This is one piece of Manhattan real estate you can’t even give away.
Owners of The Manhattan Club timeshare, a West 56th Street hotel, say they have been saddled with rising maintenance costs with nothing to show for it.
The Midtown property is so oversold, owners say, it is nearly impossible to book rooms or sell their shares on the open market. Some have resorted to simply walking away.
More than 18,000 ownerships have been sold for 286 rooms leaving a “minimum shortage of 69 rooms” each week, according to a state Supreme Court suit filed in July by a group of New York owners.
The shortage is made worse by rooms being rented on travel sites to the general public, the suit charges.
“If you go online today, you can get a room for two weeks from now whereas a timeshare owner couldn’t. And you’ll get it at a cheaper rate,” said Steven Bennett Blau, the lawyer who filed the suit against
Irene Smalls, 64, a children’s book author from Boston, said the timeshare seemed like a good deal in 2002 when she paid $20,580 to get one week a year at the hotel. But she said she can rarely book the week she wants and yearly maintenance fees have skyrocketed to $2,200.
“I can get a cheaper room at the Hilton!” Smalls said.
James Roberts paid $14,000 for his timeshare in the 1990s. He said having to make reservations six months in advance was too difficult.
“We just got so fed up that we decided to give it up,” said Roberts, 72, who is semiretired and lives in Yardley, Pa.
He said he turned over his shares to the Manhattan Club management, getting just $100 in return.
“I pity people who are buying it now,” he said.
The state Attorney General’s Office confirmed receiving complaints about the property being oversold.
But Joel Weiss, a lawyer for the defendants – the company that operates the time-share plan and developer Ian Bruce Eichner – says two prior suits were dismissed in federal court, and he expects this one to be tossed as well.
“The overwhelming number of The Manhattan Club’s purchasers have been exceedingly happy with their timeshare ownership and are obtaining the benefits they were promised,” Weiss said.