“God created beauty in nature and a sense of appreciation in humans. It is our task to experience and enjoy it.“
We own a few weeks in various timeshares. We purchased our first timeshare in 1984 in a place called Arnold, located in the foothills of Calaveres County. We have only stayed in that timeshare two times–the rest of the years we’ve exchanged it through the RCI System. Someone recently asked me if it was a good investment. For our family–it was. We have traveled the world, visiting places we would probably never get to if not for this “mandatory” timeshare vacation. On each trip to a new location, promoters try to sell us yet another resort or another deal. And through the years, some of them were successful. My wife Elfa became an expert in finding our next vacation through the timeshare websites. Internationally, we have traveled to various parts of England, Germany, Austria, Whales, the South of France, Holland, and many beautiful locations in Canada…not to mention Hawaii and Mexico. And we have travelled throughout the United States as well. Each resort has a different charge for the yearly maintenance fee. Extra weeks can be banked for future use. We have used our weeks in the bank to get additional units to allow our family to join us. When we weren’t going to use our weeks, Elfa has sold the extra week for the cost of the maintenance.
At the end of March, I had a marketing conference in Phoenix, Arizona. On the spur of the moment, Elfa asked me if I can have a week off. I knew that I needed a rest, besides I had to work on my book, “Mortgage Solutions for Smart People: 5 Easy Ways to Get Your Mortgage Approved”. Luckily, she was able to find us a timeshare in Sedona, which is about a two hour drive from Phoenix. We’ve been to Sedona before. It is a secret ground for Native Americans, known for its’ energy vortexes in the red cliffs around the area. I wrote for eight hours a day, only going out for a few hours in the afternoon. The result–a finished book and only a few photos. In between, I had to put out a few “fires” with some closing loans for sales transactions.
What prompted me to write about this subject was a very unusual email my office received a week ago from one of our lenders. After we refinanced a mortgage for a client, his loan was, as it is customarily done, sold to an investor–who could be Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or another bank. Two months later, our lender was notified that after the quality control procedure, the investor found some missing information in our clients’ file. If this information is not provided on time, the file is returned to the lender. If (God forbid) this happens, it is a very big problem for everyone. The investor claimed that apparently our client owns a co-op in San Francisco, which he did not disclose. I refinanced for this client a number of times, and I did not remember him ever mentioning any other properties (usually clients tell me everything).
What turned out was that this co-op building was transferred many years ago into a timeshare project. Our client owned a week of time not physical space. Though there is a yearly maintenance fee, which included a prorated tax, it is basically a prepaid vacation plan. The solution to this “big” discovery was very simple–to write an explanation letter. But what it demonstrated to us was that when lenders require so many documents or verifications, which takes our extra time and drives everyone crazy, it is not so much the lenders, but the Government owned investors. After losing billions in the reckless lending before 2008, the screws are getting tighter and tighter.
In spite of this, we close most of our loans and most importantly get clientsVERY LOW INTEREST RATES.
P.S.
I just had a few images to share with you where I usually showcase my artistic interpretation. Hope you like them…let me know. You can see more beautiful Sedona images (not mine)–right here.
SMILE AND PLEASE SHARE IT WITH A FRIEND
