintenance and other costs on single person were greatly reduced. These also boosted the fortune of real estate developers as they were able to successfully market and sell the properties to a greater number of people. But a key point to remember in timeshare properties is that a timeshare is owned by a number of people who have no relation to one another like a standard home ownership.

A technical definition of timeshare property is that an owner has specific time to share you own in a property. But as more and more properties are being converted into timeshare, flexible timeshare options cannot be ruled out. The flexible timeshare offers owners the option of choosing more than one timeshare destination and also more than one specific time of a year.

Timeshare properties are usually found in warm destinations like Florida where people like to vacation a lot. They can also be found in cold weather areas near ski resorts. The timeshare properties are typically furnished in full and usually have one to three bedrooms, multiple bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room. It may not come as a surprise if you find timeshare properties with indoor or outdoor pools. They have become a common feature of most timeshare properties nowadays.

The typical duration of a timeshare ownership unit is one week. Depending on what time of the year you own the timeshare the price may vary. For example, a timeshare property in the month of April in Florida will be much higher than in August.  So the rates may vary with varying season and demand. Some resorts give color coding to different seasons depending on the demand. For example some resorts term high demand season as red season meaning the prices of the timeshare will be highest in that season.

Timeshares can usually be inherited to your children like any other real estate property. Timeshare offers not only a great vacation but also great investment. Most people rent their timeshare to others when they do not use their timeshare. This has a double advantage. You earn rent also along with appreciation of the property with passage of time. Timeshare properties are exchangeable and tradable with other properties in most of the cases. While it may be easy for the owners of the red season timeshares to exchange their unit with other owners in any season it might be impossible for owners of low season timeshare owners to get a high season timeshare unit in exchange.

Timeshares can be purchased through financing also but mostly the resale properties purchased from individuals are paid in cash. The cost of maintenance, management and cost to maintain common areas like pools and tennis courts are paid by timeshare owners. Fees may vary and always make sure to find it out before buying a timeshare.

There are many types of timeshare properties. A fixed unit, fixed week, deeded timeshare allows you to own a specific timeshare at a specific time each year. A floating time agreement allows you to be flexible about the dates that you can use your timeshare. But reservations may be only first come first serve as many owners would like to go for that option. Right to use timeshare is a leased timeshare. You no longer have rights to the property after the lease expires.

Buying a beach front property or a vacation villa may be easy for rich and wealthy but not for common middle class people. The introduction of timeshare concept gave hope to those people who could not afford to buy a brand new vacation home. That is one of the reasons why the timeshare industry has grown by leaps and bounds ever since its inception in the United States. One of the aspects of a timeshare property that attracts most people is that they can have a wonderful vacation home without having to worry about its upkeep and maintenance. But at the same time people have many misconceptions about timeshares. One of the biggest misconceptions is that they compare timeshares to regular real estate property and consider it as an investment option. But in fact it should be thought as an investment in your dreams i.e. vacationing at a place where you want to go every year. Investing in real estate could reap profitable returns but if you invest in a timeshare it may not be guarantee in fact you may end up losing money.

But what if you still want to buy it and you expect no profit from it but neither loss also at the same time. There is always one question in the minds of those people who are planning to buy timeshares. Is it really worth buying a timeshare? To answer this question you have to go through an analysis of various factors. An analysis should consider factors like comparable rent of alternative accommodation, appreciation of the timeshare property and your finance rate. How do you do it? Here is a simple calculation.

Consider the worth of your investment as profitability. The profitability should be a measure of the comparable rental rate, rate of appreciation and your finance rate. If the sum of all these is a negative number then, assume that you are losing money in your investment. The rental rate is the ratio of the rent of that vacation property to the buying price of that timeshare. Suppose if corresponding rent of that vacation timeshare is $1,000 and the buying price is $10,000 then the rental rate is 10%. Now if we include the annual maintenance cost, membership and all other miscellaneous expenses, if it comes around $500. So the actual saving in rent will be $500 now and the rental rate will be the ratio of $500 to $10,000 which gives us 5%.

Now if we assume the annual appreciation of that property is 10% and the rate of our finances is 16%. If we add rental rate and appreciation and subtract the finance rate you will end up with a negative percentage which means you are losing 1% every year compared to rent. But this formula is only a rough calculation of the profitable of your investment and may not be accurate. This is just to give you a start up. The depreciation rate may vary and so as the finance rates. The maintenance fees and other fees may also vary with different locations. Some resorts have charge reasonable maintenance fee and other fees but some exorbitantly high fees. So, this is also should be a factor in deciding which resort to choose, it is not a smart idea to pay unusually high fees when you don’t know whether you can utilize the property year after year and you may think of renting out the unit which is not a profitable proposition too.

Another good idea is to add up the cost of your timeshare for the entire year i.e. all fifty two weeks and see. For the above investment it may be around 520,000. But, does the timeshare property cost that much if somebody wants to buy it as a real estate property. The extra money goes into the pockets of real estate developers who are selling the timeshare. So carefully weigh in all the factors discussed above before buying a timeshare property.