How ARDA-ROC's Legislative Wins Impact Timeshare Owners

ARDA-ROC’s mission is to preserve, protect, and enhance the vacation ownership experience for timeshare owners through advocacy and creation of tools and resources for their use and benefit.  

Over the last decade, ARDA-ROC has successfully passed many laws on different subjects relating to timeshare owners that advance this mission.

Resale and Transfer Reform:

During the 2000’s and 2010’s, many timeshare owners fell prey to bad actors in the resale and transfer industries. A typical scam included bad actors purchasing a stolen owners list from a resort and then calling each of the owners to convince them to meet in person to tell them that there was an urgent need to sell their timeshare. Once ARDA-ROC found out about these scams, the team set out to pass legislation to crack down on fraud and unethical practices among certain timeshare resellers. A notable effort on this front by ARDA-ROC was a bill passed in 2017 named HB 3647, which introduced several protections for owners, including requiring that upfront payments be put into escrow until services are rendered and providing a recission period to get out of a transfer/resale contract. The bill accompanied multiple other resale/transfer resale laws passed by ARDA-ROC in other states.

Non-Judicial Foreclosure

ARDA-ROC has also taken action on behalf of owners by passing non-judicial foreclosure laws in several states. Non-judicial foreclosure, or “trustee foreclosure,” is an alternative foreclosure process to judicial foreclosure. Judicial foreclosure is time-consuming and expensive relative to non-judicial foreclosure. It can cost several thousand dollars per foreclosure and take years before an association, or lender, can force a sale on a delinquent interest. In the meantime, owners in good standing are on the hook for the money that the association should have received. With most timeshare foreclosures being uncontested by delinquent owners, using the non-judicial saves everyone time, money, and hassle. Owners who want to contest their foreclosure retain the ability to do so. ARDA-ROC first broached the concept of non-judicial foreclosure for timeshare in Florida in the late 1990s and has continued to advocate for it since then. So far, 31 states and D.C. have adopted some form of non-judicial foreclosure and ROC currently has an effort in North Carolina to expand that list.

Separating Timeshare and Condo Statutes

While timesharing is a legally unique concept, several states lump timeshare laws into their condo or HOA statutes. While this might seem harmless on the surface, this statutory organization causes laws that are aimed at condos or non-timeshare HOAs to inadvertently end up applying to timeshare associations as well. This results in legal requirements, which do not make sense in a timeshare context and are not intended to be applied to timeshares, being applied to timeshare, nonetheless. The best way to avoid this situation is to separate timeshare laws into their own act, apart from condos or HOAs. ARDA-ROC pursued this type of legislation in TX in 2013 with SB 1372, having already passed laws in several other states.

Timeshare Plan Termination/Extension

Many older resorts contain language in their timeshare plan that terminates the plan on a certain date, sometimes 40 or 50 years after the initial creation of the plan. However, they oftentimes do not provide any clear direction on what happens next. Some older resorts have no procedure for terminating the timeshare plan, leaving owners who can no longer afford to maintain their aging property stuck. ARDA-ROC believes that owners should be able to choose the future of their resort. To do this, owners need clear procedures and achievable voting thresholds for pursuing termination, or extension, of the plan. This is the goal of ARDA-ROC-supported termination/extension legislation. Over the years, ARDA-ROC has achieved victories on this front in Florida, South Carolina, and Rhode Island. Virginia became the latest state to pass termination/extension legislation this year, thanks to an ARDA-ROC-led effort. ARDA-ROC also have a bill in the works in Massachusetts and hope to secure victory there, as well.

ARDA-ROC is proud to have secured these victories on behalf of owners and, although the issues that impact owners the most have changed over time, ARDA-ROC continues to keep up with these developments to ensure that timeshare owners are represented at the table in statehouses across the country.