It is confusing!
If you email me I can send you a .pdf copy of SunGlances "At a Glance Membership Information Guide" tht will reinforce what you saw at your presentation. Pg 16 includes "What can I do with my SunOptions?" and one of the items is "Rent your time (independently/non-commercial)." Renting is not easy and the smaller the scale the greater percentage you have to invest in effectively advertising. You can reserve high times at popular places and hope you get it rented or you can wait for the request and hope that there is spce still available for you to book, it's not as easy as the salesman would suggest.
Whether you want to use or rent your SunOptions... when you go to buy, as Frank said, you need to look at the long term cost which is the maintenance fees. When you go to buy a traditional week, that week comes with maintenance fees that are the same whether it is a mid winter week in off season that nobody wants or a holiday week that everyone would want. For example: MFs at Powhatan are $779 for a 4BR lockout, millions of 'em are available on eBay all the time. A mid winter week is worth 6000 SunOptions if converted to Club Sunterra while a week 26/27/47/51/52 holiday week is worth 15,000. Same MF. The mid winter week comes up to .13/pt while the holiday week comes up to .05/pt of annual fees. You can't rent your weeks out for too much more than .15/pt. Therefore to clear any reasonable fee you need to have the lower MF/pt ratio.
Converting the fixed week is also confusing. If you go to Sunterra sales center where you would most probably be directed they will try to sell you ~2000 moe SunOptions for $7000 to convert. They will do it for a flat fee of $2995 but you've got to push the right person. Sunterra Corporate will also do it for the flat fee of $2995 but again, you've got to talk to the right person or they'll try to refer you to your local sales center. There has been some reported success in taking their $7000 deal and RESCINDING the next day, then you might get offered the bottom line price of $1295 to save the deal. $1295 is the price that was generally available several years ago without having to do the dance.
OK, well that was converting a fixed week deed that you may have bought. Sunterra doesn't sell fixed week deeds anymore. They sell into a Trust called Club Sunterra Vacation Trust (CSV). We are starting to see more and more of these on the resale market both on eBay and from the Holiday Group. You do not get a deed, you become a member of the Trust that holds the deeds in a group of what is now 19 properties. My understanding is that when you buy these resale, you have access to those 19 properties but not the ~100 total properties of Club Sunterra without paying a $2995 to get the FULL Club Sunterra. Anyone with personal experience here, please chime in as I have never bought a Trust property.
Trust properties come with various MF/pt, I'm not sure why, I've seen .08-.12. One of the 'selling' points of the Trust is that they supposedly have lower MFs/pt and insulate you from major assessments since you get taxed on a homogenized mix of the 19 resorts. When I recently went to an "owners update" and they realized that I owned all holiday deeded weeks, they knew they could not 'sell' me on converting to their Trust.
BLUKE, as a data point, what was the retail offer you received?