I recently had a call from a company promoting Time Share packages. These are resort style developments that people can go and spend a week or two at.

They said they would call later to confirm a date. Meanwhile I forgot about it. The company called me up about two weeks later and I was surprised to hear back from them. They had a resort not far from where I live so I thought I would go down there on the week end to check it out.

I started to thing about the whole concept of time shares and of the people I had heard or knew had one. I started to think of the time share as a real estate investment. Would it appreciate in value? Would anyone want to buy it off me if I wanted to sell it later on down the track? What I came up with was, time shares are a bit like the stock market. That is they don't have any real concrete value. Sure if you bought an expensive one in Hawaii or down in Florida it would probably maintain it's value, but the buy in price would be huge. And they are always building these kind of resorts everywhere.

The first thing that struck me at last weekends resort was how old it was. I would not be able to claim any depreciation of the value of my time share purchase. This time share would be a liability not an asset for me. Also when I went there I would not be able to claim my travelling expenses, meals or taxi fares etc. These are things I can claim with my real estate investment properties.

Time shares do allow you to change your holiday destination so you can stay at another resort that is affiliated with your resort. This can be in anther country as well. That is a bonus as you can get to see other parts of the country or overseas locations as well. If you own real estate investment units in different locations that are in a holiday letting pool you can go and stay in your own unit. You pay the property manager there and then you get your own money back less some expenses. How cool is that?

Owning your own units also give you full control of what you want to do with that investment property especially if you want to stay there. All you have to do is arrange it with your property manager. In a time share you are locked in to a certain time and you are very rarely able to change it especially at short notice. This has happened to someone I know.

The real kicker with investment properties is the capital growth you get that is compounded each year. With a time share your purchase price could very well be dropping each year. With your time share there is nothing you can do to add value to it to make it more valuable. This is not the case with a real estate investment property. You can drive the value of your property up by doing just small cosmetic renovations, that can add massive value to the property. By doing selective make overs and touch ups you can control what your investment is worth.

An experienced investor would do this as second nature. But everyone's values and concepts of things are different. That is why these companies are able to sell time shares to some people who don't think like an experienced real estate investor. I am not bagging time shares, but I think it is a shame some people buy a time share before they have bought an investment property. A better way would be to use the profits from your investment property to buy your time share.

To your investing success

Leo Love

PS If any of your family or friends are interested please pass this on to them.