Can you play devil's advocate for me and pretend you are my Starwood agent and tell me why I shouldn't rescind the contract?
I'll bite and give you the counterpoint, which you have had a lot of in all the points above by other wiser TUGgers but I have just gone through (whithout the recission part) the thought process so here are some of my thoughts.
MF was my main reason for rethinking this thing over and over. Is paying $1400/yr worth an EOY 2 bdrm LO? That's what I kept asking myself over and over.
Well this MF is for a $2800 vacation every other year in HI. HI is not a cheap place to vacation and this guarantees you a week in HI hence the cost. As others have pointed out you can do better if you don't plan to be in HI every other year or your HI plans can be a little more flexible.
Hi all,
I have not read any of the stickies yet but thought I would start by posting my experience here.
I'm not sure if I can post the details of my transaction here so feel free to edit my post if needed.
I purchased just last wednesday April 3rd and was having a little buyer's remorse and found out that I have a 7 day window to cancel according to one of the stickies?
Picked up a 2bdrm LO for $36,900 (every other year starting 2015).
Included in the deal was:
The interested rate was at 13.9% so I plan on getting that much lower within the 180 days I have.
Others have done the math and there is a great example at the bottom. I think you also spoke of refinancing at 5%. Financing a TS makes little sense as that interest is money you could be spending on a vacation.
At $36k and 5% you are paying $1800 in interest each year (that would make a nice dent in the flights costs to HI). In addition you need to pay down the capital on the purchase, say over 10 years thats $3600 a year. On top of that you are paying the MF. So this is really a $3600+$1800+$1400x2), thats $8200 week of vacation and you still need to pay for the flights to get there. This is why people go on to hate TS, you have created a $6800 a year cost in your life. That's a lot of vacation money and not even a form of forced saving like paying down a mortgage as you don't build equity in a Timeshare.
- 100,000 starwood points (rewarded after 6 months or after paying 10% more down)
That's great in that it is the maximum amount they usually dole out. Not so great in that for a lot less effort and no $600 a month of payments you could get the Starwood Amex card and that will give you 25,000 miles (your partner could do the same). That gets you 50,000 Spend on there or buy miles with the annual buy mile bonus if that is what you want to use miles for but it is an enticement to get you to sign that line. Buying at full price is 3.5c each means this has about $3,500 of value. You could equally spend $3,500 on hotel rooms on your Starwood AX card and earn another $7,000 points etc.
- $1250 credit since we were staying at the Westin resort next door for 5 days
This is another way of applying their explorer package. If you had not signed they would have offered you a package where for you paying forward a certain amount of $, say $1,2550 you could come back and book a 5 night stay with them for that money. If you then bought they would hold the pricing they just quoted you and take this $1250 off the bill. Again you did manage to get the offers out of them to close and this deal is about as good as the developer deal gets, thing is that the developer deal is sucky unless you yous the retro and retrade steps (at which point you are into advanced starwood timesharing).
- 4 promotions for 80,000 starwood points for ~$1550/ea (total 320,000 points available)
20,000 points retail in April with the bonus offer is $525
https://buy.points.com/PointsPartne...&product=BUY&CAMPAIGNCODE=SWGetBuy&c=SWGetBuy
So each 80,000 cert is a $550 saving over that. Again. When do you need to use these by, with financing and MF and capital repayments this deal has you $600 in the hole to Starwood. Do you really think you will now be using these? In any case this is money in the bank to Starwood and with some organization, some cash and points deals from the other spending you can get on the Amex card the $1550 and the other points you are earning will get you some sweet hotels stays.
- one other promo I can't remember
SPG Gold for life? Well if you get the SPG Amex (this is starting to read like an ad for SPG Amex then spend $25k a year on it you also get SPG gold. Put your cell bill, gas bill, groceries and other already spending it spend on there and the $25k is not hard to hit.
Will Starwood buy it back from me when I no longer want it and at what %?
I read a couple of the threads and people are referring to "II" which sounds like a rollover related thing. Can someone explain?
Thanks.
Will Starwood buy it back. Well they have a right of first refusal (ROFR) at that resort, they probably bought this back then resold to you. There was a recent post on here with someone wanting to sell an IV and feeling quite dissapointed about the price a broker could get for them.
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1443990
What you bought is worth about $9k resale
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1443619&postcount=14
So the $27 extra is what you paid for the fluff of points, etc.
First you need to find a buyer, then Starwood could buy it in their stead at that price. Starwood don't create a buyback market.
I guess you are saying that timeshares are not really a way to save money on vacation, rather, a way to spend less on a nicer vacation?
Many ways it can save you money and get you more space for your money. A bit of both but buying retail does not achieve either. It just helps HOT's Earnings Per Share.
Is paying $1400/yr worth an EOY 2 bdrm LO? That's what I kept asking myself over and over.
Something else to learn about MF is that it is kinda the same for all units all year so your MF on your Island View is about the same as the one on the Ocean Front view, but their unit is more desirable.
I guess I'm not familiar with SDO yet (does that stand for Sheraton Desert Oasis?) so that last part was a little over my head but I get what you are saying (you can get Maui for cheaper than paying for Maui).
There is a lot more analysis of this question already answered but the general guidance for Starwood is that you don't buy retail (at least until you are a senior and understand the tricks). This means you lose the vouchers, bonus points and perma gold but can get much of that benefit back by spending the $ you saved and getting an SPG amex card.
Next up,
1) Rent. Your now to be rescinded plan would have had you spending $6k a year toward vacations. Use that to rent weeks from TUGgers, or RedWeek or other rental routes (check out many TUGers My Website links in their profiles)
2) buy in one of the 'voluntary' developments. This means you get no Star Options. You can reserve where you bought 12 m out and in the same way your TS salesperson told you. If you want to use an alternate destination you need to use II to make that exchange. There is a priority treatment for Starwood > Starwood trades which is why you buy a Starwood property.
SDO in AZ is considered a top purchase for this as it is cheap to buy $1,000 for a trader or $3-4k if you want one of the platinum units (only really necessary if you are going for advanced Starwooding and by then you can sell the GoldPlus and buy the Platinium at that time.
Another to consider is Broadway Plantation. There is good trade demand there and now it has been refurbished MFs are coming back down to a comparable level. Going back to they buy where you would vacation, an east coaster may consider this a better option as you can drive there. You would want to buy a summer week though. This buy assumes you don't want a fixed same place each year.
3) you buy at the resort you really want to go to, every year, every other year. Many *W tuggers buy at WSJ for that reason, they have a fixed week so can easily make travel plans a year out.
4) you buy at a mandatory resort to have staroptions. The best for this is Kierland. A Platinum purchase is not cheap here and if you are borrowing to do this would not be recommended. That gets you 148,000 SOs for a $1400 a year MF. You can buy gold with 81,000 options a year for a lot less but you are still paying $1400 a year MF. You can use these to trade into places like Maui and St John like your salesperson told you. Theoretically that should be an easier trade than using 2) above as the availibility released to II should occur after *W has passed the 8 month mark and StarOption owners have had the opportunity to use those options.
And read up on the FAQs at the top. There is one on StarOptions, one on Interval International, one with a list of all the acronyms, one listing the mandatory resorts. Look on EBay at the completed auction prices. That indicates the floor / cheapest price that many units go for (in some cases it is $1).
By trader do you mean an individual or is this a broker? If I can finance something at a low % I would rather do that and keep the money in the bank so long as my investments can beat the interest rate of the loan.
'Traders' are properties you have bought with not much intention to stay in because they are cheap to buy and own and have demand within the exchange systems. The exchange systems assign an internal value to what you put into the sytem. A week in July in Myrtle Beach is worth more than a week in January etc). SDO gets this categorisation in the SVO system.
