 | There is a lot of commotion over the 2016 Presidential election. Policies tossed around. Promises made. Attacks launched. I know a lot of people who’ve aligned themselves with a candidate already. Many of them are now supporters of Donald J. Trump. I get it; the anger, the disgust with lifetime government officials, the gridlock. It all stinks. But Trump is never going to get my vote. Ever. The reason? He stole my timeshare. |
I had a timeshare. I got it 30 years ago, a place called The Golden Strand in North Miami. How we got it is a story in itself. But got it we did. We could trade it in for other locations, which we did without fail. It was an affordable way to take family vacations. We could loan it to friends. We’d have it for 99 years, so we could leave it to the kids. It was the first (and for many years the only) possession we had. I had no intention of parting with it. Until that letter arrived.
You know those fake “urgent” letters you get in the over-sized cardboard envelopes wanting to buy your car or sell you solar panels? One of those arrived, only it was real. The Trump Organization had bought the lot adjoining the Golden Strand and built a structure on it. They now wanted to buy The Golden Strand property. That meant they had to contact every owner of every week of every unit and pitch the deal to them. The deal was…well, let’s just say they weren’t about to redistribute any wealth in the process.
The plan was they must get 80% of the owners to accept their offer (such as it was). Once they got 80%, the remaining 20% would be sold out at auction. Which meant getting screwed. An auction where the Trump company would be the only ones interested in bidding? Yeah, good luck with that. So, it was go with the flow, or get skunked. There was no counter offer. There was every little resistance. The little there was didn’t want to save the property, they were just angling for more money.
The money? Maybe it was a little more than I paid for it 30 years ago, until you figured in all the interest on the 15-year mortgage. And it was just money, as we learned they were planning to tear down the building, so no trade-in to a new time share. So all those years and all the effort the building association put into maintaining and upgrading the property? For naught.
As it turns out, over the years, some people bought multiple time shares as foreclosures came up. They got them very cheap, pennies on the dollar. These multiple timeshare owners (why would there even be multiple timeshare owners?) owned over 15% of the units and were all backing the deal (oh, that’s why there were multiple time share owners). So, looks like I have to sell my timeshare.
The deal is going to take five years to complete. And five years for them to pay me. So there we have it. This clown just swoops in, grabs my property, then decides to he wants to run the country? Well, he wouldn’t get my vote. However, I am willing to trade my vote for a hotel room inside Disney World
You know those fake “urgent” letters you get in the over-sized cardboard envelopes wanting to buy your car or sell you solar panels? One of those arrived, only it was real. The Trump Organization had bought the lot adjoining the Golden Strand and built a structure on it. They now wanted to buy The Golden Strand property. That meant they had to contact every owner of every week of every unit and pitch the deal to them. The deal was…well, let’s just say they weren’t about to redistribute any wealth in the process.
The plan was they must get 80% of the owners to accept their offer (such as it was). Once they got 80%, the remaining 20% would be sold out at auction. Which meant getting screwed. An auction where the Trump company would be the only ones interested in bidding? Yeah, good luck with that. So, it was go with the flow, or get skunked. There was no counter offer. There was every little resistance. The little there was didn’t want to save the property, they were just angling for more money.
The money? Maybe it was a little more than I paid for it 30 years ago, until you figured in all the interest on the 15-year mortgage. And it was just money, as we learned they were planning to tear down the building, so no trade-in to a new time share. So all those years and all the effort the building association put into maintaining and upgrading the property? For naught.
As it turns out, over the years, some people bought multiple time shares as foreclosures came up. They got them very cheap, pennies on the dollar. These multiple timeshare owners (why would there even be multiple timeshare owners?) owned over 15% of the units and were all backing the deal (oh, that’s why there were multiple time share owners). So, looks like I have to sell my timeshare.
The deal is going to take five years to complete. And five years for them to pay me. So there we have it. This clown just swoops in, grabs my property, then decides to he wants to run the country? Well, he wouldn’t get my vote. However, I am willing to trade my vote for a hotel room inside Disney World
