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Owner Update / Sales Presentation in Maui - 6/3/2019

Dean

TUG Review Crew
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Yes, as Dean stated I bought a week a two bedroom platinum at Aruba Surf Club for about $35,000 and a resale at Ocean Pointe which was for $18,000. I was looking to maximize my time and the points for the lowest maintenance fees possible. What appealed to me with those two properties was that they were lock off units, in platinum season in desirable locations which is great for trade power and to rent when you wanted, and maximum points election. I was able to get 9450 points. I looked at it from the standpoint from a points perspective, so if I were to buy resale points, I would have had to find a seller in the 2.50 range and then pay the $3.00 per point fee. I would have had to pay a higher maintenance fee for the points if I had just points. So with the maintenance fees for Aruba at $1870 and Ocean Pointe at $1735, the maintenance fee per point was .38 cents. That’s .20 per point LESS than Marriott’s Destination Club points maintenance fees per point. That is a HUGE SAVING. I have already been able to rent my lock off sides for a great price, as well as the Marriott Deposit into Interval International. I received 400,000 Bonvoy points with which some which I am going to use for my Australia trip. So in my first year, I will recover close to $10,00 of my upfront cost.

In your situation, you have to buy two resales which means two maintenance fees for the units and another maintenance fee for the DC/VCP points which are at .58 per point.

I would recommend to determine what you are willing to pay and then look for the maximum points you can get for properties that YOU like and meet the criteria you want. I was looking at quality of resort and ultimate flexibility. Marriott let me choose whatever I wanted. At first they tried to sell me a week at St. Kitts, then it was the typical bundle of points and St. Kitts. Then it was St. Kitts and another resale week but the points for the resale week could not exceed the point conversion of the St. Kitts week. Then it was St. Kitts and I could choose any resale week even if it was for more than the St. Kitts week. I selected Ocean Pointe as my resale week. It was very desirable and good for over 5000 points. I coupled that with Aruba because I did not like St. Kitts as it was in the hurricane zone and it seemed to be not as accessible to get to as Aruba and it was difficult to sell. So they brought the Aruba price down and we had a deal. My Aruba week elects to 4075 points. I would have bought a 3 bedroom but they did not have any at the time.

My suggestion is to do whatever possible to keep your maintenance fees as low as possible because they will only go up. Also, get places that YOU will want to stay.
I bought a 3 BR Platinum at Surf Club as part of my conversion of weeks I already owned but it's quite a bit more. I assume the 2 BR would have qualified to bring in 3 outside weeks but apparently the level to bring in 7 outside weeks is around $48K from what I was told by the SC sales people. I would suspect a garden view Platinum at SC or 1 BR Platinum at Aruba Ocean Club would be enough to bring in one week but not 3. On a different thread talking about enrolling post 2010 weeks, Barry talked about doing similarly and even more cheaply (up front and yearly) with Spain weeks but I don't know much about that other than he mentioned it. The Aruba purchase was much better for me because we go every other year and the 3 BR would be perfect.
 
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