Timeshare Resale Accountability Act Voted In
On tuesday, the Florida Business and Consumer Affairs Subcommittee unanimously voted in the Timeshare Resale Accountability Act, which hopes to reign in the dishonest practices in the timeshare resale industry.
An overwhelming amount of these scams and unlicensed brokerages operate within this southern state’s borders, which can be shown by the graph below that was assembled by Attorney General, Pam Bondi, showing Florida’s timeshare fraud problem. This leads to literally millions of dollars being lost by timeshare owners and buyers due to fraud each year. Many of these scams involve owners looking to sell their timeshare quickly, who pay an unlicensed listing agency an upfront fee to advertise their property. You should never pay upfront. You wouldn’t pay an unlicensed Realtor before they sell your house for you, would you?
The Timeshare Accountability Act shows that there truly is a problem with timeshare resale in today’s market. This legislation aims to strengthen existing laws in a few different ways, which include toughening penalties for timeshare resellers that:
A.) Misrepresent that a buyer has an interest in purchasing a resale timeshare.
B.) Collecting payment until the timeshare owner signs a written agreement for the resale services.
C.) Do not honor a cancellation request made within 7 days of signing the agreement or do not pay the refund within 20 days of the cancellation.
Unfortunately, you won’t see much about upfront fees in the legislation, or the legality of unlicensed advertising agencies, but hopefully in time we will see government cracking down on those companies that promise way over market value for their clients ownerships and charge an exorbitant fee just to list, when our licensed agents will list your ownership at no cost what so ever, and give you an honest answer on what the ownership is really worth.
Even still, Selling Timeshares, Inc. applauds the state of Florida for creating the guidelines, and has practiced these ethics from its inception.
