Urban time-shares save money, get you better accommodations

For Barry and Rhoda Abrams, frequent visitors to New York, buying an "urban" timeshare turned out to be a better investment than staying in hotels.

"In a hotel, you never know the room you're getting," said Barry Abrams, a dentist from Cherry Hill, N.J., a Philadelphia suburb. By staying at the Manhattan Club in Midtown, "we know what we're getting," he said. He also figures they save $2,200 annually by avoiding hotels for the 14 nights a year they stay in the city.

Timeshares have sprung up in places such as New York, Boston and San Francisco to cater to such travelers as the Abramses, who regularly visit a particular city at least once a year. Timeshare rentals offer accommodations that are usually roomier than hotel rooms and are able to swap their rights with other time-share owners for vacations in locales around the world.

For frequent visitors, timeshares can pay for themselves in about nine years based on nightly average hotel rates in a large city.
By purchasing a timeshare, owners buy the right to stay in a furnished unit in a timeshare resort or condominium for a set period of time, usually seven days a year. It can be the same week every year or can vary, and it can sometimes be split into separate stays. Owners generally pay an annual maintenance fee.

The Manhattan Club, where the Abramses stay, was one of the first time-shares in New York when it opened on West 56th Street near Carnegie Hall in August 1997. The property was developed by Ian Bruce Eichner, builder of City Spire, a mixed-use tower in midtown Manhattan, among other properties.