The trick if you're going to rent WM is to actually own a 5,000 credit account and rent the POINTS from another owner on wmowners.com.
The way WM has MF structured is the more points you own, the less you pay per thousand. That leads to a lot of people with high point accounts having extra points that they need to sell. If you own a 5,000 point contract, you owe $569 a year, or $114 per thousand a year and get 1 HK token and access to bonus time and inventory specials. When you need to more points, you can rent them for $60-70 per thousand from another owner and make your own reservation with your own account in your name. If you are going to use WM more than once a year outside of inventory specials and bonus time, that's when you want a bigger account for extra housekeeping credits. Also when times are tough you are only liable for the $569 a year.
For us Club Wyndham owners, it pairs perfectly if you vacation in areas with both WM and Club Wyndham properties. For example, when I go to Ocean Walk, I want to use WM because their point chart actually lets you pick your view, plus the cost is lower. Out of the 3 times I've gone with my Club Wyndham points, I've only gotten ocean front once out of the 3 times I requested it. If I only want to rent a 3 bedroom at Reunion for 2 nights for a quick family get together with my sister and parents, I would run out of housekeeping credits because the reservation costs around 45,000 points but 140 housekeeping credits. The alternative is to just use bonus time for around $250 and not run out of housekeeping.
There is another way I can get my view request and unlimited housekeeping with owning 100% Club Wyndham, but that has a $27,000 minimum purchase price. No thanks, I'm going to go with the free WM account (whenever I can get my hands on one once this crisis passes).
