[*]HLDear fellow members of Loch Rannoch Highland Club ,
I've been the owner of a HL, first week 44 then changed to week 39, since 2010. We've loved our years of visiting the area but we live in Oxford and, due to our advancing years, the annual visit to Loch Rannoch is becoming more problematic and we're now ready to sell up, like many other owners it seems.
I have no idea of the value of our timeshare in today's financial climate. I'm guessing I might be lucky to give it away.
Grateful for any views or helpful information,
Many thanks,
Catherine
If you do manage to sell up, then maybe you could pass on some tips to the club on how to achieve this ?
There is to be a 3 day seminar soon specifically for this purpose and all input is welcome I believe.
To be honest I will be surprised if anything new is learned, but I will stand corrected if wrong.
Let's look at the facts.
We know that certain people know how to sell a home to a committee member for Airbnb purposes which creates a conflict of interest to the club under the rules, but struggle, in my opinion on how to sell lodges.
We know we have spent over £60,000 on "sales experts" who unfortunately failed as we still have a high percentage over 45% of club owned lodges for sale.
We have never achieved the stated figure of 100 club owned lodges a year.
We know that ideas/ suggestions were ignored due to a lack of capability and knowledge.
We concentrated on the short term solution rather than spread the wings and look for the longetivity in sales.
Over the next few years we will have lodges coming back to the club due to the end of 5 year term deals and because of the " removal" of voting rights, these owners will abandon what they once loved.
There has been much talking and monies spent on sales- we paid for someone a few years ago at expense to the club to help motivate and educate staff, but I reckon this was never followed up.
You need personality, charisma and belief to sell timeshare and that must come from the top to everyone, but I've never seen it.
You need everyone to be focused and excited about sales which creates harmony and teamwork, but?
There are many more facts no doubt, but I am desperate to be proved wrong and if so I will congratulate the person responsible.
I had a brief glance at the sales map of available lodges for sale.
I was quite shocked at the extent of unsold units which suggests that there is absolutely no demand for them.
We are putting out Highland Lodge (unit 7 week 6) up for “sale.”
I wonder if the decision not to sell the studios and apartments to the hotel was a missed opportunity. Yes, I know that some owners may have wished to retain their units but I don’t know to what extent negotiations were pursued with them.
Although I have looked at sales map and I can tell that this doesn't show the true position of lodges for sale as there is, for some reason a mass removal of lodges for sale which before an AGM,extremely suspicious.
Personally, I don't think it is all down to a lack of demand, but poor marketing, avoidance and a lack of experience.
Selling the studios and apartments again in my opinion was a " no brainer", but certain parties discouraged this and it has potentially created an issue further down the line.
The question you are asking about negotiation is an excellent one to ask at AGM on 29th Nov.
I’ve been advised that the minimum price that the club would market my unit for is £1,000.
Given that there are already 11 weeks already for sale for HL7, this seems pointless. Would it not seem to be beneficial to the club to get the weeks sold rather than creating an unrealistic market. I’m pretty sure that the number of available weeks has gone up since the last time that I looked.
This is not a sensible marketing strategy.
I was advised that this minimum figure was not set under the constitution but as a result of a committee decision.
I’m quite prepared to sell this for £350.
This unit was the subject of a very thorough renovation a few years ago so it is somewhat disquieting that a thriving market does not exist.
Any suggestions on where to market the unit?
Many thanks.
I’ve been advised that the minimum price that the club would market my unit for is £1,000.
Given that there are already 11 weeks already for sale for HL7, this seems pointless. Would it not seem to be beneficial to the club to get the weeks sold rather than creating an unrealistic market. I’m pretty sure that the number of available weeks has gone up since the last time that I looked.
This is not a sensible marketing strategy.
I was advised that this minimum figure was not set under the constitution but as a result of a committee decision.
I’m quite prepared to sell this for £350.
This unit was the subject of a very thorough renovation a few years ago so it is somewhat disquieting that a thriving market does not exist.
Any suggestions on where to market the unit?
Many thanks.
There are definitely more lodges for sale at the club than shown on this website.
I also personally believe it is fundamentally wrong to be forced into asking for a price which you as the owner are willing to reduce. It's your week.
I think any good solicitor would dispute what you have been advised is a condition of sale.
To make a comparison- the house sold to a committee member as an Airbnb was sold by the staff member at less than he wanted unless there were any other add-ons such as a spouse managing said rental.
However this may just have been a decision just to get property sold so a reduced price was accepted.
It is also known that committee members past and maybe present have bought lodges from members possibly at cheaper prices for same size of lodge you have and in some cases, never paid a penny which happened on numerous occasions during covid.
I can only suggest to you the best way to get your questions answered is to ask at the AGM.
You would be doing extremely well to be able to sell a timeshare week for £350. Most owners are unable to give away their week(s) for free. Reason being that nobody in this day and age will understandably sign up to in perpetuity time share. It is a thing of the past.
Its the same reason why LRHC have great difficulty in selling weeks at LRHC
Last edited by THOM042 on Sun Nov 23, 2025 1:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I'll comment on various matters.
To assist Owners the Club will market their lodge if they so wish. There is nothing in the Rules requiring us to do so but we offer it as a service to Members. For much of the Club's life Members were on their own and having to use various agencies, some of which operated poor practices leading to Members losing money. Using the Club means that this won't happen to you and you will be treated fairly. The Club is trying to sell Club stock at sensible prices but if we were to sell Members lodges at very low prices it would wreck our efforts to maintain a sensible price level. We do monitor this but it is something of a balancing act. The Board's job is to maximise the benefit for the whole Club. Members are completely free to use an outside agency if they feel we are not doing well enough. On a more positive note I would urge Members to consider swaps, exchanges, and renting out.
I have no idea if Committee members bought lodges from Members for free at Covid time. I wasn't around then. The present position is that they or anybody else could buy them at cheap prices in a private deal and we have no authority to stop that. If they did it through the Club then they would be refused. To allay suspicion, I am currently the longest serving Board member and haven't bought a lodge since being a Board member
Regarding a staff member selling a house to a Committee member for less than he originally wanted, maybe that's called negotiation. I have never managed to sell my house for the asking price.
The decision about the possible sale of the studios and apartments was one possibility of about five different methods to increase our income. All possibilities were considered by the Club Accountant at that time and he advised against selling assets. We took his advice.
There is no doubt that we are disappointed in our sales results. We don't hide that. I originally set a target of 100 per year. I wonder if anybody on this thread has missed targets at work? It happens and the mature way is to tackle it logically which is what we've done. As mentioned on here we recently held a three day workshop. That's quite a chunk of time for anybody but we believe it was the right thing to do. One of the surprises which came out of it was that many other sites are doing worse than us. They have a higher proportion of empty weeks to sold weeks than us. Several sites have given up on sales and are becoming more rentals focussed. It would be the easiest thing in the world for us to go the same way because gaining more rentals is easier than selling lodges. But we are deliberately not going down that route because we want to remain a Members' Club and many people on this Forum are also of that opinion. We are now deciding how to put into action all the matters discussed at the workshop.
I note that there are already two of the larger HL units shown at a nil selling price - HL33 week 51 and HL35 week 13.
I’ve gone through the sales map and note that almost 50% of the entire complex is advertised for sale on the Club’s website. There are probably other owners like ourselves who would like to sell too and who have not advertised as yet.
Given that other owners are getting to be of an age where their units may soon revert to the Club under the death clause, the picture is not rosy. In addition temporary memberships will by definition result in more units becoming available.
I appreciate that there are many owners who are content to remain as owners but there are equally many who don’t. A sensible balance needs to be struck.
In spite of the best endeavours of the committee, sales do not appear to be outstripping new units for sale.
I am aware that the hotel approached the Club with a view to acquiring the studios and apartments, currently with almost 600 vacant weeks. I don’t know the full story as to why this didn’t progress. Perhaps some owners were unwilling to relinquish their weeks or perhaps legal issues.
In the case of the former, I’d have thought that some accommodation could have been reached, perhaps through making a red squirrel or pine martin available at the same management fee for a number of years or allowing them to relinquish their ownership without charge.
On the money side, the simple net cost of disposing of these units should be fairly easy to determine: loss of rental income, less unrecovered electricity, less wages, less repairs, less refurbishment etc.
Any funds received from the hotel could be received in annual instalments to ameliorate the cash flow effects on the hotel.
This effect of such a disposal would obviously reduce sharply the number of units that we are attempting to sell. If this was subsequently followed by a similar disposal of the Otter and Red Deer units, the sales stock would be reduced by half and the disposal programme would be less daunting
I would like to reply first of all to Alex003- everything you have said I agree with most of it.
The studios and apartments are and I have said this before, a no brainer to sell to hotel if the offer is still on table.
They will cost at least £500k or more to refurbish as they will require work on stairwells and outside walls as well as internal work.
This work I feel would be a waste of time and owners money as these properties are only fit to be demolished.
There are 816 weeks there and with us needing to re-unit owners that would reduce club owned stock by at least 1000.
I don't think selling other lodges would be beneficial however at this moment in time.
Until recently I personally believe sales were secondary to rentals based on conversations I have had in relation to this with certain people, not necessarily committee who believed rentals was the way forward based on the experience they had with hotels, but no experience in timeshare.
At one time it was suggested rentals would bring in over £500k a year and this did not include owners rental commission,but unfortunately I can't remember seeing that figure and on looking at accounts it would appear rental income reduced in 24/25.
We again wasted £60k plus on salespeople who again had limited or no experience in sales.
The last 4 years and again in my opinion, has been a missed opportunity and with the changes in conditions for term owners, shortsighted.
Re what John has said on pricing- I can understand this philosophy but I feel we have to be careful as if we can't sell a lodge at say £1000 and someone offers £750, are we going to refuse and potentially missed out on many years of annual fees.
Maybe we should say price negotiable instead and prices are not shown?
On the committee members getting lodges for free or very low prices,I will not name names however I can say an ex chair and ex secretary were involved in this and I was told by an existing committee member based on a deal on a refurbished lodge by a recently resigned committee member,had been investigated.
However with one of the committee motions for AGM been missing minutes for a number of years, I am beginning to think this particular investigation was missing some hard facts and should be reviewed?
On the accountants advice re selling the block I have always wondered if certain people were potentially feeding him misleading information as many could not see the logic in this, highlighting again future issues, but I could be mistaken.
I have though been looking at the levy discussion especially on the third party loan and again this is maybe a question for AGM in light of the other recent purchase to be discussed.
And if I am right in my assumption, questions have to be raised.
I'm so looking forward to 2025 AGM and hope many important questions are asked and are not met with " I don't know" answers or ignored.
“The decision about the possible sale of the studios and apartments was one possibility of about five different methods to increase our income. All possibilities were considered by the Club Accountant at that time and he advised against selling assets. We took his advice.”
It would be interesting to see this advice and the rationale behind it.
"It would be interesting to see this advice and the rationale behind it."
Again Alex003, this is an excellent question and one to be asked next week at AGM.
The advice by the accountant in my opinion was flawed.
He was again in my opinion led down a garden path and based his so called decision on fantasy figures and assessments by some who had possibly had another agenda.
Some at the Club were dead against it as they were egotistical and self important but if I were to say on here who, it would be too obvious,
However getting an answer to the question could be tricky if the previous secretary appears not to have kept and infact destroyed any minutes.
According to the motion there appears to have been various stories given by this person regarding this which does not add up.
Also worth noting was that we had a retired accountant, the partner of secretary who during covid and after spent much time at the club despite not been a committee member at that time and had total access to club accounts which again in my opinion was a GDPR breach and dealt with accountants.
He only recently resigned from committee which makes me suspicious as to why?
Unfortunately there are so many unanswered questions but owners also Unfortunately don't ask the right questions or seek the transparency required which again is why your question is so important.
There are indeed so many unanswered questions, Stuart however a significant number of LRHC owners no longer have the right to ask any questions by virtue of the fact that they are barred from attending a general meeting of club owners and are therefore silenced without any recourse.
I refer of course to all Term owners who had the goal posts drastically changed on them at last year’s AGM.
Interestingly enough up until now non owner’s have been allowed to attend AGM’s , typically a spouse or partner of an existing paid up owner and if this practice is allowed to continue then it represents a clear discrimination against Term owners.
Is this really what everyone wants ?
Again Thom042, I totally agree with what you have said.
Original owners and infact all owners who in some cases were talked into term deals were told they still had same rights.
It is totally wrong to treat owners in this way and treat them like second class citizens stripped of all the rights they were promised.
They are not a share issue.
Next year will create problems as a lot of those owners will hand back the weeks due to this shoddy and underhand treatment.
Similar to the motion this year re virtual AGM, it appears to be an attempt to silence everyone.
This suits those who have much to hide and gain as we have seen by recent events.
Indeed Stuart . I am extremely dissapointed with the Committee inspired resolution in this respect and in particular with John who I previously respected completely. As the Chairman who presided over last year’s resolution, which I still fail to understand he must take the responsibility for this happening.
It is a complete fallacy that Term owners do not have the interests of the club in mind. Why would they not ? They pay as much if not more into LRHC during their tenure as anyone else.
Taking the reason given for the resolution to strip Term owners of all rights to its logical conclusion it could be justifiably argued that all employees of LRHC do not have the long term interests of the club in mind because after all each and every one from the lowest paid worker to the GM can walk away at any time subject to giving the statutory period of notice. The period of notice is in fact far less than any Term owner has available to them and there are countless examples of LRHC employees leaving their employment since the 1970’s.
The treatment dished out to Term owners since the last AGM is disgraceful and quite frankly I regard this as a breach of the Equality Act ( Scotland) 2010. The committee who are in fact Directors of the club can do
pretty much anything they like but it must always be in good faith and within the law. A club resolution made by the committee and then voted on does not overule or change the law.
If any existing Term owners renew to a new contract at the expiration of their current term, I would be most surprised
I don't know how they, the committee,voted last year, but whatever way it went we may never know if there are no minutes based on the other motion for this year.
However enough of them have agreed to progress the motion last year and the one this year which I am sure, they will all regret in the future, and if the club were to flounder, I know who I would blame.
I don't know if all committee necessarily thought it over properly and the potential disadvantages and repercussions.
If this motion succeeds, in my opinion we can forget calling ourselves an owners club especially if there is no proper democracy and it is run like a dictatorship.
I already know many who are considering leaving LRHC due to this unfair treatment.
The biggest mistake made remains to " basically ban" term owners who have a history of emotional attachments to this club without proper consultation.
The AGM, in my opinion was not the place to carry out the wishes of a few.
But when you have and again this is my own opinion, people who have offered money to the club as a third party loan, people who have created irreparable reputational damage to the club by recent purchases and are now in conflict of interest with our very own rules and regulations, a village where the locals have made their feelings clear and rather than admit failure certain people have decided to move 80-90 minutes away to hide, people who cry wolf when they don't get what they want, people who have taken advantage of the silent ownership, people who have no real feelings for the club or staff and only their own ego you have to question what their ultimate goal is whether the slippery road is on that agenda.
I personally feel and my opinion has never wavered , poor and non empathetic management is to blame but this poor management has convinced some to support and those who don't, the facts are there for all to see, including yourself.
And so the LRHC commitee now progresses to the 1st AGM since they have effectively discriminated against all Term owners, who now no longer have many rights.
They are all now barred from voting or attending an AGM, proposing a resolution, serving on Committee or basically anything other than occupying the week(s) which they pay for just as in perpetuity owners do.
One can only assume that the AGM will only now be the sole domain of fully paid up in perpetuity owners and not the guests of same who may well happen to be spouses or partners of paid up owners.
This presence of non owners at an AGM was always considered to be reasonable in the past but if this practice is now continued then it will be regarded as a blatant discrimination against Term owners who are now no longer allowed to attend AGM’s.
The ill founded Committee inspired resolution at the 2024 AGM which initiated this situation has now come home to roost and the purpose behind this has never been credibly explained .
All term owners should make themselves familiar with the Equality Act 2010 ( goods and services)
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