If you are looking to buy a timeshare then you need to be a bit careful. If you just go find the place you want to own at and immediately drop your money then you are making a mistake. The key is to do your homework and be able to evaluate the true value of the purchase. This is really no different than evaluating a piece of real estate but in fact it can be made a bit more complicated by the fact that you are only purchasing a specific time slot for the property.
So the first tip right off the bat is not to dive in and purchase a brand new property at full price. You might also set a rule for yourself that you will never buy at a hyped up timeshare presentation, but will only make a purchase from the comfort of your own home when you are not under any sales pressure.
One of the best ideas is to troll eBay on a frequent basis and watch what things are selling for. You have to do your homework of course and that is where the effort comes in at. Know the market and know the prices and study what things are selling for. Look into reviews of any specific properties you are looking at and try to find genuine user feedback on their experiences there. This is not generally hard to do and if you explore the resources on this site then you can find these sort of real-world opinions.
Photo by Shayan
If you see the full price on a certain property, check it out on eBay and see what it is going for resale. Usually it is several thousand less so the ideal situation is for you to be patient and snag a good deal from an auction rather than paying full price.
Another thing to consider are the maintenance fees. There are some very nice properties out there that are prohibitively expensive simply due to outrageous maintenance fees. If you want to go on a Kauai vacation you can expect higher fees than if you are in Ohio. That is just how it works. Now there are some excellent values out there as far as the fee system is concerned and there are timeshares the vow to work hard at keeping their fees low. Of course there is inflation to deal with and so in most cases all of the fees will slowly rise over time but in general they should stay reasonable.
The most important buying tip is to take your time and do very thorough research. If you do your homework, shop around, and just be patient, then you can get a great deal on a killer property that you can enjoy for years to come. We know this after finding killer deals on Honolulu flights and barely surviving Cancun vacations 101!
Now here is a video that is worth watching, recommended to us from a California tourist guide, and is a very professional speaker and an economics expert of sorts. He runs through some tips on how to get the best deal when buying a car, a timeshare, and a house. He basically shows you how to do the equivalent of paper trading and having various dealers negotiate against themselves. Not all of his speech applies to timeshares but almost all of the tactics that he discusses can be applied to timeshares. You can use some of his ideas to remove pressure from in sales situations and so on. Check it out, it is worth the 12 minute video:
