Dolphin Cove - consider buying, new to Wyndham

[Richelle]

Ok, that one was a bust. Besides Ebay where else can I find resale contracts for sale at a good price?

TUG has its own market place. Fidelity Resales and Timeshare Broker associates are Wyndham vetted resellers. Their prices can be high, but don't be afraid to offer lower.

 

[jmbarnes101]

Fidelity has the one I want but they want $800 for closing costs in addition to the normal Wyndham fees plus a Hawaii tax of some sort. The search continues.

 

[queenofthehive]

I am a little late to the party on this one but I will throw my experience in on this issue. I was able to acquire a floating week free from another tugger from the bargain forum. I paid closing costs and fees. It is a 2 bedroom. Floats in most months but summer. I used it one year in May to go to Disneyland. I then have always traded in RCI on the weeks side using the week between Christmas and New Year. Last year I was able to get 59 TPUs with RCI. I use these points mostly to trade for Walt Disney World (SSR 95% of the time). The maintenance fees are $250 quarterly. So a $1,000 for a week at WDW is quite the bargain. If you are not in a rush, keep your eyes peeled for the “freebies” at the tug marketplace or eBay/redweek etc.

 

[jmbarnes101]

I missed out on a super cheap with low fees grand desert recently but I’m looking at another different location. A couple questions on biennial contracts.
Fees - are their more monthly/yearly fees beyond the maintenance fee and the program fee? For example, If the maintainance says $36 is their more fees beyond this? Besides the transaction type fees. Trying to get a sense of what my monthly amount would be.

Housekeepking and transaction fees - do I get a full allotment of these on a biennial contract or do I only get half and half to pay for the rest?

Finally, am I better off buying a biennial with the double points or an annual with half the points, same maintenance feeknowing I’ll likely be using it every other year?

Thank you to whomever can help.

 

[Eric B]

I missed out on a super cheap with low fees grand desert recently but I’m looking at another different location. A couple questions on biennial contracts.
Fees - are their more monthly/yearly fees beyond the maintenance fee and the program fee? For example, If the maintainance says $36 is their more fees beyond this? Besides the transaction type fees. Trying to get a sense of what my monthly amount would be.

Housekeepking and transaction fees - do I get a full allotment of these on a biennial contract or do I only get half and half to pay for the rest?

Finally, am I better off buying a biennial with the double points or an annual with half the points, same maintenance feeknowing I’ll likely be using it every other year?

Thank you to whomever can help.

For fees, the way they get billed by Wyndham is those payable to the HOA, which typically include maintenance fees, reserve funds, property tax and local tax, and the program fee, which would be $0.64 per thousand for members with plus partners, $0.62 per thousand for members without plus partners, or $0.72 per thousand for the first million points for presidential reserve owners, then $0.64 per thousand for points over a million. These change every year.

Right now there are a couple of Panama City Beach contracts for sale on eBay; one an annual 84K and the other a biennial 168K. They both show the exact same "maintenance fee," but it doesn't seem to match the standard 2020 costs for PCB that have been reported here of $4.45 per thousand for the HOA plus the program fee, which has a $180 minimum. The HOA cost for those contracts should be the same ($31.15 per month since that is how the seller quoted the "maintenance fees") and if the contracts are currently held by someone that owns other contracts the program fee would be $4.48 per month for a member with plus partners, making the $35.63 per month quoted by the seller. That being said, if you were to buy either of those, the program fee would be at the $180 minimum, or $15 per month, making your cost $46.15 per month if this were your only Wyndham contract; if you own other Wyndham contracts it would work out to $35.49 per month as the plus partners are part of having bought from the developer. The costs will change with the new year, of course.

Housekeeping and transaction credits are associated with the number of points your account gets per year and come with the points. You get one free housekeeping credit per thousand points and one free reservation transaction per 77K points. I don't have experience with needing to track those as I'm VIPG, but believe that housekeeping credits don't get borrowed or PDFed to other years, which might make the biennial contract a better option as 84K isn't much to vacation on. If you'd be using it every other year, it would make much more sense to me to have a biennial contract as the points are only good for one year, so using the off year points would mean you either have to "borrow" the next year's points to use in the current year, which can only be done in the express reservation window (3 months, I believe), or use the points deposit feature to move one year's points to the next, which costs $39.

All things considered, it might be more worthwhile to look into the WorldMark side of Dolphin's Cove, it that is where you want to go. WorldMark credits are good for a year, similar to Wyndham points, but can be used to book a vacation 13 months in advance, making them effectively useable for a 25 month period from when they get into your account. (You can also borrow from a future use year without the 3 month limitation, which could make it a 36 month period if I've got it all right.)

 

[jmbarnes101]

For fees, the way they get billed by Wyndham is those payable to the HOA, which typically include maintenance fees, reserve funds, property tax and local tax, and the program fee, which would be $0.64 per thousand for members with plus partners, $0.62 per thousand for members without plus partners, or $0.72 per thousand for the first million points for presidential reserve owners, then $0.64 per thousand for points over a million. These change every year.

Right now there are a couple of Panama City Beach contracts for sale on eBay; one an annual 84K and the other a biennial 168K. They both show the exact same "maintenance fee," but it doesn't seem to match the standard 2020 costs for PCB that have been reported here of $4.45 per thousand for the HOA plus the program fee, which has a $180 minimum. The HOA cost for those contracts should be the same ($31.15 per month since that is how the seller quoted the "maintenance fees") and if the contracts are currently held by someone that owns other contracts the program fee would be $4.48 per month for a member with plus partners, making the $35.63 per month quoted by the seller. That being said, if you were to buy either of those, the program fee would be at the $180 minimum, or $15 per month, making your cost $46.15 per month if this were your only Wyndham contract; if you own other Wyndham contracts it would work out to $35.49 per month as the plus partners are part of having bought from the developer. The costs will change with the new year, of course.

Housekeeping and transaction credits are associated with the number of points your account gets per year and come with the points. You get one free housekeeping credit per thousand points and one free reservation transaction per 77K points. I don't have experience with needing to track those as I'm VIPG, but believe that housekeeping credits don't get borrowed or PDFed to other years, which might make the biennial contract a better option as 84K isn't much to vacation on. If you'd be using it every other year, it would make much more sense to me to have a biennial contract as the points are only good for one year, so using the off year points would mean you either have to "borrow" the next year's points to use in the current year, which can only be done in the express reservation window (3 months, I believe), or use the points deposit feature to move one year's points to the next, which costs $39.

All things considered, it might be more worthwhile to look into the WorldMark side of Dolphin's Cove, it that is where you want to go. WorldMark credits are good for a year, similar to Wyndham points, but can be used to book a vacation 13 months in advance, making them effectively useable for a 25 month period from when they get into your account. (You can also borrow from a future use year without the 3 month limitation, which could make it a 36 month period if I've got it all right.)

Those are exactly the two I’m currently looking at. Lol That answers some of my questions but creates others, thank you. Having seen the estoppel the $35.63 is what Wyndham is reporting for maintenance fees. So since the owner assumably has other properties it’s including their program fee but mine would be higher having this as my only contract. The program fees seem to have jumped substantially the past couple years, $135-$160-$180. Probably a separate conversation but is their a ceiling on these as it seems like program fees could become higher then the maintenance fees at some point. When buying something presumably for the rest of ones life it makes sense to look at everything. DVC is so much easier!

So then with a biennial of 184,000 one would get 184,000 housekeeper points and 2 transaction credits every other year and expire at the end of the year. So if dumping them into the pool it seems to make sense to do as many years as possible but making sure to time the reservations around still having those credits to use, I need to do more research on this.

Finding a Dolphin Cove contract has not been easy. Fidelity has one but they want a lot of money for the contract plus all closing costs and they use an expensive title firm. It’s really not the right number of points either. I haven’t seen any elsewhere. My biggest problem with Worldmark is it seems that their maintenance fees are much higher across the board. Plus other then wanting to go to Anaheim I don’t travel west very often and likely less often when I move from Minnesota.

 

[Eric B]

Those are exactly the two I’m currently looking at. Lol That answers some of my questions but creates others, thank you. Having seen the estoppel the $35.63 is what Wyndham is reporting for maintenance fees. So since the owner assumably has other properties it’s including their program fee but mine would be higher having this as my only contract. The program fees seem to have jumped substantially the past couple years, $135-$160-$180. Probably a separate conversation but is their a ceiling on these as it seems like program fees could become higher then the maintenance fees at some point. When buying something presumably for the rest of ones life it makes sense to look at everything. DVC is so much easier!

There isn't really a ceiling on the program fees; they're set up as a set amount per thousand points with a floor of $180 this year. This means that for a resale only account you could have up to about 290K with a flat program fee of $180 for the year, but above that it's really $0.62 per thousand points - or looking at it the other way, for a resale only account having 84K annually the program fee would be $180 or ~$2.14 per thousand points rather than $0.62 per thousand points. That kind of makes it more efficient to concentrate on a single point-based mini-system like Wyndham rather than having multiple ones, though there are advantages to having multiple ones such as the different access to resorts. YMMV.

 

[r4rab]

Historically, at least, people have reported that housekeeping credits only became an issue when booking many shorter stays. If you're doing week long vacations you probably don't need to worry about them. Reservation transactions are a different story. When you run out you have to purchase more at a nominal fee (I don't remember the amount and I think the charge differs whether you are making the reservation online or over the phone).

 

[Eric B]

• The cost of an additional Reservation Transaction is $19 online at myclubwyndham.com or $39 through the Vacation Planning Center.

Members' Directory p. 248.

 

[bnoble]

And even then, unless you're doing a lot of rebooking, you won't pay more than a handful of those.

 

[paxsarah]

So then with a biennial of 184,000 one would get 184,000 housekeeper points and 2 transaction credits every other year and expire at the end of the year.

You would get 184 housekeeping credits in the use year of the biennial points, and you should get 1 free reservation transaction every year as those are based on the annual average of your points (which would be 92,000, and I believe the number of RTs rounds down). You would pay monthly every year based on the 92,000.

In the current system I only recommend biennial contracts if you truly plan to use them every other year (which you do plan to do). The biggest catch for you is based on such a small amount of points, the program fee becomes a pretty big portion of your maintenance+program fee assessment. You'll pay $160 every year on top of the maintenance fees.

 

[cbyrne1174]

Before you buy Club Wyndham, make sure you look fully into Worldmark. 216 of the 241 units in Anaheim are Worldmark units. Only 25 units in Anaheim are a part of Club Wyndham. 85 of the 136 units in Dolphin's cove are Worldmark as well.

Source: https://www.worldmarktheclub.com/education/pdfs/WorldMark_Unit_Breakdown.pdf