Considering Wyndham Fairfield Harbor or Williamsburg

[Steve0711]

I am new to TS's and am considering a resale purchase. I am looking primarily at Wyndham's Fairfield Harbor (North Carolina), Williamsburg, and Smoky Mountains as potential home resorts for the purchase. I am purchasing for points usage and focusing primarily on the relatively low maintenance fees and do not necessarily plan on staying at these resorts. There are no resorts in the network that I feel I need to have as my home resort for advanced bookings. Does anyone have any color or feedback on either / both of these resorts for potential purchase? Aside from maintenance fees and potential booking priority is there any other aspects of a particular resort that I should focus on? Any help is much appreciated.

 

[timeos2]

Shop carefully. Look at age and history of fees at each resort

I am new to TS's and am considering a resale purchase. I am looking primarily at Wyndham's Fairfield Harbor (North Carolina), Williamsburg, and Smoky Mountains as potential home resorts for the purchase. I am purchasing for points usage and focusing primarily on the relatively low maintenance fees and do not necessarily plan on staying at these resorts. There are no resorts in the network that I feel I need to have as my home resort for advanced bookings. Does anyone have any color or feedback on either / both of these resorts for potential purchase? Aside from maintenance fees and potential booking priority is there any other aspects of a particular resort that I should focus on? Any help is much appreciated.

Try to find the history of maintenance fees. If they have been consistently low then there is a really good chance that a special assessment will occur at some time when they finally decide they have to upgrade things. If there has been a special assessment or if fees have shown a reasonable upward trend, and the resort has maintained a ranking/reviews say things are in good shape, then (hopefully - never is there any guarantee) fees will stay stable and it represents a good fe/point value. Remember the true cost over time are the fees not the purchase price so pay careful attention to those.

We have Williamsburg (Kingsgate) as our deeded base. While annual fees have been relatively stable & are in a good range now we also got hit a couple years back with a hefty, multi-year SA. For those years the value wasn't good and now we can only hope that they learned the lesson and current fee levels are adequate thus leaving the cost/point in the lower range.

The newer resorts especially may show low initial annual fee per point but always rise - sometimes dramatically - once the sales near an end and the true cost starts to get passed along to owners. Don't think low initial annual fees will stick past the first 5 years or so.

 

[Steve0711]

Thanks John, great advice. I have noticed that the NC property is a bit outdated from various reviews. Do you know where I might look to find fee history for properties?

 

[hjtug]

The Wyndham owners site at: http://forums.atozed.com has a spreadsheet with fees for all resorts over many years. While most Wyndham resorts trade with RCI, Governors Green in Williamsburg trades through II.