‘Special levy’ makes owning timeshare impossible

The relationship is wonderful until you are ambushed, writes D Wolpert.

Timeshare is a huge industry in SA. It has many avid supporters and arguably just as many detractors. On the positive side, there are so many magnificent venues worldwide that offer good value for your money which involves a purchase price plus an annual levy to cover the resorts costs.

All quite fair until the sudden ambush by the “special levy”, something you were never informed of when you first visited the resort or perused the beautiful glossy brochures their marketing departments create.

Our experience in Cape Town deserves a special award. We own three units at a Bantry Bay resort where we spent many beautiful holidays.

Then the bottom fell out of our wonderful association with the Atlantic seaboard.

For five of the last seven or eight years we were unable to occupy our units, two of them due to the noise and dust of the redevelopment of the adjacent building, followed a couple of years later by major renovations of part of our resort, and then two successive years of Covid lockdowns.

Annual levies of around R20 000 for the three units were paid during these years without any compensation other than our right to space bank the time for possible future use. Our simple choice was to give beautiful Cape Town a miss or to stay elsewhere in the Mother City at additional costs.

Now we have been informed that major renovations need to be undertaken next year during which time the resort will be closed for half the year.

But the management committee requires us to pay a “one time special levy” of about R45 000 for our units, in two tranches, over and above annual levies with above inflation increases.

As a previous avid supporter of timeshare, I am now rushing for the exit. The relationship is fine until you are ambushed.