Timeshare Trouble

[Looking Forward]

We have friends, a couple close to our age, who bought a timeshare. It is the kind where you own a piece of it, not the points type.
Here's the situation, as she told me:
They bought into this timeshare property, very nice, thought they'd use it a lot/often. Bought in May 08, have not used it once! $200/mo payments. Owe about $10,000. Having a harder time paying for it now given less work/less money. Would like to be out from under it, but how? She said they can't sell it unless it's paid off (??) Unable to pay it off. If they stop paying: down goes their credit scores.

Is there foreclosure on a timeshare? Short sale? Tax repercussions? What would you do?

Any advice I could pass on?

[disneysteve]

Timeshares are virtually always a horrible idea. They never sell for more than pennies on the dollar. They can sell it for whatever they can get. If they owe $10,000, they might be lucky to get a few hundred or maybe $1,000 for it and just be on the hook for the remainder of the loss themselves.

[JoshuaHeckathorn]

Ugh...I really hate timeshares. It's a shame so many people still get duped into them.

It doesn't have to be paid off to sell it. They might even be able to sell it back to the company they purchased it from for a small percentage of the going rate.

They're definitely going to take a hit on this, but it's better to just cut their losses now. Don't take the chance of letting this go unpaid and hurting their credit scores too.

[DrSavin]

Perhaps they should try renting it out by advertising online. This way they can make their payments from the income they receive, and someone else will actually use it.