Here’s a new vacation motto: never pay retail again. There’s a glut of time shares on the market, and that means great deals for folks who buy those one-week resort stays from previous owners instead of arm-twisting developers. “You can buy a resale for 50 cents on the dollar, but some areas will go for far less than that,” says Bill Rogers, founder of Timeshare User’s Group (tug2.net), a popular site where owners rate resorts, share price data, trade vacation weeks and gossip. For example, Rogers’s site has reported recent secondhand time-share deals like a permanent week in Tuscany for $2,000; Crete for $500, and Alpenland, Austria, for $750.

The time shares themselves are better deals than vacationers might remember from the industry’s scam-scarred beginnings in the 1970s. Most are at well-run, upscale resorts and give owners their week in the sun (or snow) as well as entree into the world of vacation trading. Owners like self-described hobbyist Lynda Bettcher of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, are loading up on secondhand deals. She snagged a $15,000 Aruba time share for $5,000, an every-other-year apartment in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for $1,500, a St. Martin studio for $900 and a week at a South African resort (that she traded away recently for a week in Manhattan) for $385. Those prices are one-time fees for permanent, year-after-year use.

To find the best deals, look for real-estate agents near your target resort and haunt Web sites like timesharestogo.com, where the Lyalls found their place in Goa; time-sharing.com (in German); www.apaf-vtp.com (in French); the Timeshare Consumers Association (www.timeshare.org.uk), or the Timeshare User’s Group, which is well worth its $15 membership fee. Learn the rules–some purchases net you the same week at the same place every year; others offer “floating” weeks that allow you –to vacation when you want. Vet your property by calling the resort to make sure the owner who is selling you the time share really is the owner.

Also, consider trading ability. Many time-share owners today don’t go back for the same vacation year after year, but trade their weekly ownerships for vacations at different places. Two of the major exchanges are Condominiums International (rci.com) or Interval International (intervalworld.com). Each has an annual membership fee; RCI’s is $85 a year. And even if you don’t intend to trade, remember to budget for extra expenses. Time shares all carry maintenance fees that can range from $200 to $900 a year. It will cost about $200 to do a closing through a company like Prodox (www.prodox.com), which specializes in time-share transfers. But that should still leave you enough for sunscreen… or another secondhand week.