Can you direct us to this forum post?
I get it now. You sell to an extremely narrow high-end market. The problem is as developers increase their price points beyond $100,000 you are selling to an ever narrowing audience and the TS market is saturated.
The market is even shrinking because the industry has an image problem due to a lack of liquidity caused by a fractured "wild west" resale market, and brands refusing to guarantee deedbacks. I see exit companies every night on prime-time. Just read the comments to a Wyndham interview on The Points Guy blog (spoiler: it struck a negative nerve). This reputation must not sit well for prospective penthouse buyers with big egos who want bragging rights.
If you want to give people a big reason to buy developer, here it is:
Provide a guaranteed buyback and emergency deedback program. It could look roughly like this:
- The buyback could be as simple as a sliding scale e.g. "if you own for 5 years you get x, 10 years we will give you y, if you own for 15 we will give you z.."
- The emergency deedback would be like an insurance policy in which if someone could verify they lost their job, had a major health issue. spousal death etc. they could surrender their unit for free in return for taking over the maintenance fee. Proceeds from reselling the unit, and insurance proceeds cover the MF costs until it is resold.
Similar to Starwood's requalification process for StarOptions, you could even enable people to get the same guarantee for their resales if they buy back in. You make sales, people know they have an easy exit if life happens and they need out quickly. It's like an insurance policy. A new revenue stream that supports deedbacks and buybacks, without the cost of building a new resort.
If I knew that I was going to get my money back (or a good portion of it), and had an easy exit in an emergency, I would consider buying developer again. We purchased with the expectation our value would hold (but without a guarantee) and were disappointed. You can fool me once.
Developers are going to have to address supporting a robust resale and deedback market because losing $20k vs. losing $100k changes the game stakes and the house of cards will fall to earth if they choose to ignore it.
Spend some time reading TUG. Listen to the stories and share them with your management so they can take action to address the industry issues.