[2008] Why is Sheraton Mountain Vista so cheap?

[djp]

While there are always a ton of spring/fall smv weeks, and also quite a few summer weeks on II, I have not seen many prime ski weeks on II, I would find that surprising. A gold crown resort close to vail/beaver creek is going to be in high demand during prime ski weeks.

 

[Twinkstarr]

While there are always a ton of spring/fall smv weeks, and also quite a few summer weeks on II, I have not seen many prime ski weeks on II, I would find that surprising. A gold crown resort close to vail/beaver creek is going to be in high demand during prime ski weeks.

In early May, Starwood did a big banking of ski weeks at SMV and LT. Jan-March.

Now I did see it with the Starwood pref. but there were still some prime weeks left after the 3 days.

 

[thinze3]

There is now an annual 2BR winter week listed on eBay.

Quick question for you owners, how difficult is it to book week 52? Now that would be nice, as it seems to be a week when all the kids are on the same schedule.


Terry

 

[djp]

I dont think it would be hard at all at 12 months out. I have never tried for week 52, but have had no problem getting week 7.

 

[RLG]

RLG, I still don't think you get the purpose of my posts about the Redweek rental asking prices.

Let's assume both Resort A and Resort B are of similar quality and have similar annual MF's. Let's also assume that both resorts have a similar and fair number of rental units listed on websites like Redweek. If the average ASKING price of Resort A is $2500 during its prime season, and the average ASKING price of resort B during its prime season is $1250, that does give one some sense of worth for comparison purposes of the two timeshares (or at least it does me)...
IMHO This was a very simple comparison tests that you seem to have taken way out of context.

If you were talking about a "normal" liquid market like price of a heavily traded stock, I would agree with you. If all you know is that the asking price of stock A is double that of stock B, it would be reasonable to assume that actual trading levels will also be approximately double.

Unfortunately, timeshares are far from that. There are many people involved who, to put it generously, are less than sophisticated. Take a look at the resale offerings for many properties and you'll see identical weeks offered at more than a 100% price difference.

I think both Robert D and I saw your use of asking prices as a red flag and were trying to be helpful to you and others in pointing out that in many markets asking prices might not have any relationship to reality.

If I understand correctly, Robert D goes further and claims that asking prices have no information value whatsoever. I disagree with that as you can see below.

 

[RLG]

Robert D, I think you and I are in agreement that asking prices don't necessarily equal market prices.

However, you said they were "irrelevant". That's where we disagree.

Main Entry: rel·e·vant
Pronunciation: \ˈre-lə-vənt\
Function: adjective
1 a: having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand b: affording evidence tending to prove or disprove the matter at issue or under discussion <relevant testimony>


We have a situation where someone estimated told us his estimate of market rent for Sheraton Mountain Vista - $2400. I pointed out that that was higher than the current asking prices. That is "evidence tending to disprove" that the OP could expect to average $2400 renting out an SMV ski week.

Note from my post above this that I do understand that asking prices might be completely divorced from market reality. However, they still represent a CEILING on market value.

 

[RLG]

There 26 weeks SMV weeks for rent on Vacation Timeshare Rentals (http://www.vacationtimesharerentals.com/United-States/Timeshares/Colorado/Avon/Sheraton's-Mountain-Vista/index.asp?RentalSort=Week&Sort=ASC#rentals) including several week 51/52. There also always seem to be quite a few SMV week available for exchange on II

I as pointed out to the OP, I think his guess about the market rental for SMV was a little too high. However, I think your data analysis is way off.

First, as was pointed out already, there are currently ZERO ski weeks available on II in 2009. There have been few or none since the Starwood bulk bank many months ago. That's a lot different than "quite a few". Perhaps you didn't notice that the weeks that "always seem to be" available are usually mud weeks?

Second, I'm familiar with the site you linked. There are actually 5 specific ski weeks that can be rented: 48, 51, 52, 1 and 7. [Out of compliance info. deleted.-DeniseM Moderator] Of the other three, week 1 is a 1br asking 2400, week 48 is a 2br asking 2000, and week 51 is a high demand week asking 2400/5000.

 

[RLG]

Quick question for you owners, how difficult is it to book week 52? Now that would be nice, as it seems to be a week when all the kids are on the same schedule.

Before I owned a week 52, I tried to wait list for it using one of my floating weeks. Reservations told me that they were all sold as event weeks and that there was zero chance I would get one if I didn't own that week. YMMV

 

[DeniseM]

A gentle reminder - You may not describe your current rentals in the TUG forums, except in the most general sense. No dates, unit size, or prices - please.

 

[thinze3]

RLG,
I did not realize that that SMV sold week 52 as a fixed week. This too is something knew to me. How can they sell some weeks as floating weeks which include week 52 and others as a fixed week 52?

Thanks,
Terry

 

[RLG]

I did not realize that that SMV sold week 52 as a fixed week. This too is something knew to me. How can they sell some weeks as floating weeks which include week 52 and others as a fixed week 52?

I was certainly surprised when I found out that they advertised weeks as floating 48-52 when they knew that all of the 51 and 52s were going to be permanently unavailable.

Once I remembered we were talking about the timeshare industry I was no longer surprised.

 

[Robert D]

I don't know that much about SMV but I thought that the ski weeks were weeks 48-14, and if that's the case, it would be very misleading for them to have fixed week 51 & 52. I own at Falcon Point and Eagle Point and my weeks are 48-50 and 1-14 but weeks 51 & 52 are fixed there.

Regarding my comment that asking prices are irrelevant, that may be a little strong and it really depends on the site that you're looking at the asking prices. If you're looking at Timeshares Only on the price of their resale weeks, most all of those are totally irrelevant and grossly overpriced. I look at the asking rental prices on Redweek, Vacation Timeshare Rentals, and My Resort Network, before pricing my rental weeks and always try to price them lower than most all that are listed. My experience is that most of the listings on these sites for rent and especially for sale are done so poorly that it's hard to tell what they really have. An example would be listing a 1BR unit for rent but not saying whether it's the small or large SMV (or other Starwood / other resort) unit. There's a huge difference in the size and therefore the value of the small and large 1BR's at many Starwood resorts. An example for sale would be that a large number of listings in Vail/Avon say they are floating weeks but don't spell out the specific floating period. Fact is a floating ski week is worth quite a bit, a floating mud week is totally worthless, and a floating summer week is not worth much if anything at most of those resorts. Thus, when you shake it all down, I've found that asking prices on most of these sites are not useful.

 

[SDKath]

They can fix any week if you pay 10% over asking price. But unless they are sold as "event weeks" (usually with a huge markup), they are only allowed to fix 50% of the units for a given week. The other 50% is then available for the usual platinum float folks.

At least this is what I was told when we thought about fixing a Riverfront week 7. Katherine

 

[thinze3]

They can fix any week if you pay 10% over asking price. But unless they are sold as "event weeks" (usually with a huge markup), they are only allowed to fix 50% of the units for a given week. The other 50% is then available for the usual platinum float folks.

At least this is what I was told when we thought about fixing a Riverfront week 7. Katherine

Did Starwood ever come out with prices for Riverfront? I read the thread here a while back about a Tugger reporting a relatively low price that everyone seemd to question as being legit.

Terry

 

[rickandcindy23]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sheraton-Mounta...3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66:4|65:1|39:1|240:1309

This is what happens when we talk up a resort on TUG.

Where is the bidding going to end? It's way higher than usual. No Staroptions, and high maintenance fees, so I don't get it.

 

[Pit]

This is what happens when we talk up a resort on TUG.

Where is the bidding going to end? It's way higher than usual. No Staroptions, and high maintenance fees, so I don't get it.

They have President's Week booked. Even so, price is way high.

 

[djyamyam]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sheraton-Mounta...3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66:4|65:1|39:1|240:1309

This is what happens when we talk up a resort on TUG.

Where is the bidding going to end? It's way higher than usual. No Staroptions, and high maintenance fees, so I don't get it.

They have President's Week booked. Even so, price is way high.

Actually, the price is not out of line. Looking back to Jan 07, there haven't been very many 2BR winter weeks available on ebay, less than 10. Of those annuals have sold between $9600 - $11000. EOY units have sold between $4500 - 6250. Granted, prices have dropped overall of higher end resorts, but this one hasn't because of its limited supply.

In my opinion, if someone was wanting to buy at this resort, I would be looking at non-ebay sources to get one.

 

[rickandcindy23]

Something similar happened to a Kauai Beach Villas on eBay that was posted here as ocean view. The seller told the winning bidder, who happend to be a TUG member, that this was a mistake, and that the week was not the building/ unit number listed, and would they take the week anyway. Of course, the TUGger said he wouldn't take it. This seller knew we were all watching and another person listed the same week right away, hoping for more money.

My Point: The eBay sellers watch what we post, and when they see how interested we are in something, they make sure they get top dollar. The sudden bid to $9,999 could have been to "up the price" so TUG members would bid higher.

We have Starwood watching all the time as well. I wouldn't be surprised if Starwood started buying up the bargain weeks, so we couldn't do it anymore, but they seem apathetic so far. You just don't know what the future holds for our internal trading priority with II, or if our ability to get the prime weeks for our exchanges will end (and when). It's all guesswork, but the developers sure dislike the knowledgeable people like us.

I worry that we are cutting off our own noses..............

 

[RLG]

TUG is a great source of information. I've learned a lot from TUG about timeshares and Starwood's system in particular.

Unfortunately, however, TUG seems prone to silly conspiracy theories when it comes to Ebay. (If you don't believe me, just do a search on "Ebay" and read some of the threads.) I've been an Ebay user for more than 12 years and it seems pretty clear to me that nothing nefarious is going on with this auction.

The only thing that is unusual here is that the high bid got so high so early. Nowadays the most experienced and serious bidders enter their bids in the last few minutes, i.e "snipe". For example, the bidding history on the EOY auction I link below shows that the price would have tripled in the last 60 seconds.

As djyamyam points out, the high bid is well within the market range for a 2br ski week at this resort. This couldn't easily be discovered by searching completed auctions on Ebay since there haven't been any recent ones. However, much of this info is readily available here on TUG for those who don't regularly follow this resort like djyamyam and I do. (BTW, no recent listings may indicate some scarcity value.) There have also been several EOY listings including this one which indicates the 10k valuation is reasonable:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250308864328

A look at the bid history for the EY listing makes it pretty clear what happened. This can be seen here:
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=280285443307

Normally the high bid would only jump enough to outbid the second highest bid of 6500. However, the seller apparently had a 9999 reserve and the high bidder exceeded it. Ebay automatically increases the bid to the reserve level. I don't like this as a bidder, but that's how it works. It's one of the many reasons I normally don't bother to bid on reserve auctions.

Not only is the 9999 not a silly high bid, I would not be surprised to see the week sell for more than that. Last year I was outbid on a 2br ski week at SMV by another Tugger who paid in excess of 13k.

On another note, I don't agree with the characterization of this resort has having "high" maintenance. A 2br locks off into two units that rent and trade as true 1 bedrooms. $525 per year for a 1br may not be cheap, but it's hardly "high" for a name brand timeshare.

 

[djp]

Yeah if you love to ski beaver creek and vail, and dont feel compelled to be ski in ski out, then SMV is a great place to ski from. The ski in ski out beaver creek resorts sell for high dollar (over 20-30k) even resale, so $10k for a 2br lockout that can be slit up into two 1br's that can each trade for a 2br in Maui in off season would be nice to have. The maintfees which did go up last year are not bad if you realize that they are about half of the SVN beach resorts. some people really really like to ski in Colorado.....and will pay $10k to own a nice name brand resort there. The prices at SMV for ski weeks maxxed out at $45k from the developer......so $10k does not seem that high for a resale ski week.

 

[KevinRS]

You CAN get week 52- but not likely

They do sell week 52 as fixed, but those owners can trade their week for a different winter week, and then their week 52 would be available as a trade. why anyone would ever trade New Years week is beyond me, but the Res agent says it happens on RARE occasions,

I LOVE this resort, it always surprises me that others don't.... to each his own.

 

[rickandcindy23]

Who doesn't like the resort? I love the resort and the area. I also love Lakeside Terrace.

I think my point was missed a bit here. As I watch eBay listings, I see a pattern of bidding, which is not being followed here on this listing. Usually, a bid starts out very low and climbs pretty high in the last hours. Also, I see a trend toward dropping prices, which isn't holding true for this particular week. For example, a Sheraton Broadway Plantation platinum 2 bedroom lockout sold a few months ago for about $2,300 on eBay. Then a few days ago, the exact same thing, a platinum lockout at SBP sold for $1,500. The prices are going down on all of these units.

Perhaps that reservation for the February week is really something the bidders want. Seems a bit odd to me to see the high price in these economic times, and the bidding pattern going up so sharply early on.

 

[rickandcindy23]

I should also add that with this kind of cash outlay, a person could get a mandatory resort like Sheraton Vistana Villages.

 

[SDKath]

I don't really understand the problem with the price. It has a reserve. So unless the reserve is met, it is not gonna sell. It doesn't matter how fast the price goes up at the beginning. I think the seller said the reserve was $10,000? Katherine

 

[djp]

I think that there are different kinds of ebay buyers...
-some like me....have a lowball price they are willing to pay and wait until the end to bid and see what happens
-others..like the bidder on this item....have a max bid they are willing to pay, so they enter that relatively high bid early one....obviously hoping to not have to pay that high amount, unless the bidding goes higher. This way avoids the last minute pressurized bidding.
In this particular auction, the only reason it shot up to the 10,000 mark was the reserve was set at that amount, otherwise the bid would have been $6500, and would have gone up incrementally over the next few days as others