Buying tips for RCI points?

[markbernstein]

I'm doing the research prior to our first purchase. RCI Points via resale is one possibility I'm considering. When I look at the listings over at alltimeshare.com, I see per-point prices ranging from under five cents to almost twenty cents, with an average of about ten cents. Obviously, there are other factors I'm not aware of.

What are the factors I should be looking for, or, to put it another way, what questions should I be asking the sellers? Should I be most concerned about maintenance fees? Given that it's points, how important is the home resort? Anything else?

Thanks,
Mark Bernstein
Ann Arbor, MI

 

[rickandcindy23]

Check ebay for the best points deals. Also, your cost-per-point for maintenance fees needs to be under 1 cent to get inexpensive trades. For example, a two-bedroom unit in Hawaii (Gold Crown) is about 79,000 points in the off-season (when kids are in school). If you are paying more than 1 cent per point, that could be a very expensive vacation.

We pay $671.00 for our 92,800 points and just booked our flights to Hawaii with our points, borrowing from next year's allotment, and we saved about $200 per ticket.

 

[cresus]

Just FYI:

My maintenance fee / points = ~$0.004/point
Purchase price / points = $0.09/point

So I would agree that finding a good deal is very important because otherwise you'll end up spending a lot each year.

 

[AwayWeGo]

We Bought Small & Cheap.

If we had wanted a substantial points package, we no doubt would have paid more attention to the per-point purchase cost & the per-point maintenance fees.

We just wanted a mnimal toe-hold into the points system so we could start doing Points For Deposit if we choose with the straight-weeks timeshares we already have. So our focus was on the bottom line.

What we ended up with is 15,000 annual points with an annual fee of $330 -- no doubt escalating to $350 pretty soon. For that we paid $152.50 (eBay). Adding RCI Points initiation fee, closing costs, transfer fees, etc., took the all-in bottom line close to $1,000.

Can't get much for 15,000 points, right? Our 1st reservation was a 2BR Orlando Gold Crown timeshare condo for our son's & daughter-in-law's pre-Christmas vacation, December 2005 -- 7,500 points, Instant Exchange.

That got us a bonus of 4,000 points as a reward for making a reservation within our 1st 90 days of membership in RCI Points. Then we did Points For Deposit with a Florida 1BR week & an overseas 2BR week, taking our points total to 84,000 -- should be enough for some decent reservations.

Trouble is, we're so locked into the bargains that our next reservations are apt to be more Instant Exchange deals for 9,000 or fewer points -- or maybe Last Call reservations for zero points, like our after-Christmas vacation in January 2006.

If that keeps up, I don't know how we'll manage to use up our 84,000 points.

The Chief Of Staff now figures what we should do is rent out our our Orlando weeks for money & keep on using our 15,000 annual straight-points plus Points For Deposit for Instant Exchange reservations for ourselves whenever we can't get a nice Last Call.

Shucks, if that works out & she starts coming out ahead financially, look out!

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.

 

[BocaBum99]

A good deal within RCI Points is between $.04-.05/point upfront capital. And, maintenance fees should be about $.0075 or less. That is the point at which airline tickets make sense.

They are there, you can find them. Just make sure that the MF are not an illusion and artificially too low. That could lead to a special assessment down the road.

If you are interested in generating a lot of RCI points, you can buy a cheap RCI Points resort for under $1000 and buy other properties for Points for Deposit.

 

[Dustijam]

What are the factors I should be looking for, or, to put it another way, what questions should I be asking the sellers? Should I be most concerned about maintenance fees? Given that it's points, how important is the home resort? Anything else?

If you go with RCI points, home resort may be very important, and that is where cheap points may not always be smart points.

One of the very first rules of timesharing is to buy where you want to stay. While that sage advice originated from those with experience on the weeks side of the house, the wisdom does cross over into points.

Home resort advantage allows you to book at the 13-12 month mark for a fixed week, the 12-11 month mark for your home resort, and at the 11-10 month mark for the resort group. So, for example, if you buy at Cliffs at Peace Canyon the entire resort group managed by the Daily Management Resorts opens up to you, including the Vacation Village at Parkway.

Want to get a place near Disney during President’s Week? The 11-10 month window would allow you access to Vacation Village (Kissimmee). This year, when the 11-10 month window opened, VV had a ton of available units for that coveted week. :whoopie: There are not a lot of resort groups in RCI, but there are many individual resorts for which you might want the home court advantage.

The point is, what are you trying to achieve? What are your travel constraints? Where do you prefer to travel? The reason to consider those factors is, cheap points sometimes leaves you looking at the same 4 or 5 second hand resorts everyone else is looking at in the 10 month window. (Hope you love the Dominican Republic )

If you are like fellow TUGGER AwayWeGo and you can travel on your whim, then the cheaper the points the better. If you are like me, and you have to consider primetime travel, then you might want to consider the home resort advantage, even if a bit more expensive.