American
Vacation
Services

Timeshares 101

What is a Timeshare?

What is a timeshare? Basically, a timeshare describes a group that shares the cost of ownership of a vacation home. i.e, they pool in funds to purchase, maintain and upgrade the property hence sharing their time that they own a particular property

How do timeshares work? Ownership is divided into 52 weekly units, 51 of which are sold with one week retained for annual maintenance. For every unit you buy, you are entitled to stay at the property for one week, enjoying all the privileges and rights of ownership.

Why buy a timeshare? Timeshares are an affordable way of owning a vacation home and enjoying the luxuries of an expensive resort. Owning a timeshare is an investment in your lifestyle, a commitment to your leisure life, a promise of exciting future holidays, and an opportunity for family togetherness.

There are all kinds of timeshares: single family homes, hotel suites, private clubs, condominiums, apartments, campgrounds, cabins, luxury villas, castles, yachts, cruise ships, houseboats, even RVs.

Timesharing is buying only that period of time (your share) of a beautiful resort that you can sensibly use during the year. Timesharing is a logical way to GUARANTEE your exclusive use of accommodations for a particular period of time each year. Owning timeshare is the means for you to save money on first-class vacation accommodations at exclusive, luxury resorts worldwide. No more mixed-up reservations. No more cramped or outrageously expensive hotel rooms. Most resorts have excellent accommodations, great recreational facilities, superb golf courses, and tennis courts and are designed to favor your convenience, relaxation and entertainment. VACATION! That delightful time of the year that we all look forward to--yours will be secure and awaiting your arrival.

With your one-time, outright ownership purchase at today’s prices, there will never be a need to worry about future inflation interfering with your cherished vacations. Plus, if your “home resort” is located close to your city of residence, typically you can also take advantage of your resort’s amenities year round (i.e. boat launch, marina, tennis courts, golf course, swimming pool, picnics, athletic facilities, etc.) Vacation ownership makes sense!

AMENITIES: Vacation Timeshare Ownership enables you to upgrade from an ordinary hotel atmosphere to a fully equipped condominium resort experience. Most resorts include amenities such as kitchens, saunas, fireplaces, playgrounds, washers, dryers, recreational facilities, etc. and are completely furnished from sheets on the beds to cookware in the kitchen! Options include one, two and three bedroom facilities.
PERIOD OF TIME: Timeshares are usually purchased in increments of one week. They can be “fixed” weeks (i.e. your vacation time would be the same date or calendar week each year) or “floating” weeks (i.e., Your time period is defined by season, and you reserve your week within that season.) You can also purchase “Quarter Shares” which is multiple week ownership of 12 or 13 weeks to be used during the calendar year. Points Systems are also available at some resorts.
SEASONAL CATEGORY: Timeshares are categorized by their availability during a particular season of the year-- High, Medium & Low (i.e., High Season at Hilton Head, SC would be in the summer; low season in the winter, etc.)
EXCHANGE FEATURE Another plus to vacation ownership is the exchange feature which allows you to exchange your week's usage with any of hundreds of appealing resorts around the world. You can spend one vacation at the beach and the next one, through your exchange privilege, at a comparable resort on the ski slopes, at a theme park, etc. Exchange company memberships for RCI (Resort Condominiums International) or II (Interval International) are available with most purchases.

The Unit/Week

There are a lot of different ways to sell timeshare. Here I will try to explain the different set-ups... but please keep in mind that if we don't use that set-up at Canada House, chances are I don't know that much about it. But at least I'll be honest with you about what I do or don't know. For each set-up listed below, the one in bold letters is the one we use at Canada House.

First of all, let me explain what I mean by unit/week. I often have people call and say "I own unit so-and-so" at Canada House. Well, that's not really the case... you own a particular week in that unit. So when I talk about a unit/week, I mean the particular week that you own in your particular unit. For example, if you own the first week of the year, in unit 2001, then you own "two zero zero one, week one", which would be written as 2001/01.

Fixed/Floating

Fixed: You own the same unit in the same week every year. In our most recent billing, we sent out a five-year calendar (which you can also find here in .pdf format). If that's not enough advance planning for you, you can always figure out the starting date of your week by counting weeks, beginning from the first Saturday of the year. In other words, if you own week 34, your week will start on the 34th Saturday of every year.
Floating: You own a week, but not a specific week.

Every Year/Even-Odd

Every Year: You own your unit/week every year. Pretty self-explanatory.
Even-Odd: You own your unit/week only in even years (2004, 2006, 2008, etc.) or only in odd years (2005, 2007, 2009, etc.) Please note that resorts are sold this way or not - if you own at a resort that's every year (as we are), you can't sell your unit for even or odd years, because we're not set up for that kind of record-keeping.

Weeks/Points

Weeks: You own a week. You trade your one week for one week somewhere else, or you use your week at your home resort. It is assumed that you will be using your week unless you bank it, put it up for rent, or notify us that your guest will be using it.
Points: You own a week, but it's available for your use as a certain number of points. You can use a few points at a time, save them up and use several years' worth at once, buy extras, etc. When you own points, it is assumed that you will be using your time as points unless you notify RCI in advance (I believe it's 13 months in advance) that you wish to use your own unit/week.
It's not a mistake that both these choices are bold -- Canada House was originally sold as weeks, but some owners have converted to points. The unit/weeks convert back to traditional weeks when they are sold to new owners, or so I'm told.

Red/White/Blue

Basically the color of your week affects your trading power with your exchange company. The entire state of Florida is red, so Canada House is also red.

Friday/Saturday/Sunday

The check-in day is just the day you check in and out of your unit/week when you use it (or the unit/week you exchange for, if that's the case). More and more resorts have Friday and Sunday check-ins available these days, but Canada House has Saturday check-in & check-out for all our units. This doesn't mean you can't check out early if you can't stay for your whole week, but it's nice if you can plan your vacation around your check-in day.

How to Use It

There are a number of different ways to use timeshare:

Stay in your unit during your week.
Many people enjoy visiting the same place each year, and enjoy feeling "at home" at their "home resort". One advantage to using your timeshare this way is that you don't pay anything but maintenance and taxes, because you're not paying to exchange, and you don't have to pay annual dues to an exchange company.

Go someplace different every year.
There is a lot of flexibility involved in timeshare, which can be taken advantage of by exchanging your week. We've list some tips on the best way to exchange on the "Exchanging" page, so we won't repeat ourselves here. But if you're wondering what the point of exchanging is, it's that you can go somewhere else, maybe even someplace different each year, and you don't necessarily have to use your week during that week. For example, if you're a teacher, you probably can't use a fall week. But if you bought a fall week, you can still enjoy using it during a different time of year by exchanging it. In order to exchange, you'll have to pay dues to the exchange company of your choice, and then pay an exchange fee to actually make the trade. But if you add up your maintenance and taxes, exchange company dues, and exchange fees, you can often still end up staying someplace for a week for much less than you'd pay if you rented a hotel room... and usually it's much nicer, too. Another advantage to banking your week is that you have a four-year window of time to use it. By paying estimated maintenance in advance, you can bank up to two years ahead of time. Plus, you have two years from the beginning of the week to actually "spend" it. So, for example, if you bank 2005 in 2003, you have till 2007 to use it -- that's a four year window of opportunity. (For information on paying in advance, please visit this page.)

Let someone else use your unit.
This is applicable whether you bank your unit/week or not. If you've banked your week, you can usually get a "Guest Certificate" through the exchange companies and get your friend or family member a place somewhere else. Alternately, you can write to us by snail mail or fax, and let us know that someone will be using your unit, and they can just check in when your week begins. If you can't use your week for some reason, this can be a nice gift that makes you look like a big spender, and keeps you from losing your week.

Rent your unit/week out.
This should be a last resort. Really. There's no guarantee that we can ever rent any unit at any time, so by putting your unit up for rent, you risk the possibility of just flat-out losing it. I can't tell you how many times I've had people tell me, "Well if I'd have known it wasn't going to rent, I would have banked it!" We have no control over whether a unit gets rented or not... So please, use this as a last resort, and don't assume it's going to rent until you have the check in hand.

Lose the week.
Actually, this should be the VERY last resort - even after putting it up for rent! If you don't bank your week, and you don't show up or send someone else in your place, and the unit isn't rented, it sits empty. Which means it's gone. You can't call your exchange company after the week has passed, and ask them to bank the week, because they won't be able to use it. You can't ask us if we can come let you use someone else's week some other time because you didn't use yours. If you don't use it, lend it out, bank it, or rent it, it's gone. Period. And I don't mean that to sound harsh, but I get a lot of questions about this, and I would rather tell people up front than after it's too late.
P.S. This also means that if you haven't paid your maintenance by the time your week begins, you will lose it. Not only will you still have to pay the maintenance and taxes, you'll also owe late fees, interest, and maybe even collection costs... and you'll be paying all that for nothing! Better to pay on time and do SOMETHING with the week than to just let it sit empty and still have to pay... Right?

What it's NOT

Over the years, people have sold timeshare with a number of different "hooks" -- some of which are not just false, but actually illegal to say. Unfortunately, it wasn't always illegal, and if timeshare has a "bad name" today, it is in a large part because of the way it was once sold. On this page I hope to address a couple of the most common falsehoods.

An investment
Timeshare is not an investment. It's a luxury. It's a vacation "home" that can be affordable to many people who aren't able to afford a full-time vacation home. Although deeded timeshare is technically real estate, in that ownership changes have to be recorded with the County where the property is located, it almost NEVER appreciates in value.
The best analogy I can give is this: If you buy a boat, you spend a LOT of money on it. You continue to spend money "keeping it up" (whether or not you actually use it), not to mention the cost of the trailer and the extra gas it takes to pull it around to various & sundry bodies of water. You might even have to pay docking fees, or storage fees to keep it in dry dock. And if you're like most people, you use it a couple, maybe even a few weeks out of the year. When you get tired of it (or decide to "trade up"), you find it's not worth nearly what you paid for it, let alone what you've put into it. There are always bigger, better, faster, fancier, niftier models out there, and the little dinghy that cost you thousands upon thousands of dollars "x" number of years ago might be hard to even GIVE away today.
Think of timeshare in kind of the same way. Yes, Canada House is a nice place to come and stay. Yes, we do all we can to keep it up so you'll get good trading power out of it. But there will always be some Developer out there building something fancier, bigger, nicer, better, with more amenities, more bonuses, more MORE... and Canada House won't (read: can't) compete.
Not to mention... If you bought from/through a timeshare sales company, you're not going to get what you paid for it, even if you turn right around and sell it the next day! The people you bought from have perks, bonuses, free vacations, highly trained sales people, incentives, and financing for purchases. What can you offer? Or, think of it another way... If you sell a used car in the newspaper, what will you get for it compared to what a used car dealer will get for it?
I'm not saying timeshare isn't a good thing. If it's used right, it IS a good thing. Just don't go into it with the idea that it's an investment, and you're going to make money on it, because chances are, you're not - anymore than you're going to make money on your television set when you're done using it. Think of it as entertainment, plan on using and enjoying it, and get past the idea that you're going to get rich off of it.

Rental Property
If you can't use your timeshare, and for some reason you don't want to bank it, and you don't know anyone else that can use your time... then by all means, put it up for rent so at least there's a chance it won't sit empty. But please, please do not get into timeshare with the idea that you're going to be able to rent it out every year and make money off of it. There's no way to guarantee that! There is no possible way the Association, the Management company, the timeshare sales people, or anyone else can ever GUARANTEE, without a doubt, that your unit/week will rent every year. And I've said it before - if you put it up for rent and it doesn't rent, you just lost your week. So if you bought your timeshare with the idea that you're going to rent it and make money, I really would like to suggest that to avoid disappointment, you start thinking in another direction.