Club at Big Bear Questions

[Fatbaby52]

I'm getting pretty close to pulling the trigger on a Bluegreen resale, but I'm hoping for some feedback here first.

I live in Vegas and my kids love Big Bear, but we've always rented cabins. The BlueGreen property there seems to be in a convenient location and the reviews seem to be great.

This afternoon, I found a resale on a Facebook group. It's 10k biennial. The owner is asking for $500 to cover the transfer fee. Based on the fact that it's been sitting for months and points are going for basically $0 on eBay, I bet I could get that down, but he seems like a nice dude and I don't want to beat him up. I'm sure it sucks to have paid $30k or whatever retail, and I'd imagine that there's a huge emotional difference between giving something away and actually paying someone to take it. If I move forward, I do think that I'll modify it to a $500 offer with him covering the transfer fee, just so we don't run into any confusion if bluegreen exercises ROFR.

Anyway, in my opinion, the real value in this (and why I want Big Bear vs. other resales) is the bonus time weeks. Since we're close enough to drive, I could see getting a lot of value out of heading down to Big Bear for a long weekend or summer/spring break week, knowing that the total cost will be less than $100 per night. The 10k biennial points are also OK with me. That's about enough to book the Cibola Vista resort in the Phoenix area. I like to go down to spring training every year- I usually book an SDO resale for about $1k, but I wouldn't mind just flipping and doing Peoria every other year.

This isn't perfect math, but I'm doing the math like this:
Annual fees = $850/year
Value of points alone to me = $500/year (I'm assuming that I'm indifferent between a week at the Peoria Resort and a week at SDO, and I'll use the 10k points every other year. I known I'm a couple points short of a full week but if I have to go home on Saturday I'm OK with that).
Surplus Big Bear value = $50+/night (staying at the Holiday Inn in the low season is about $140/night after all fees).

So anyway, if I can get a full week of bonus time every summer, I'm breakeven. If I can get a week plus a couple long weekends, we're coming out a little ahead.

So anyway, my big questions are:
1. In another thread, a very nice Tugger told me that summer weeks are easy enough to get as bonus time. They even showed me availability right now. However, I'd really appreciate confirmation from someone else. 2021 (and 2020) is obviously a weird time for travel. I'd feel a lot better if someone told me that they'd been booking bonus time weeks for summer dates back in 2018 or 2019 with no trouble at Big Bear.
2. Similarly, could someone check if a reservation is available for late February 20222 now at Cibola Vista? Or can you speak to historical availability? I think that if I owned a resale at big bear, my window for Spring Training 2022 at Cibola Vista would be opening up right now.
3. Is there anything obvious that I'm overlooking?

 

[GrayFal]

1. There is availability to book there using points in July August. Not Bonus time.
Bonus time can't be booked until 45 days out. And it is booked per day, not by the week. I have no knowledge whether this is a popular resort in the summer or not.

3. Fees are paid every year on an EOY contract
You are smart to understand the value of bonus time.

2. I will check.

 

[Fatbaby52]

1. There is availability to book there using points in July August. Not Bonus time.
Bonus time can't be booked until 45 days out. And it is booked per day, not by the week. I have no knowledge whether this is a popular resort in the summer or not.

3. Fees are paid every year on an EOY contract
You are smart to understand the value of bonus time.

2. I will check.

Do you mind sending me a screenshot of what the bonus time availability looks like right now at Big Bear (I get that it only looks forward 45 days)? I've never used this (or any timeshare) interface, so I'm not totally sure if what I'm asking is possible. Do they just show a calendar with green days and red days?

I appreciate all the help. I'm hoping that there's some value here, but I'm a little gun shy. Even though it's not nearly as expensive as a retail purchase, I really don't want to take on an obligation and find out that my anticipated use case was a pipe dream and then have to spend time and money to find some other sucker to offload it.

 

[GrayFal]

How it works
You log in
Choose bonus time
Pick the location
Pick the month
Pick the number of days
Hit enter
A calendar view pops up and you click on the date you are interested in
The next screen will show you what type units are available for that date and the price.

I posted this picture on the other thread.

 

[GrayFal]

10,000 every other is a very low number of points but your strategy of using bonus time is good. Since you pay the base fee and club dues on any number of points it is good to seek out contracts where you want to go....probably adding some Cibola points would be a good idea as well. Cost wise owning 20-26K seems to be a sweet spot for the cost per point and likely getting 2-3 weeks vacation.
My points cost me $0.072 -yours is much more. It is something to think about.

I have to honestly say I know nothing about Big Bear so really can’t offer any insight about bonus time available in the summer. But it is ultra red time Wk 20-35 so my thoughts would be in a “normal” year, bonus time would be difficult especially for 6-7 days.

 

[MrockStar]

If your Primary goal is big bear usage/bonus time then this makes sense, however that resort is 2-3 bedroom units and this 10k EOY is most likely 2 weekend days deed or tues- thurs day week day deed\. SO Buyer be ware that this is NOT a week at big bear UNLESS its a mud white week ie No skiing/Summer/fall colors. Do you homework and get an estopple or contact the seller if this matters to you. AL Premier Bluegreen owner.

 

[Fatbaby52]

10,000 every other is a very low number of points but your strategy of using bonus time is good. Since you pay the base fee and club dues on any number of points it is good to seek out contracts where you want to go....probably adding some Cibola points would be a good idea as well. Cost wise owning 20-26K seems to be a sweet spot for the cost per point and likely getting 2-3 weeks vacation.
My points cost me $0.072 -yours is much more. It is something to think about.

I have to honestly say I know nothing about Big Bear so really can’t offer any insight about bonus time available in the summer. But it is ultra red time Wk 20-35 so my thoughts would be in a “normal” year, bonus time would be difficult especially for 6-7 days.

Again I want to thank you for the time you're putting in to this. I appreciate your experience and critical eye, and a lot of what I'm doing here is kind of thinking out loud.

I hear what you're saying regarding diluting the fixed costs with more points and also owning at a different resort for more bonus time options. What I'm afraid of though is throwing good money after bad. Living in Vegas, there really aren't that many convenient options for Bluegreen. Big Bear, Peoria, and *maybe* Aspen are the ones that I could envision using with any sort of regularity. The value to me in the rest of the network is thin, so I'm discounting to roughly zero.

I think where the math breaks down is the expense (in points) of the Big Bear property specifically. Even at your rate, a week in an ultra red 2BR (26k) would cost about $1800. That's a little more than what a roughly equivalent AirBnB would go for. At $79 per night, though, it's a real bargain.

Also, this is why Peoria came into it. I was just looking for a hypothetical "least bad" way to salvage some value from the points. I'd probably prefer the SDO in Scottsdale (which can be had for $1k/week), but I'd rather pay $1700 for a week at Peoria than $1700 for 2-3 nights at Big Bear.

So I guess the real question just comes back to how realistic it is to expect to book a week or two (or a handful of 3-4 night stays) every summer at Big Bear with the cash nights. Hearing that the guy selling his was from Georgia and just bought Big Bear because the developer told him it didn't matter where his title was was encouraging. If the majority of BlueGreen owners are in the South or East Coast but just happen to have Big Bear deeds, then I like my chances. If not, then this is probably a bad idea.

 

[Fatbaby52]

In case anyone was wondering, I'm slowly learning a little more about Big Bear. This isn't totally relevant to my question above, but since there's not a lot of big bear info on this board, maybe this will be useful to someone searching in the future.

According to an agent on-site (not a bluegreen employee), who by the way I would give a 10/10 in terms of helpfulness, there are a mix of actual fractional owners and Bluegreen owners. I'm not sure what the mix of units is unfortunately. The fractional ownership gets 4 weeks, and there's a fairly elaborate preference-based and randomized system. I was able to find a listing for a true fractional here; https://www.realtor.com/realestatea...llage-Unit-15A_Big-Bear_CA_92315_M25192-23646

That's a 4BR presidential Suite. According to the listing, the maintenance fees are $2753 quarterly, or just over $11k annually.

So 4 weeks (assuming 1 of each tier) equates to 186k bluegreen points every year. Maintenance and club and base fees on that number of points would be $12,722.

As for my big question (typical bonus time availability), the answer is still unclear. I tried bluegreen owner services (I'd give them something less than 10/10), the woman there didn't have access to the live inventory, but was happy to transfer me to marketing. The guy in marketing (who also gets less than 10/10) wasn't able to answer either, but was happy to transfer me back to owner services.

I will say that this recent "who's on first" exchange with the bluegreen team has me a little less excited about taking this plunge.

 

[Fatbaby52]

If your Primary goal is big bear usage/bonus time then this makes sense, however that resort is 2-3 bedroom units and this 10k EOY is most likely 2 weekend days deed or tues- thurs day week day deed\. SO Buyer be ware that this is NOT a week at big bear UNLESS its a mud white week ie No skiing/Summer/fall colors. Do you homework and get an estopple or contact the seller if this matters to you. AL Premier Bluegreen owner.

I appreciate the advice and apologize for my own naivete here. Based on what I'm seeing with the points chart, I don't see a situation where a full week makes sense for me, because points bookings are just too expensive at big bear. A full summer week would be 26k points, and the annual fees on that would be $2228. At that point, I'm paying more than it would cost to rent an equivalent cabin through AirBnB, and giving away all sorts of flexibility. Even if I were already an owner and could rationalize away the club and base fees, I'm looking at $1716 for the week, which is really close to breakeven.

Since there isn't a preference for bonus time between big owners and tiny owners (that I'm aware of), I really think that the fewer points I own the better. If there were a 0 point option for $512/year, I think that I would be OK with that. Assuming there is availability over the summer, I'd gladly pay the $512 per year just to have the option to book a week or two at $79 per night (or $179 for the big 4BR).

 

[tschwa2]

I am not sure if current availability is back to 100% normal due to covid. While there seems to be pent up demand for beach, inland places still seem to have more people waiting until last minute this year. I am in the East and have never looked to book big bear but with summer bonus time, I don't think in terms of being able to book full weeks. I think in terms of 3-5 days if I am lucky. I don't think you should expect ultra red full weeks to be available unless you got very lucky. No one would be able to tell you what availability in the future will look like. You might find someone who has been tracking availability for years and can tell you the trends but it doesn't sound like any of the regulars here have been particularly interested in that particular resort.

 

[MrockStar]

BlueGreen is mostly an East Coast/midwest timeshare thats been slowly expanding westward with some excellent quality resorts. Big bear is really nice but large/presidential units so lots of points and fairly large mainteance fee's for the weeks. I could be great if your going to own a fairly large points deed in trust fund-E abd go to other resorts as well.

 

[GrayFal]

I am not sure if current availability is back to 100% normal due to covid. While there seems to be pent up demand for beach, inland places still seem to have more people waiting until last minute this year. I am in the East and have never looked to book big bear but with summer bonus time, I don't think in terms of being able to book full weeks. I think in terms of 3-5 days if I am lucky. I don't think you should expect ultra red full weeks to be available unless you got very lucky. No one would be able to tell you what availability in the future will look like. You might find someone who has been tracking availability for years and can tell you the trends but it doesn't sound like any of the regulars here have been particularly interested in that particular resort.

Agree about availability
This is not a usual year.
And since this is a very flexible points program where you can make 2-14 day resies and it is easy to cancel and rebook it makes it even more difficult to predict.

But, 26,000 for a price week is a lot of points. You would really have to love this place to pay so much. So maybe people don’t book in the ultra high season and go in the shoulder season leaving more open summer inventory.
Like @tschwa2 I focus on other resorts in the system so just can’t say about this resort.

 

[Fatbaby52]

I am not sure if current availability is back to 100% normal due to covid. While there seems to be pent up demand for beach, inland places still seem to have more people waiting until last minute this year. I am in the East and have never looked to book big bear but with summer bonus time, I don't think in terms of being able to book full weeks. I think in terms of 3-5 days if I am lucky. I don't think you should expect ultra red full weeks to be available unless you got very lucky. No one would be able to tell you what availability in the future will look like. You might find someone who has been tracking availability for years and can tell you the trends but it doesn't sound like any of the regulars here have been particularly interested in that particular resort.

BlueGreen is mostly an East Coast/midwest timeshare thats been slowly expanding westward with some excellent quality resorts. Big bear is really nice but large/presidential units so lots of points and fairly large mainteance fee's for the weeks. I could be great if your going to own a fairly large points deed in trust fund-E abd go to other resorts as well.

Agree about availability
This is not a usual year.
And since this is a very flexible points program where you can make 2-14 day resies and it is easy to cancel and rebook it makes it even more difficult to predict.

But, 26,000 for a price week is a lot of points. You would really have to love this place to pay so much. So maybe people don’t book in the ultra high season and go in the shoulder season leaving more open summer inventory.
Like @tschwa2 I focus on other resorts in the system so just can’t say about this resort.

Thank you everyone, I appreciate the replies. I'm fairly certain that the West Coast bluegreen ownership experience is very different from the Southeast or East Coast. To even get to Big Bear, you guys have to fly over probably 20 or 30 bigger lakes, land in Ontario, rent a car, enjoy the eastern part of LA County traffic, and then pay a whole bunch of points for your stay. I'm a 3-4 hour car ride away, and in the summer that 3-4 hours gets me from 115 degrees to 75.

So I'm actually kind of hoping that's a good sign. I'd imagine that Tuggers (?) are more savvy than most. So if a handful of deeds are in the hands of people on the east coast, who just want the points (like the one I'm considering), and the rest are spread around southern CA, maybe there really isn't that much competition for these last minute bookings.

 

[MrockStar]

Best wishes on what ever you decide.

 

[lopertc]

Thank you everyone, I appreciate the replies. I'm fairly certain that the West Coast bluegreen ownership experience is very different from the Southeast or East Coast. To even get to Big Bear, you guys have to fly over probably 20 or 30 bigger lakes, land in Ontario, rent a car, enjoy the eastern part of LA County traffic, and then pay a whole bunch of points for your stay. I'm a 3-4 hour car ride away, and in the summer that 3-4 hours gets me from 115 degrees to 75.

So I'm actually kind of hoping that's a good sign. I'd imagine that Tuggers (?) are more savvy than most. So if a handful of deeds are in the hands of people on the east coast, who just want the points (like the one I'm considering), and the rest are spread around southern CA, maybe there really isn't that much competition for these last minute bookings.

I think you are really on to something here.

 

[lopertc]

I'm getting pretty close to pulling the trigger on a Bluegreen resale, but I'm hoping for some feedback here first.

I live in Vegas and my kids love Big Bear, but we've always rented cabins. The BlueGreen property there seems to be in a convenient location and the reviews seem to be great.

This afternoon, I found a resale on a Facebook group. It's 10k biennial. The owner is asking for $500 to cover the transfer fee. Based on the fact that it's been sitting for months and points are going for basically $0 on eBay, I bet I could get that down, but he seems like a nice dude and I don't want to beat him up. I'm sure it sucks to have paid $30k or whatever retail, and I'd imagine that there's a huge emotional difference between giving something away and actually paying someone to take it. If I move forward, I do think that I'll modify it to a $500 offer with him covering the transfer fee, just so we don't run into any confusion if bluegreen exercises ROFR.

Anyway, in my opinion, the real value in this (and why I want Big Bear vs. other resales) is the bonus time weeks. Since we're close enough to drive, I could see getting a lot of value out of heading down to Big Bear for a long weekend or summer/spring break week, knowing that the total cost will be less than $100 per night. The 10k biennial points are also OK with me. That's about enough to book the Cibola Vista resort in the Phoenix area. I like to go down to spring training every year- I usually book an SDO resale for about $1k, but I wouldn't mind just flipping and doing Peoria every other year.

This isn't perfect math, but I'm doing the math like this:
Annual fees = $850/year
Value of points alone to me = $500/year (I'm assuming that I'm indifferent between a week at the Peoria Resort and a week at SDO, and I'll use the 10k points every other year. I known I'm a couple points short of a full week but if I have to go home on Saturday I'm OK with that).
Surplus Big Bear value = $50+/night (staying at the Holiday Inn in the low season is about $140/night after all fees).

So anyway, if I can get a full week of bonus time every summer, I'm breakeven. If I can get a week plus a couple long weekends, we're coming out a little ahead.

So anyway, my big questions are:
1. In another thread, a very nice Tugger told me that summer weeks are easy enough to get as bonus time. They even showed me availability right now. However, I'd really appreciate confirmation from someone else. 2021 (and 2020) is obviously a weird time for travel. I'd feel a lot better if someone told me that they'd been booking bonus time weeks for summer dates back in 2018 or 2019 with no trouble at Big Bear.
2. Similarly, could someone check if a reservation is available for late February 20222 now at Cibola Vista? Or can you speak to historical availability? I think that if I owned a resale at big bear, my window for Spring Training 2022 at Cibola Vista would be opening up right now.
3. Is there anything obvious that I'm overlooking?

I did the same thing basically, I bought resale deeded at big cedar in missouri becasue I live 3 hours away in tulsa. I have 4 weeks booked right now and am loving it and I just spent 4 days in austin for spring break. Im happy. it comes down to cost to rent at big bear vs cost of maintnce fees in points used. value the ownership at -1500 (cost to give it away ) and do a 5 year cost benefit analysis. as to whether or not bonus time is available, youll need to find a tugger with a deed there that has been around a couple years. I know at big cedar bonus time is typicaly 2-3 days at max strung together but other locations are always available. I have no idea what big bear is like. I can tell you right now there is almost no availablity at big cedar so I think demand is not short.

 

[lopertc]

my typing sucks and I didnt correct typos.

 

[GrayFal]

youll need to find a tugger with a deed there that has been around a couple years.

You don’t have to be deeded there to use bonus time. Many of us here can book bonus time at all the resorts because we own charter points.
The trick is to find a BG owner that frequently looks at availability at this resort.

Ask me about La Cabana and I can tell you.
There are many people that are experts at booking Big Cedar, not me!
The other issue is that this resort is relatively new in the BG family so there just might not be that much info out there.

 

[Fatbaby52]

I did the same thing basically, I bought resale deeded at big cedar in missouri becasue I live 3 hours away in tulsa. I have 4 weeks booked right now and am loving it and I just spent 4 days in austin for spring break. Im happy. it comes down to cost to rent at big bear vs cost of maintnce fees in points used. value the ownership at -1500 (cost to give it away ) and do a 5 year cost benefit analysis. as to whether or not bonus time is available, youll need to find a tugger with a deed there that has been around a couple years. I know at big cedar bonus time is typicaly 2-3 days at max strung together but other locations are always available. I have no idea what big bear is like. I can tell you right now there is almost no availablity at big cedar so I think demand is not short.

That's a good idea, but without bonus time, everything is a negative number. Cost in points for a summer week in a 2BR (smallest unit) is $2228. I could maybe shave a couple weekend nights to get the daily rate down a bit, but the $300/night ballpark gets you an awfully nice cabin. If bonus time is off the table, I'm looking at -$500 (cost to acquire, maybe I do need to negotiate) + -$250 (value of committing $2228 to a week long stay vs. about $2k for a nice cabin with more flexibility) + -$1500 (cost of finding the next sucker). So there's really not a universe where that 26k point ownership makes sense for me.

However, every bonus time night I'm able to book has a positive value of at least $50, maybe even closer to $100 (Booking at $79 vs. Holiday Inn for $150 or small cabin for $200). If I can find 10 or so of those every year I'll be a happy camper. That's why I kind of like the 5k membership tier- I know I'm paying way too much per point, but the points are worth less than 6.6 cents to me anyway, so I don't want more of them.

 

[Fatbaby52]

You don’t have to be deeded there to use bonus time. Many of us here can book bonus time at all the resorts because we own charter points.
The trick is to find a BG owner that frequently looks at availability at this resort.

Ask me about La Cabana and I can tell you.
There are many people that are experts at booking Big Cedar, not me!
The other issue is that this resort is relatively new in the BG family so there just might not be that much info out there.

Yeah that seems to be the pattern. I think that my location and use case is so unique that there might not be a Tugger who is able to help. You guys with charter points who are thousands of miles away wouldn't have had a reason to look into big bear anyway.

 

[lopertc]

You don’t have to be deeded there to use bonus time. Many of us here can book bonus time at all the resorts because we own charter points.
The trick is to find a BG owner that frequently looks at availability at this resort.

Ask me about La Cabana and I can tell you.
There are many people that are experts at booking Big Cedar, not me!
The other issue is that this resort is relatively new in the BG family so there just might not be that much info out there.

That's a good idea, but without bonus time, everything is a negative number. Cost in points for a summer week in a 2BR (smallest unit) is $2228. I could maybe shave a couple weekend nights to get the daily rate down a bit, but the $300/night ballpark gets you an awfully nice cabin. If bonus time is off the table, I'm looking at -$500 (cost to acquire, maybe I do need to negotiate) + -$250 (value of committing $2228 to a week long stay vs. about $2k for a nice cabin with more flexibility) + -$1500 (cost of finding the next sucker). So there's really not a universe where that 26k point ownership makes sense for me.

However, every bonus time night I'm able to book has a positive value of at least $50, maybe even closer to $100 (Booking at $79 vs. Holiday Inn for $150 or small cabin for $200). If I can find 10 or so of those every year I'll be a happy camper. That's why I kind of like the 5k membership tier- I know I'm paying way too much per point, but the points are worth less than 6.6 cents to me anyway, so I don't want more of them.

Sounds like you’ve got this figured out. Great work.

 

[GrayFal]

Yeah that seems to be the pattern. I think that my location and use case is so unique that there might not be a Tugger who is able to help. You guys with charter points who are thousands of miles away wouldn't have had a reason to look into big bear anyway.

Why not? I thought you said it was nice!

 

[Fatbaby52]

Why not? I thought you said it was nice!

Ha, it's beautiful, plus I'm grading on a curve coming from Vegas in the summer. I think that the issue for you guys will be getting to it. Big Bear isn't especially convenient.

Sounds like you’ve got this figured out. Great work.

You say I have it figured out, but I'm still confused. I keep hoping someone will pop in here and say "I've had no trouble booking 15-20 nights with bonus time every summer" or "I've only been able to get a night or two of bonus time every year." That would make the decision easy.

 

[GrayFal]

Ha, it's beautiful, plus I'm grading on a curve coming from Vegas in the summer. I think that the issue for you guys will be getting to it. Big Bear isn't especially convenient.

I fly on airplanes and rent cars.
If you can get there, so can I.
Thanks to time sharing, I have been all over the world. You are focusing on the little picture of "where can I drive to"

Anyway, good luck and let us know if you pass ROFR.

 

[andymul]

You don’t have to be deeded there to use bonus time. Many of us here can book bonus time at all the resorts because we own charter points.
The trick is to find a BG owner that frequently looks at availability at this resort.

Ask me about La Cabana and I can tell you.
There are many people that are experts at booking Big Cedar, not me!
The other issue is that this resort is relatively new in the BG family so there just might not be that much info out there.

How does bonus time look for La Cabana? Any trouble getting weeks with points during high season?