The General Assembly declares that the purposes of this article are to recognize that:

(A) timeshare estates are interests in real property and have been so created and designated by a specific act of the legislature codified in Chapter 32, Title 27 of the 1976 Code;

(B) timeshare estates are used for a vacation experience and may not be used for homestead purposes;

(C) timeshare estates, while interests in residential real property, are statutorily prohibited from being used for homestead purposes, are not offered for investment purposes, do not include many typical rights afforded owners of interests in residential real property such as rights to continuous exclusive possession and partition and are typically purchased and sold as fungible vacation commodities;

(D) timeshare estates located in South Carolina are sold primarily to nonresidents;

(E) the purchaser of an interest in a vacation time sharing plan in this State is afforded significant and unique consumer protections not available to purchasers of other forms of real property;

(F) the process involved in the purchase and sale of interests in a vacation time sharing plan is unlike traditional residential real property and, due to the provisions of this act, require unique practices and procedures;

(G) as part of each sale of an interest in a vacation time sharing plan, every purchaser must be given a comprehensive disclosure document that includes the material terms and conditions of the vacation time sharing plan;

(H) purchasers of interests in a vacation time sharing plan have an unqualified five-day pre-closing right of rescission;

(I) each developer of a vacation time sharing plan must place all purchaser funds in escrow, or otherwise secure such funds, prior to the expiration of the five-day rescission period and before the timeshare closing can occur;

(J) the South Carolina legislature specifically established the South Carolina Vacation Time Sharing Recovery Fund in order to provide additional redress for aggrieved purchasers of interests in a vacation time sharing plan in South Carolina;

(K) prior to the sale or offering of an interest in a vacation time sharing plan in South Carolina, the vacation time sharing plan, and the documents used in connection therewith, must be submitted to the South Carolina Real Estate Commission for its review and approval;

(L) the South Carolina Real Estate Commission, as part of its regulatory mandate, scrutinizes the practices and procedures of persons developing or selling interests in vacation time sharing plans in this State; and

(M) the economic health and continued stability of the vacation time sharing industry should be subject to the clear identification of various procedures involved in the purchase and sale of an interest in a vacation time sharing plan and the timeshare closing itself.

HISTORY: 2006 Act No. 310, Section 1, eff June 1, 2006.