HGVC Long Term Costs Over Time

[BillW]

Wanted to share with everyone some info about long term costs with our TS. When we bought I started a spreadsheet and tracked every cost, fee and expense we used to book through HGVC. I've averaged them over time and have found it quite enlightening. There is no need to share all the numbers but some averages will be enlightening.

Background:
Ownership is a 3BR Platinum Tuscany Orlando purchased on 5/31/2010. We bought resale at what was a good price at the time, but north of $1/point. The recession had not quite brought the prices down to where they are today. In the spreadsheet I tracked the averages four different ways.

The first differentiation was between the cost per night (/nt) and the cost per ROOM night (/rm nt). If we stayed in a 3 BR unit for 7 Nights, I would divide the total cost by 7 for the cost per night. For the same stay I would divide the total cost by 21 (3 rooms x 7 night) for cost per ROOM night. This seemed much more useful as booking the same accommodations in a hotel would require booking an equivalent number of hotel room nights.

The second differentiation was between the total costs including amortizing the purchase price over all the stays and the recurring costs only - excluding the purchase price. This was broken down by the two categories above - per night and per ROOM night.

It is important to note that these included RCI exchanges and all applicable exchange and resort fees as well as hotel taxes for all stays are included. Reservation fees, fees to save points, etc are also all included.

If you've stuck with it so far, here are the numbers.

Total nights of all stays: 101
Total Room nights: 168

The first stay was at our home resort in a 3 BR at Tuscany in July 2010.
Total avg cost: $1896/nt*
Total avg recurring cost $207/nt**
It gets a little more sane when broken out per ROOM night.
Total avg cost: $632/rm nt*
Total avg recurring cost: $69.01/rm nt**
*Remember, this includes purchase price amortized over ONE stay.
**Without purchase price.

It gets better. After staying in Lagoon Tower for Thanksgiving 2019 for a week in two 2BR units the numbers have averaged out over ten years to:
Total avg cost: $324/nt
Total avg recurring cost: $207/nt
Room Night Costs
Total avg cost: $195/rm nt
Total recurring cost: $124/rm nt**

Stays
These are the stays we made during the time period.
Sep-10: Orlando, FL - International Drive 3BR / 7 Night
Jul-11: Seiverville, TN - RCI Wyndham Smokey Mtns 2BR + 1BR / 7 Night
Mar-12: Waikoloa, HI - Kohala Suites 2BR / 5 Night
Jun-12: Carlsbad, CA - Marbrisa. 1 BR / 6 Night + 2BR / 4 Night
Jul-13: Waikoloa, HI - Kohala Suites 2BR / 7 Night
Mar-14: Honolulu, HI - Lagoon Tower 2BR / 7 Night
Jul-14: DVC - Wilderness Lodge 1BR / 7 Night
Dec-14: DVC - Saratoga Springs 1BR / 7 Night
Jun-15: DVC - Saratoga Springs w/ RS (2 Units) x 1BR / 7 Night
Dec-17: Waikoloa, HI - Kings Land 2BR / 9 Night
Nov-19: Honolulu, HI - Lagoon Tower (2 Beach Front Units) x 2BR / 7 Night

One last statistic that is enlightening. I've also tracked our annual fees (mx, dues, etc.. whatever amount I write the check for every December). Dividing by our number of points yields the price per point.
2010: 16.67 cents/point
2019: 21.74 cents/point

Overall the recurring $124/rm nt is pretty cheap not accounting for the purchase price. Assuming we can get what we paid for it back out then this number is useful.

Even so $195/rm nt is not shabby for staying in a resort with all the amenities and, most importantly, separate bedrooms, living room, kitchen. If I could account for the money we've saved by having breakfast in the room versus eating out 3x a day times seven days, then these costs would come down even further.

When we purchased one of my thoughts/bets was that if the long term cost was break even with staying in hotel rooms that it would still be preferable because it would motivate us to take vacations (life can get busy) and we would stay in much nicer accommodations than hotel rooms.

The costs are going up that is a fact but we still enjoy our timeshare and over the long haul it appears to be working out to be somewhat cheaper. My wife and I have become spoiled and when we do wind up with four of us in a double queen room - as we did on our way to Hawaii this trip for one night - it really makes us look forward to and appreciate the timeshare experience.

I hope this information is useful and I've been able to explain my methodology well enough.

Bill

 

[LC Travel Newbs]

I like the analysis. As a new tugger, I’m using a similar long game approach to pricing ourselves into the right decision on a resale. Purchase price plus MF taken out 10 years divided into 10 years of points giving me a rankable result for value.
I’m just the type to equally track expenditures as you did. Just don’t lose sight of the experience. Even break even compared to hotel stays would put the ts adventure ahead I hope.

 

[phil1ben]

Like you Bill, I bought a single resale timeshare in 2010. I paid $1.00/point for a 7000 annual point platinum 2-bedroom unit in South Beach. It is the first and only timeshare I will own, but I do feel we get good value from it. I would say that we use about half our annual points for long weekends in South Beach and then the remainder in different locations. We have stayed in Italy, Scotland, New York (often), Colorado and of course South Beach. If I had to do it over again, the only thing I would have done differently was to have bought in a place where the maintenance fees are lower. I believe South Beach has among the highest annual maintenance fees. I bought in South Beach because of my distrust (then and now) in timeshare operators (even Hilton at the time) and felt that South Beach real estate virtually on the ocean would always have some value. We have used the 1 week Home Week benefit only once because we normally stay there only 3-4 days. As an aside, I purchased HGVC stock when it first went public and sold it a profit resulting in the repayment of my initial investment.

What I would be interested in is a poll where resale owners report their satisfaction with HGVC (perhaps on a scale of 1-10) side by side against a similar poll of owners who paid full retail. I feel that once many retail owners find out about the resale market it sours their opinion. I would be curious about the difference in results.

I would rate my satisfaction as an 8 with 10 being complete satisfaction. The reason I did not rate higher is because of the difficulty reserving a unit in a popular location.

 

[CalGalTraveler]

Nice calculation. Sounds like you have benefited greatly from your resale.

We purchased 2 resales and 1 developer. We are happy with our resales and have past breakeven on vacations from our initial small investment. Although the MF are high, our Westin OF has held steady in value. (If you don't pay much, you don't lose much.) This is a keeper unless MF goes astronomical, however we can lock off the 2bdrm unit and get 2 weeks out of it for $1500/week (rents for $2700 - $3800/week and $5k/week for 2bdrm) or rent one side to pay for the other so our ownership is free. It will be a long time before that one goes upside down. Our HGVC 7k Vegas stretches our points and has low MF. We can sell it easily if we need to.

To @phil1ben's point, we are soured by overpaying for our developer unit because we will never get the initial money back and will likely never reach breakeven unless we own for several decades. I am usually a rational investor but still kick myself for making this purchase and not buying resale (we found TUG too late).

We are making lemonade. Lucky that the property we purchased has good MF/point and residual value; not a silver season low MF/point worthless dud. We also got a lot of bonus points in which we traveled a lot. At $1500/year MF it is easily affordable and the best value for Manhattan TS. It also has some unique elite amenities such as early reservations in NYC, AI reservations which justifies keeping it. We just wish we had bought this resale and saved.


There will be a point in the future where MF will exceed our usage value and we will sell it for a fraction of retail and move on. Although the developer purchase price is sunk cost, the almost instant loss of our hard earned money still hurts.

 

[mega3000]

I had tracked our costs vs 'comparable hotel bookings' for a few years.

My wife and I still laugh about one of our early non-HGVC timeshare presentations where this animated salesman kept shouting at us that it wasn't about the exact weeks or points it was all about the 'BONUS TIME!.' That's right the BONUS TIME!, whatever that was.

With 4 kids, I stopped tracking the delta versus hotel bookings when we realized it was about the MEAL TIME! Don't underestimate the cost of feeding a family of 6 - especially during the teenage years. 1-2 meals a day in the timeshare and higher likelihood of taking some snacks with you over the course of a week really adds up.

And for extreme cost watchers - this year we are booked to go to Oahu for Spring Break. As we have done in the past, without paying extra luggage fees, we will be packing up and carrying in all the non-perishables we need for the week. (Much cheaper here than Waikiki.) We already agreed to maximize eating-in to offset costs for SCUBA lessons.

 

[jehb2]

We average $150 a night but we have owed for 20 years. Lately (since we’ve owned for so long) I just calculate the MF, reservation, and transient fee (Hawaii).

'BONUS TIME!.' That's right the BONUS TIME!, whatever that was.

At an owners update they were trying to get us to upgrade. I calculated the true cost of the upgrade on a piece of paper and showed it to my husband. The salesman grabbed the piece of paper and said this was not important and what we needed to realize that with the upgrade we would be “the creme dela creme” of Hilton owners.

 

[Talent312]

I 'spose that may be helpful for some to know, but...
Rather than 2nd guess myself on the $$, I just enjoy my stays.
To me, there's as much value in the intangibles as the numbers.
So I choose to remain blissfully ignorant of what my cost may be.
<YMMV>
.

 

[bogey21]

When I was married with 3 kids my Marriott Weeks were a Godsend. Cost was not an issue. After kids grew up and wife and I divorced I dumped my Marriott Weeks and bought "el cheapo" one bedroom Weeks at Resorts I planned to use every year. When it became apparent that my travel days were numbered those Weeks went too. My advice is when your situation changes the quicker you modify your Ownership Profile the better off you are. Don't procrastinate...

George