MrMBurz
newbie
I am very interested in a buying a Starwood week on the resale market.
Among our favorite places is St. John and so a goal of ours is to be able to get there once per year. We are OK with going in the fall, say late October to early December For now, it will be just my wife and I traveling but we would like to have the option to take our sons or other family and friends with us (i.e. have or save enough StarOptions to get a larger unit).
There appear to be a couple of ways to reach our goal:
1) Buy at Westin St John directly because this is where I want to go the most. Looks like the Hillside/Virgin Grande Villas are the only ones where I can use the StarOptions to go to other places in the SVN (which I want to do). This approach guarantees me a week in St John every year. The down side is that it may cost me more in terms of purchase price and it will cost me more in maintenance fees as compared to other mandatory resorts. If money were no object I'd buy a week at WSJ and be done with it.
2) Buy at one of the other mandatory resorts and reserve a week at WSJ 8 months out. I understand it is based on availability, but what I do not know is how feasible it is for me to get a week during weeks 42-49 or even during the dead of winter (weeks 7-16) given how popular WSJ is? For example, I see some resales for the Kierland property that have very low MF's as compared to WSJ. So if I could get a week at Kierland with MF's that are less than 50% of the WSJ MF's, that's a good deal, but do I stand a chance of getting a week at WSJ using this approach? If I bought a week at Kierland, I would probably never go there.
Does anyone have any advice on the strategy I should take to try and get to WSJ once per year for most years? I've been reading on the forum for a bit and I see that some people use the "Starwood trader" approach. I'm OK with that strategy but have no idea if it will give me reasonable chances of reaching my goal of getting to WSJ some time in the fall every year. I have spoken to a few reservation agents at Starwood on the phone, and none have been able to give me any usable info. In order to do any sort of searching, they said I need to be an owner. Wondering if anyone here has experiences or info on the proposed strategies they would be willing to share.
Thanks in advance....
Among our favorite places is St. John and so a goal of ours is to be able to get there once per year. We are OK with going in the fall, say late October to early December For now, it will be just my wife and I traveling but we would like to have the option to take our sons or other family and friends with us (i.e. have or save enough StarOptions to get a larger unit).
There appear to be a couple of ways to reach our goal:
1) Buy at Westin St John directly because this is where I want to go the most. Looks like the Hillside/Virgin Grande Villas are the only ones where I can use the StarOptions to go to other places in the SVN (which I want to do). This approach guarantees me a week in St John every year. The down side is that it may cost me more in terms of purchase price and it will cost me more in maintenance fees as compared to other mandatory resorts. If money were no object I'd buy a week at WSJ and be done with it.
2) Buy at one of the other mandatory resorts and reserve a week at WSJ 8 months out. I understand it is based on availability, but what I do not know is how feasible it is for me to get a week during weeks 42-49 or even during the dead of winter (weeks 7-16) given how popular WSJ is? For example, I see some resales for the Kierland property that have very low MF's as compared to WSJ. So if I could get a week at Kierland with MF's that are less than 50% of the WSJ MF's, that's a good deal, but do I stand a chance of getting a week at WSJ using this approach? If I bought a week at Kierland, I would probably never go there.
Does anyone have any advice on the strategy I should take to try and get to WSJ once per year for most years? I've been reading on the forum for a bit and I see that some people use the "Starwood trader" approach. I'm OK with that strategy but have no idea if it will give me reasonable chances of reaching my goal of getting to WSJ some time in the fall every year. I have spoken to a few reservation agents at Starwood on the phone, and none have been able to give me any usable info. In order to do any sort of searching, they said I need to be an owner. Wondering if anyone here has experiences or info on the proposed strategies they would be willing to share.
Thanks in advance....