VAIL — Mary Servais and her husband own two timeshare units in the Vail Valley — one an Avon studio she found for $1 on eBay.
After paying closing costs of about $200 and annual dues of about $211, the Seattle couple feel like they got a steal to stay one week every summer in the small unit near the Beaver Creek Resort.
In the summer, the Servaises go hiking. They also have a slightly more expensive timeshare week at Sandstone Creek Club in Vail at the end of March for skiing, and cheap weeks in Hilton Head, S.C., and Escondido, Calif., in the spring and the fall for golfing.
“There are phenomenal deals. It just depends on what you want to own,” Servais said. “But it’s not an investment; it’s a pre-arranged vacation for a discount.”
Love them or hate them, the much-maligned timeshares are still a big slice of the real-estate pie in ski towns. But the dynamics of the market have changed significantly.
The Sheraton Mountain Vista timeshare complex in Avon, for example, has several units in foreclosure, according to public trustee records. Their values are usually listed at about $5,000 a pop, lending credence to critics’ arguments that timeshares generally don’t appreciate in value.
While there are no specific real-estate statistics on timeshares in Eagle County, second homeowners own an estimated 70 percent of the real estate in Vail and Avon, many of them timeshare units in aging condo complexes.
Advocates of timeshares say they give people a chance to own a little piece of vacation heaven in a pricey area. They also point to the brisk trade of timeshare weeks that owners make between vacation spots around the world.
“We know people are buying timeshares that maybe couldn’t afford to buy a whole-ownership place,” says Heather Lemon, a Realtor who sells the 1-year-old Westin Riverfront timeshare units, many of which have views of Beaver Creek. “They still want to come here on vacation.”
Just don’t think you’re going to make money on the deal, said Lemon. The Westin’s 120 or so timeshare units have fees of $2,000 a year, for example, for the heated outdoor pool, the on-site health club, hotel-style housekeeping and other amenities. The Westin also has hotel rooms with nightly rates and whole-ownership units. Other timeshares in Avon and Vail have fees of about $800 to $900 a year, Lemon said.
“I tell folks not to buy it for the investment, buy it for the vacation,” Lemon said. “If you have a place to go, you’re going to go. But if you wait until it goes up in value, that’s insane.”
That’s the rub for owners, says Tommy Neyens, owner of Ski Valet, a local ski-rental, storage and tuning shop in Vail. For him, a timeshare unit at the Marriott Streamside in Vail turned out to be more hassle than fun. While relatives and friends would often stay at the timeshare, one year Neyens was too busy to use his time at all. After complaining about the high fees, Neyens finally decided to sell the unit back to the Marriott.
“I was on the phone for more than an hour with them trying to figure out how to get rid of it,” Neyens said.
Christie Lodge timeshares in Avon also appear to have dropped in value, Lemon said.
“A guy called me with two Christie Lodge units, and just wants what we can sell them for,” Lemon said. “He paid $9,000 for them, but he could get just $5,000.”
In fact, after about 30 years as a real-estate product, timeshare units may be a concept whose time has come and gone, said Glenn Mueller, a professor at the Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business.
In a slow economy, a timeshare payment is the first one a strapped homeowner will stop making, Mueller has said.
