Advice needed on how to get to WSJ every year

[MrMBurz]

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....

 

[SMHarman]

So I own at WKV and have since 2013. 2016 is the first time I will be exchanging into WSJ. HRA and WLR exchanges in the prior years.

This is for the dead of winter week's. Fall may be easier.

The SVN is likely to be in flux for the next few years as the purchase by II leads to changes.

Buy where you want to go is likely the best suggestion here. Still much cheaper than a hotel ressie or renting.

 

[NNerland]

If you buy from them - you are in the Network and can use St John 12 months out or explore other resorts 8 months out or convert to starpoints or bank or rent. But will be expensive and only Virgin Grand is mandatory, which means the SVN network goes with the resale if you ever change your mind.

I personally own there and added to my portfolio on the secondary market, and bought 2 through them direct when prices were more reasonable.

I would think you can get a Bay Vista 3 bedroom for about 20,000 if you dig around and make some offers. I know we were able to buy a platinum, annual Bay Vista 3 bd. for about $20,000 including closing costs.

But if you buy on the secondary market know you are going to be limited to St John and 12 months out and not other SVN resorts.

You will only get the SVN network through Virgin Grand, but they do have higher maintenance fees and will have higher resale.

One final point and I am sure I am missing many things -- but if you want fall it is odd weather. But if you don't care and can go in November or late summer you can probably pick off some really cheap Virgin Grand / Hillside properties. Again you will be able to SVN network, but you CANNOT convert to hotel points. But there is some value with buying in that season. I saw ones for as little as $3000-5000 in that season when we looked last time. But I cared more about owning when I wanted to use and also being able to get in my network as St John has the Highest Value of StarOptions and thus convert to a nice amount StarPoints if you are in the network.

St John is a bit easier to get into at 8 months NOW, with new inventory -- but as that sells out it will be more challenging again -- just like Maui. It can be done but as many say - BUY WHERE YOU WANT TO GO AND WHEN YOU WANT TO GO, not just this year but for your ownership lifetime.

 

[SandyPGravel]

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.I'm not sure what your threshold for cost is, but I found a 2BR for a reasonable price, IMO, I just kept an eye on TUG marketplace. Yes MF are high, but it's the only guarantee if you want to come back every year and have good trading power.

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. I think the weeks 7-16 are almost impossible, I have gotten 42-49 but not a guarantee depending on the unit size you are looking for.

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....

I would watch the TUG marketplace diligently, I found what I was looking for, but it took awhile. If you find something you want I can give you some tips from what my experience was. Starwood will not give any info if you aren't an owner I found that out when trying to verify ownership of a week I was interested in buying.

 

[okwiater]

Before the new Coral Vista inventory came online, it was very difficult to reserve WSJ in any season including fall. IMO, the conversion of the remainder of the resort to timeshare will ensure that there is decent SVN availability for a few years while they are in active sales. So, you can probably reliably exchange for the time being using SOs from another mandatory resort such as WKV.

However, if you are certain you want to have the option to go to WSJ every year, I would seriously consider purchasing a Platinum Plus 3-bedroom pool villa. The acquisition cost will likely be a bit higher than WKV Platinum Plus, but you not only have guaranteed access to WSJ every year, you also get 257,700 StarOptions so that you can exchange to WSJ in the fall (depending on availability) and/or other resorts in the SVN network. The maintenance fee is currently about $3,150 including property taxes and SVN fee, which is 1.2 cents per SO. WKV is about $1,600 including property taxes and SVN fee, which is about 1.1 cents per SO. Downsides to this option are (1) they are not lockoffs, so home resort usage can't be split into 2 weeks in smaller units like WKV usage can; and (2) they were sold as fixed-to-float weeks, which means you can't easily float within your season during the home resort period. Of course you can book anything once you hit the 8-month SVN booking window.

Anyway, WSJ certainly isn't for everyone, and perhaps winter isn't your preferred season, but the mandatory 3-br pool villas are some of the best values in the system when you consider that they include guaranteed access to one of the best villas in SVN (the pool villa) as well as very economical access to a large bucket of StarOptions.

(Full disclosure: I own a WSJ 3-br Platinum Plus pool villa. No, it is not for sale. )

 

[alexadeparis]

Before the new Coral Vista inventory came online, it was very difficult to reserve WSJ in any season including fall. IMO, the conversion of the remainder of the resort to timeshare will ensure that there is decent SVN availability for a few years while they are in active sales. So, you can probably reliably exchange for the time being using SOs from another mandatory resort such as WKV.

However, if you are certain you want to have the option to go to WSJ every year, I would seriously consider purchasing a Platinum Plus 3-bedroom pool villa. The acquisition cost will likely be a bit higher than WKV Platinum Plus, but you not only have guaranteed access to WSJ every year, you also get 257,700 StarOptions so that you can exchange to WSJ in the fall (depending on availability) and/or other resorts in the SVN network. The maintenance fee is currently about $3,150 including property taxes and SVN fee, which is 1.2 cents per SO. WKV is about $1,600 including property taxes and SVN fee, which is about 1.1 cents per SO. Downsides to this option are (1) they are not lockoffs, so home resort usage can't be split into 2 weeks in smaller units like WKV usage can; and (2) they were sold as fixed-to-float weeks, which means you can't easily float within your season during the home resort period. Of course you can book anything once you hit the 8-month SVN booking window.

Anyway, WSJ certainly isn't for everyone, and perhaps winter isn't your preferred season, but the mandatory 3-br pool villas are some of the best values in the system when you consider that they include guaranteed access to one of the best villas in SVN (the pool villa) as well as very economical access to a large bucket of StarOptions.

(Full disclosure: I own a WSJ 3-br Platinum Plus pool villa. No, it is not for sale. )

I do agree that the 257,700 units are the best value overall, but that won't fit OP's needs right now. I do not own at WSJ. I have had my EOY ownership for 2 use years. The first year I was able to reserve a spring break week 2 bedroom unit at WSJ. The highest of the high season! The next time i tried to go week 39, my anniversary (low season) and was shut out! With new units in inventory things MAY ease up, but buying a WSJ unit in the season he doesn't want will do OP no good, the staroptions will just be the staroptions to compete with everyone else for the week he really wants, just as though he had bought a non-WSJ unit.

There is no one WSJ unit that will provide everything he wants. For float season, he will need Bay Vista (no SO or SP) or Coral Vista which gives HomeOptions[HO] (those can't be used in other SVN properties)and no SP. VGV will give him staroptions, no SP; but fixed week and unit. So if he wants staroptions, the best way to do it would be to buy VGV, but ONLY if he can live with the same week every year. IMHO.

 

[MrMBurz]

Thanks all for the info/advice.

okwiater: What do you mean by:

they were sold as fixed-to-float weeks, which means you can't easily float within your season during the home resort period. Of course you can book anything once you hit the 8-month SVN booking window.

I see a listing for 3BR pool villa in a platinum week with 196900 SO's. It is in week 48. Let's say I want to get a smaller 1BR in week 42 at WSJ and use my remaining SO's to go somewhere else. Is that hard to do?

 

[Sea Six]

I just want to echo what NNerland said about the odd weather in the fall. By December, the "Christmas winds" begin to kick up, and the surf gets rough. Swimming in the bays becomes difficult, and I've seen the snorkeling areas closed down. Not being able to enjoy the beach takes the fun out of WSJ.

 

[NNerland]

Thanks all for the info/advice.

okwiater: What do you mean by:



I see a listing for 3BR pool villa in a platinum week with 196900 SO's. It is in week 48. Let's say I want to get a smaller 1BR in week 42 at WSJ and use my remaining SO's to go somewhere else. Is that hard to do?

Just depends on where you want to go and what season.
The issue will be - can you get the 1 bedroom week 42. I would guess at 8 months you can through Coral Vista - but there isn't really 1 bd options rather studios.
So again - just depends on what you want and understanding options. The network is pretty open except StJ, Maui and high demand seasons.

 

[okwiater]

Thanks all for the info/advice.

okwiater: What do you mean by:


I see a listing for 3BR pool villa in a platinum week with 196900 SO's. It is in week 48. Let's say I want to get a smaller 1BR in week 42 at WSJ and use my remaining SO's to go somewhere else. Is that hard to do?

A Platinum week will have 196,900 SOs but the same maintenance fee, so it's not as good a deal from a maintenance fee perspective.

If you buy a fixed week at WSJ Hillside (mandatory), you have 2 options to float your week:

1. Your week is technically "fixed-to-float". What this means is that your fixed week is automatically booked, but you can cancel it and "float" your unit instead. This makes it available for other fixed-to-float owners to book instead of their own weeks, and allows you to select a different week as well, if it was relinquished by the owner of that fixed week. Note that you can only float to units of the same type and in the same season. Typically there is not a very large selection of floating units given the limited inventory and the fact that most people use their fixed weeks and thus they never make it to the floating pool.

2. At 8 months prior to check-in, you can use the StarOptions value of your unit to book any unit in any season at any resort. You would be competing with every other owner with StarOptions. There is no home resort priority.

Normally I would recommend buying where (and when) you want to go. But in the case of WSJ, the maintenance fees are so high that you really need to be sure about your travel desires if you are looking to buy a low-season unit. The only way to ensure you can travel to WSJ every year in low-season is to buy at WSJ in low-season. But, the more economical option if you want access to StarOptions is to buy a unit with a good SO/MF ratio.

 

[dsmrp]

I've been looking for WSJ for the past few weeks and did get something, but availability was still really extremely low for mid-June onwards when school's out.
Sometimes it doesn't make sense when things pop up.
For example, I searched last night, just out of habit, and saw at 1 pm EDT, a 2 bdrm unit available for up to 9 days, over July 4th holiday weekend. This is one hour after the new inventory is available each day.
Those dates were better, but I didn't dare release my current reservation to go after a new one. Of course it's gone now
I'm happy I have something :whoopie:

 

[DavidnRobin]

I just want to echo what NNerland said about the odd weather in the fall. By December, the "Christmas winds" begin to kick up, and the surf gets rough. Swimming in the bays becomes difficult, and I've seen the snorkeling areas closed down. Not being able to enjoy the beach takes the fun out of WSJ.

I agree from what I have heard - or observed on webcams and YouTube videos.
You also have to potentially deal with tropical storm aftermath.

I looked at this upon buying a fixed week - we choose Early to mid June.