# Upgrading to ocean front at WKORV



## DeniseM (Mar 8, 2007)

Do you think Starwood would let me use our OV 2 bdm. to upgrade to Ocean Front?  Or are all the OF units sold at the WKORV?  In other words, would they let us apply the $45K we paid for our week, to an OF unit?  Any idea what an OF unit at the WKORV would cost?


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## formerhater (Mar 8, 2007)

Sounds like a possibility.  Why not call them and ask?


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## Henry M. (Mar 8, 2007)

As long as the price difference is over $12K they should let you do that. They told me about trading in your property last summer and that was the minimum price difference then.

Henry


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## Denise L (Mar 8, 2007)

Wasn't it close to $70K at WKROV-N for an OF? Or more...I can't remember.

When we purchased OV in 2003, it was $65K for the OF. Resale OFs were going for mid-50s a while back.

I would guess that if they had them, they would let you do it, but do you want to pay another $25K?


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## ricoba (Mar 8, 2007)

I know it's a different system, but Hilton does what you are asking.  In fact they sent me a letter just the other day inviting me to upgrade, using the "equity" we currently own as the "downpayment" for more points.  

Why not call them and ask, I'd be curious to hear what other clubs do.


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## ciscogizmo1 (Mar 8, 2007)

I can't remember the exact details.  However, back in June they told us we could upgrade to an OF unit.  It was very tempting but expensive.  I can't remember the price difference.  If you have the money, I'd go for it as the OF seem so nice.  GL... Hopefully, they still have some OF units left.

Oh, they offered this when we indicated that we had no interest in the North units.


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## DeniseM (Mar 8, 2007)

Denise L said:


> I would guess that if they had them, they would let you do it, but do you want to pay another $25K?



Well....no....but I really want OF and if the alternative is to sell our 2 bdm. resale, and buy OF resale, I think it would cost even more because we would take a loss on the week we sell.  

And....maybe I could get them to bring my SDO week into the SVN as part of the deal???     Hmmmmmmmm......

I'm just playing around with ideas....I know I could buy ocean front, resale,  somewhere else for a lot less, but if I do that, I don't really need my WKORV week, but I hate to sell it for a big loss...

Does anyone have the phone number for the main sales office?


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## Henry M. (Mar 8, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> Does anyone have the phone number for the main sales office?



Try talking to Owner Services. Maybe Portfolio Services would be a good number to call too (800.743.7654).

Good luck!


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## saluki (Mar 8, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> Does anyone have the phone number for the main sales office?



Denise-

Here's a thread on the Direct Sales Office including the phone #.

Please let us know what you find out.

http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33280&highlight=direct+sales


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## Transit (Mar 8, 2007)

I was told at an owner update that a developer ugrade was possible as long as it was over 7000 dollars but that was at VV.


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## DavidnRobin (Mar 8, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> Do you think Starwood would let me use our OV 2 bdm. to upgrade to Ocean Front?  Or are all the OF units sold at the WKORV?  In other words, would they let us apply the $45K we paid for our week, to an OF unit?  Any idea what an OF unit at the WKORV would cost?



Not sure if this has been answered, but you can for OF WKORV-N ($68K).  WKORV OF villas are not being sold.  Also, they told me our OF Deluxe was ~$86K if it were to be sold by them - although they are not - to which I replied - "then why doesn't SVO exercise their ROFR for WKORV OF, and then resell for a profit" - to which I got a blank look...


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## DavidnRobin (Mar 8, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> Well....no....but I really want OF and if the alternative is to sell our 2 bdm. resale, and buy OF resale, I think it would cost even more because we would take a loss on the week we sell.
> 
> And....maybe I could get them to bring my SDO week into the SVN as part of the deal???     Hmmmmmmmm......
> 
> ...



You could get OF WKORV-N for $68K, and use the price you paid at WKORV.  This was told to me directly during our Owner Update at WKORV in November.  He had thought we paid $65K for our OF, but then realized that we had bought resale from this owner.   I tried to play dumb as long as possible.  He was trying to get me to 5* Elite because he had a list of our SVO properties - until he relaized that we were resale buyers - and we were released quickly and kindly.

If they have sold them - then of course they would pass.  If they have - you could always try WPORV - plus it couldn't hurt to ask to requal your SDO - they just might (but get it in writing...)

Here's the number for Direct sales (not same person as above) - great guy - at least over the phone - he was very upfront - and didn't try and blow smoke up my a**.

SVO Direct Sales:
Jim Johnson 407-465-3684
james.johnson@starwoodvo.com


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## Denise L (Mar 8, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> And....maybe I could get them to bring my SDO week into the SVN as part of the deal???     Hmmmmmmmm......



Denise, how many annual SOs and SPs would you get if you requalified your SDO? I'm guessing not a lot? If you are truly going to buy "developer" again, why not buy another voluntary resale somewhere to get up to 81K SOs (if added to your SDO) and requalify both so that you would have a lot of options with your requalified SOs?!  Whew, that was a mouthful!


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## DeniseM (Mar 8, 2007)

Denise L said:


> Denise, how many annual SOs and SPs would you get if you requalified your SDO? I'm guessing not a lot? If you are truly going to buy "developer" again, why not buy another voluntary resale somewhere to get up to 81K SOs (if added to your SDO) and requalify both so that you would have a lot of options with your requalified SOs?!  Whew, that was a mouthful!



That's a good question and a good idea.  According to the chart, the SDO unit we own is worth 81K Staroptions (if purchased from the developer) but I don't know if they would give me that many if I requalified it.  Any thoughts on that?  It's a floating, 1 bdm., premium.


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## Denise L (Mar 8, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> That's a good question and a good idea.  According to the chart, the SDO unit we own is worth 81K Staroptions (if purchased from the developer) but I don't know if they would give me that many if I requalified it.  Any thoughts on that?  It's a floating, 1 bdm., premium.



Previous TUG posts have led me to believe that you will get the number of SOs that are supposed to be assigned to that interval, so you should get 81K SOs if that is what it is worth. Great! You shouldn't need to buy another interval then. And you can let us know how the requal goes .


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## chrisfromOC (Mar 8, 2007)

Denise, we just did this in January, but we upgraded to an OF at the North ppty.  They would have done the upgrade to OF at WKORV, but the only inventory they had was week 51.  They gave us a credit in the amount we had paid for our OV, and the price for the OF week was $68k and change.  They also gave us a 45,000 SP incentive.  

Let me know if you have any other questions.


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## DeniseM (Mar 8, 2007)

chrisfromOC said:


> Denise, we just did this in January, but we upgraded to an OF at the North ppty.  They would have done the upgrade to OF at WKORV, but the only inventory they had was week 51.  They gave us a credit in the amount we had paid for our OV, and the price for the OF week was $68k and change.  They also gave us a 45,000 SP incentive.
> 
> Let me know if you have any other questions.



Thanks Chris - do you know what they wanted for week 51?


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## oneohana (Mar 8, 2007)

Denise L said:


> Previous TUG posts have led me to believe that you will get the number of SOs that are supposed to be assigned to that interval, so you should get 81K SOs if that is what it is worth. Great! You shouldn't need to buy another interval then. And you can let us know how the requal goes .



It depends when the unit was originally sold. If it is 1-52 week float it would only be worth 44,000 options. If it is 1-21,50-52 week it could be worth 81,000 options.


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## pointsjunkie (Mar 8, 2007)

*confused*

I thought that all hawaii had the same staroptions 67100 and 81000.where did 44000 come from? please set me straight.


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## pointsjunkie (Mar 8, 2007)

*buying from starwood*

before you go ahead and upgrade ,my advice is to get an explorer package first. i have the number if you do not have it. the amount of money you spend on it will be applied to your purchase and you get mega starpoints for purchasing the explorer package plus starpoints for the upgrade. it won't cost you any more money and you can get a great trip with the extra starpoints.:whoopie:


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## saluki (Mar 8, 2007)

pointsjunkie said:


> I thought that all hawaii had the same staroptions 67100 and 81000.where did 44000 come from? please set me straight.



They were discussing what StarOptions she might get from her Sheraton Desert Oasis resale.

Also, in reference to your next post, I'm pretty sure that current SVO owners are not eligible for any type of promo visits.


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## pointsjunkie (Mar 8, 2007)

*explorer program*

the explorer program is for svo's. we went for an update at keirland and we were not interested in purchasing at that time so they brought us to the explorer person. it was for signing up for another update within 18 months and a guarntee 50000 starpoints and a 5 day stay at the resort or purchase somewhere, don't use the 5 day stay and recieve 90000 starpoints. the money goes toward the new purchase. we did this when we upgraded our VV in december.got 90000 starpoints.:whoopie:


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## chrisfromOC (Mar 8, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> Thanks Chris - do you know what they wanted for week 51?



I believe it was somewhere around $85k; they said that to the extent they get inventory at WKORV, they sell it based on the final phase prices.  I'm not sure where they ended up pricing non-event week OF units.  I wasn't interested in week 51 so I quickly turned our attention to WKORV-N.  For us, it's a better layout since there are OF ground floor units which open onto grass.  We have young kids and I really like that sort of setup.  Of course the drawback is that the OF category at WKORV-N is more of a crapshoot than at WKORV since N is constructed so that the units are staggered back as opposed to all sitting right up front like WKORV.


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## daventrina (Mar 8, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> Do you think Starwood would let me use our OV 2 bdm. to upgrade to Ocean Front?  Or are all the OF units sold at the WKORV?  In other words, would they let us apply the $45K we paid for our week, to an OF unit?  Any idea what an OF unit at the WKORV would cost?


Sales told us a 2 BR OF at WKORV could probably be tracked down for about $85k.
We were not happy with the way the OF units were laid out at WKORV-N and would guess that you wouldn't be either. They don't set on the beach like WKORV and they would not sell us a fixed unit that was OF on the corner


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## DavidnRobin (Mar 9, 2007)

daventrina said:


> Sales told us a 2 BR OF at WKORV could probably be tracked down for about $85k.
> We were not happy with the way the OF units were laid out at WKORV-N and would guess that you wouldn't be either. They don't set on the beach like WKORV and they would not sell us a fixed unit that was OF on the corner



$86K is what I saw for a non-event during the Owners Update - he had tables showing the SVO price over time (annually) and I saw some of the values at the quick glance that I had.  

The owner we bought from paid $65K based on the info he had (from ~2 years ago). He thought we were the original owners and was discussing using our purchase for upgrading to OF WKORV-N.  I saw this documentation.  He also thought we bought WSJ (which also listed what the original SVO price was).  He wanted to do something with the OF exchange - and another purchase to get us to 4 or 5* Elite with our WSJ - he said that we were already 3* - then at some point he realized we weren't based on his readout - and the 'resale' topic arose.

I wasn't interested and told him that it probably wouldn't happen because we were also in contract for resale WKV - and only have 3-weeks vacation per year - and didn't need the SO-SP conversion.  We discussed some things about Mandatory/Voluntary - he mentioned that we did really good for ourselves with the resale buys (off the cuff comment), and then made a comment on the only thing that concerned us...
That was that Elite owners could end up with better unit assignments even as long as they called before 8 months and then followed up 30-60 days ahead of time to the Elite line - even if we called exactly at 12 months ahead. And of course why we should get to 4-5*.
(made some sense, but the 3-week vacation thing...)

Well - we will find out because we were the very first callers for this year.


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## DeniseM (Mar 9, 2007)

pointsjunkie said:


> the explorer program is for svo's. we went for an update at keirland and we were not interested in purchasing at that time so they brought us to the explorer person. it was for signing up for another update within 18 months and a guarntee 50000 starpoints and a 5 day stay at the resort or purchase somewhere, don't use the 5 day stay and recieve 90000 starpoints. the money goes toward the new purchase. we did this when we upgraded our VV in december.got 90000 starpoints.:whoopie:



How much is the explorer pkg?  If I understand this right, you applied the full cost of the explorer Pkg. to the purchase price of your upgrade, so it doesn't really cost you anything, plus you get 50K Starpoints with the Explorer Pkg.,  plus incentive Starpoints when you purchase the upgrade?  So you got 50K Starpoints + 40K Starpoints for the upgrade?


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## DeniseM (Mar 9, 2007)

DavidnRobin said:


> The owner we bought from paid $65K based on the info he had (from ~2 years ago).



Dave - I know you've posted this before, but please remind me what you paid resale for your WKORV OF?

BTW - I emailed James Johnson and he got right back to me.  He is checking to see if they have any OF inventory.  In my email I asked him about upgrading, requalifying, Starpoint incentives, and price - I will let you know what I find out.


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## DavidnRobin (Mar 9, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> Dave - I know you've posted this before, but please remind me what you paid resale for your WKORV OF?
> 
> BTW - I emailed James Johnson and he got right back to me.  He is checking to see if they have any OF inventory.  In my email I asked him about upgrading, requalifying, Starpoint incentives, and price - I will let you know what I find out.



~$56K including MFs for 2006.  We paid about $4K too much (live and learn) - we just felt that that we had just saved $20K over the WKORV-N OF (at ~$74K) - so it seemed like a bargain.  If we had been more patient we could have saved more, but having Thanksgiveing week reserved (and the ability to have out family there for our marriage and T-Day was worth some additional cost) - there was one on eBay that went unsold for $49.5 from Stroman Reality.

Also worth knowing - the inside (non-Deluxe) OF units that are side-by-side (I listed their unit numbers in another thread) do have a real lanai on the studio-side, even though the 'premium' floorplans do not show a lanai.  I have never seen one of these forslae, but they would be nice to own from many aspects (lower MFs, both sides facing the ocean).


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## pointsjunkie (Mar 9, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> How much is the explorer pkg?  If I understand this right, you applied the full cost of the explorer Pkg. to the purchase price of your upgrade, so it doesn't really cost you anything, plus you get 50K Starpoints with the Explorer Pkg.,  plus incentive Starpoints when you purchase the upgrade?  So you got 50K Starpoints + 40K Starpoints for the upgrade?



it was 2grand,we applied the full amount to the upgrade and received 90,000 starpoints for the upgrade from the explorer program. i will never buy from starwood without getting an explorer package first. i can get it over the phone and the starpoints will keep on coming in. i travel 3-4 times a year for 5 nights( so i get the 5th night free) that is beside my TS vacations. i love the ability to turn my vo to starpoints. i exchange harborside every other year and we charge everything on the amex (college tuition) and we travel for free like crazy.:whoopie:


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## jerseygirl (Mar 10, 2007)

Points Junkie --

Does your college charge a service fee?  I would love to do that, but I haven't figured out how to get around the fee.

Thanks,
jersey


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## DeniseM (Mar 10, 2007)

jerseygirl said:


> Points Junkie --
> 
> Does your college charge a service fee?  I would love to do that, but I haven't figured out how to get around the fee.
> 
> ...



Both of my kid's colleges charge a fee too! :annoyed:


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## divenski (Mar 10, 2007)

FYI, in the last month or so, a "lot" of North units have been put on the resale market if this site is accurate.

http://sellmytimesharenow.com/searc...sortId=7427&price=&unitType=&bathrooms=&week=

A bit surprising given that it hasn't even opened yet, and that Westin seems to have no trouble selling more weeks.

Also a bit surprising is how many Maui units, especially Westin and Marriott, are available for rent as seen at redweek.


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## DavidnRobin (Mar 10, 2007)

divenski said:


> FYI, in the last month or so, a "lot" of North units have been put on the resale market if this site is accurate.
> 
> http://sellmytimesharenow.com/searc...sortId=7427&price=&unitType=&bathrooms=&week=
> 
> ...



See this thread
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42289&highlight=sellmytimesharenow


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## pointsjunkie (Mar 10, 2007)

*college fee*

the colleges do charge a fee but we figured out that is was well worth it because with both tuituins we had enough for 2 nights at cat 4 hotel.


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## DeniseM (Mar 10, 2007)

pointsjunkie said:


> the colleges do charge a fee but we figured out that is was well worth it because with both tuituins we had enough for 2 nights at cat 4 hotel.



I don't know - if I have to pay for the points, it doesn't seem like a good deal to me.


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## DeniseM (Mar 16, 2007)

I heard back from Dave's SW contact today and he said they didn't have any OF units at the WKORV available now, but he would contact me when they do.  He said that they are getting some units because people upgrade to WKORVN.  Can you imagine "upgrading" from *ocean front* at the WKORV to any unit at WKORVN???  

An OF unit closed on ebay today - one of the center units.  There was a $55K reserve, but the auction topped out at $22K and didn't meet the reserve.


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## DavidnRobin (Mar 16, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> I heard back from Dave's SW contact today and he said they didn't have any OF units at the WKORV available now, but he would contact me when they do.  He said that they are getting some units because people upgrade to WKORVN.  Can you imagine "upgrading" from *ocean front* at the WKORV to any unit at WKORVN???
> 
> An OF unit closed on ebay today - one of the center units.  There was a $55K reserve, but the auction topped out at $22K and didn't meet the reserve.




What was the auction #?  I track these and didn't see it listed  Did it not have Westin in the title?


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## DeniseM (Mar 16, 2007)

DavidnRobin said:


> What was the auction #?  I track these and didn't see it listed  Did it not have Westin in the title?



No, it didn't - I found it by searching by state.


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## DavidnRobin (Mar 16, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> No, it didn't - I found it by searching by state.



Do you have the auction # handy?


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## DeniseM (Mar 17, 2007)

DavidnRobin said:


> Do you have the auction # handy?



No - but you should be able to find it by doing a search for Hawaii (state drop down menu) and then choose COMPLETED LISTINGS (on the left) and click SHOW ITEMS.


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## DavidnRobin (Mar 18, 2007)

DeniseM said:


> No - but you should be able to find it by doing a search for Hawaii (state drop down menu) and then choose COMPLETED LISTINGS (on the left) and click SHOW ITEMS.



I did this, but still do not see it.


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## grgs (Mar 18, 2007)

Here it is:

140095304910

Glorian


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## DavidnRobin (Mar 19, 2007)

Thanks - talk about a bad way to list a TS.

DeniseM - offer them $45K and see if they take it  -


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## Denise L (Mar 19, 2007)

What a listing! The address is wrong, and they haven't paid 07 MFs that were due in January?! Doesn't sound as if they have reserved a unit for 2007 yet either...good luck with that!

Why would someone place such a poorly designed listing for such an expensive property and hope to sell it?


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## DeniseM (Mar 19, 2007)

DavidnRobin said:


> Thanks - talk about a bad way to list a TS.
> 
> DeniseM - offer them $45K and see if they take it  -



They won't take less than $55K - I let them know about the OF unit listed for $49.5K that didn't get any bids...


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## DeniseM (Mar 19, 2007)

Denise L said:


> What a listing! The address is wrong, and they haven't paid 07 MFs that were due in January?! Doesn't sound as if they have reserved a unit for 2007 yet either...good luck with that!
> 
> Why would someone place such a poorly designed listing for such an expensive property and hope to sell it?



I would guess that they can't make a Resv. because they haven't paid the MF?


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