It's time to pick up some Platinum weeks for cheap

[BocaBum99]

I seriously have to question these above statements as that would indicate that it will be possible to buy a Marriott Utah ski week (SW or MS) for $1,750?

Really? Perhaps you mean Bronze weeks.

When a 2 bedroom ski week rents for about $750 per day from Marriott for non-owners, then this timeshare would pay for itself in 3 nights.

Let me know where I can buy a platinum 2 bedroom Marriott ski week (ski-in/out) for this low price.

I agree with what you are saying. I think that the reason why this doesn't make sense is that Perry is extrapolating a couple of data points he sees with his real fear for the entire economy and generalizing his claims to the entire timeshare industry market. There are lots of reasons why a) his armagedon scenario isn't likely to happen and b) even if it does, it won't happen over night. His predictions will happen for some resorts. But probably not for the whole industry. It rarely happens. Even in the great depression, 70% of the working population had jobs. It didn't go to zero.

 

[m61376]

And, what I think is very different today, is that lifestyles and expectations are very different. Our parents' generation was used to making do with what they had, but there are a lot of people in our generation and certainly our children's generation who are accustomed to a more luxurious lifestyle. Even though savings may have been depleted, many are still employed and making nice incomes and have some disposable income. Vacations for many are not considered a luxury but a way of life and, while many may curtail their spending, they will still go on vacations.

That said, timeshares in a sense lend themselves towards nice vacations with the ability to cut back a little. A family can eat breakfast in, pack lunch for the beach and perhaps grill a couple of nights and still have a great trip, yet save hundreds of dollars just by doing so.

Maybe I am just convincing myself of what I want to believe to justify buying another unit now, but I don't think the bottom is going to fall out of the market like Perry predicts. Of course, no one has any real facts and we are all just pontificating here, but as the credit market eases I think Marriott's hiatus from exercising ROFR will end, and then the only one to benefit from desperate sellers will be Marriott. The small proportion of people who need to sell at any price will still exist, but the regular buyers won't get a chance to buy them. I really feel now may be a unique opportunity.

I may be wrong, but given their price-point Marriott tends to attract a more affluent buyer in the first place. Certainly Marriott owners are not immune from what's going on, but like most of us here who are even contemplating buying another, many of them still can afford to travel.

Who knows...some of us will be feeling pretty smug this time next year as we reflect back, and some of us will be kicking ourselves.

 

[taffy19]

Personally, I believe that prices may be lower yet in January just before the maintenance fees are due but after that the prices may stay the same unless the economy gets bleaker yet and many more people get unemployed. It's the media who is at fault because they love to down play any good news but the bad news are headlines so people have the tendency to cut back even if they have a job and are making the same money as before. Uncertainty is hard to deal with for most people. JMHO. I know it is for me.

 

[MOXJO7282]

I seriously have to question these above statements as that would indicate that it will be possible to buy a Marriott Utah ski week (SW or MS) for $1,750?

Really? Perhaps you mean Bronze weeks.

When a 2 bedroom ski week rents for about $750 per day from Marriott for non-owners, then this timeshare would pay for itself in 3 nights.

Let me know where I can buy a platinum 2 bedroom Marriott ski week (ski-in/out) for this low price.

I agree. I think too many make blanket statements that are just not always relative to every region or name brand.

I do think many TS resorts, in overdeveloped areas, still have more room to drop, maybe alot, but I don't think Marriott prime weeks will suffer the same fate.

I don't know the prime ski market, but I do know the prime beach market and I just don't see those going down more than another 10-15%. I would then expect a rebound in 3-5 years.

That's just my opinion, but I think its more likely that will happen than a total cave-in of pricing. Again I'm just talking Marriott prime beach weeks, because that is what I know, but from what I've seen on TUG, prime ski behave the same.

 

[Vacation Dude]

Quality name brand timeshare + beach/ski location + 2-4 bedroom size + prime week or holiday will always command value and it is doubtful that the resale value will approach the annual dues (as PerryM suggests).

A tired timeshare + poor location (long way from beach or chair lift) + offseason + high annual dues will always be hard to sell and is probably worth less than $1 on ebay.

With timeshares and everything else, you usually get what you pay for and if something is too good to be true, it probably is.

 

[stevens397]

Maybe I'm just praying but I don't see depression as a real possibility. That said, what will the effect be if Detroit's big 3 are allowed to go into bankruptcy? Chrysler already just closed for one month. And if it happens, how will that psychologically affect the rest of the economy.

I don't think we're done. That said, it's easy to predict depression. If you're wrong, so what?

 

[london]

Well Said

Quality name brand timeshare + beach/ski location + 2-4 bedroom size + prime week or holiday will always command value and it is doubtful that the resale value will approach the annual dues (as PerryM suggests).

A tired timeshare + poor location (long way from beach or chair lift) + offseason + high annual dues will always be hard to sell and is probably worth less than $1 on ebay.

With timeshares and everything else, you usually get what you pay for and if something is too good to be true, it probably is.

I agree with your thoughts, well said......

 

[PerryM]

I seriously have to question these above statements as that would indicate that it will be possible to buy a Marriott Utah ski week (SW or MS) for $1,750?

Really? Perhaps you mean Bronze weeks.

When a 2 bedroom ski week rents for about $750 per day from Marriott for non-owners, then this timeshare would pay for itself in 3 nights.

Let me know where I can buy a platinum 2 bedroom Marriott ski week (ski-in/out) for this low price.

Simply using the going rate for Wyndhams (15%) and the developers settling for 200% gross return on their money instead of 400%. (Resulting in just 5%) Some here report 20% of current sales price - not much of a stretch to me; the panic hasn't started yet.

When bubbles burst the prices we have gotten accustomed to fool us as to how little something is actually worth to folks who don't want these things. People like to follow the crowds - they can't wait to buy when prices are at all time highs (Don't want to miss out on a good deal) and can't wait to sell when prices start to crash - want to dump a bad deal. It takes a contrarian to buck the trends.

But we'll see...I'm just guessing based upon my studies of the "Madness of the Crowds".

P.S.
I went thru the rare coin market bubble bursting 20+ years ago - in the blink of an eye they lost 90% of their value - all of them. Took 10 years to recover. No one then could contemplate how coins could be worth their base metal price - that's exactly what happened - they assumed the value of the metal they were made from.

Just what is 1/52 of a condo worth? There are 51 other owners in that one condo - they all want to do something different and thus the 1/52 slice becomes worthless until folks feel comfortable with disposable income again.

We see our largest companies imploding,, stock market losing 1/2 of 200 years of gains in 12 months, real estate fading, and our government spending 5+ trillion dollars on boondoggles in 1 year - plus we are now bankrupt. Assuming a 1/52 slice of a condo has some value is a stretch of the imagination in this environment; at least to me.

 

[lark]

I seriously have to question these above statements as that would indicate that it will be possible to buy a Marriott Utah ski week (SW or MS) for $1,750?

Really? Perhaps you mean Bronze weeks.

When a 2 bedroom ski week rents for about $750 per day from Marriott for non-owners, then this timeshare would pay for itself in 3 nights.

Let me know where I can buy a platinum 2 bedroom Marriott ski week (ski-in/out) for this low price.

A platinum summit just went for about $17.5k on ebay, so I think we're still about 16k shy of that mark.

 

[BocaBum99]

Simply using the going rate for Wyndhams (15%) and the developers settling for 200% gross return on their money instead of 400%. (Resulting in just 5%) Some here report 20% of current sales price - not much of a stretch to me; the panic hasn't started yet.

When bubbles burst the prices we have gotten accustomed to fool us as to how little something is actually worth to folks who don't want these things. People like to follow the crowds - they can't wait to buy when prices are at all time highs (Don't want to miss out on a good deal) and can't wait to sell when prices start to crash - want to dump a bad deal. It takes a contrarian to buck the trends.

But we'll see...I'm just guessing based upon my studies of the "Madness of the Crowds".

P.S.
I went thru the rare coin market bubble bursting 20+ years ago - in the blink of an eye they lost 90% of their value - all of them. Took 10 years to recover. No one then could contemplate how coins could be worth their base metal price - that's exactly what happened - they assumed the value of the metal they were made from.

Just what is 1/52 of a condo worth? There are 51 other owners in that one condo - they all want to do something different and thus the 1/52 slice becomes worthless until folks feel comfortable with disposable income again.

We see our largest companies imploding,, stock market losing 1/2 of 200 years of gains in 12 months, real estate fading, and our government spending 5+ trillion dollars on boondoggles in 1 year - plus we are now bankrupt. Assuming a 1/52 slice of a condo has some value is a stretch of the imagination in this environment; at least to me.

I figured your conclusion was based on something like what you state in this message.

In summary, you read a book for what you thought was an analogous market situation, looked at a couple Wyndham data points and extrapolated a conclusion across the whole industry.

It makes for interesting message board reading, but not so much for sound buy, sell or hold advice.

 

[ondeadlin]

I must say it's absolutely fascinating to watch this thread.

On the one hand you have the actual financial numbers. Every major timeshare company reporting that after years of growth, sales have tanked. Employees being laid off. Timeshare prices absolutely cratering on eBay - pretty much a "Did you see THAT?" thread concerning a different auction every day on TUG. Historical resale lows on just about every property.

Yet despite all this actual, factual evidence, on the other hand, you've got people suggesting Perry is the one who's nuts for suggesting it might get worse.

It's all got a touch of "The Emperor's New Clothes" feel to it.

With Perry playing the role of the small child who cries, "He's got nothing on!"

 

[BocaBum99]

I must say it's absolutely fascinating to watch this thread.

On the one hand you have the actual financial numbers. Every major timeshare company reporting that after years of growth, sales have tanked. Employees being laid off. Timeshare prices absolutely cratering on eBay - pretty much a "Did you see THAT?" thread concerning a different auction every day on TUG. Historical resale lows on just about every property.

Yet despite all this actual, factual evidence, on the other hand, you've got people suggesting Perry is the one who's nuts for suggesting it might get worse.

It's all got a touch of "The Emperor's New Clothes" feel to it.

With Perry playing the role of the small child who cries, "He's got nothing on!"

You and Perry are clearly in the same camp. That's fine. For every seller who has a strong reason to sell, there is a buyer who has a strong reason to buy. The equilibrium point where the buyers equal the sellers in the tug of war of opinion is called the price.

Just because there is a lot of factoids that suggest prices will continue to drop, it doesn't mean a) that it will continue to drop, b) that prices at this level are bad to take advantage of, or c) that it won't later rebound. In fact, I believe that prices will rebound, but nowhere near to the levels they were at their peak. And that resort sales won't resume to more than about 50% of their peak within 2 years. But prices have dropped on the resale market by more than 50% for many prime weeks. So, perhaps it could be that the news and facts you are seeing are already priced into the market.

Perry believes in timeshare armagedon. Hardly anyone else believes that scenario. They could all be wrong and it could be Perry and you that are right. At this point in time, the majority on this message board clearly disagree with both of you as evidence by their posts. Why don't you just accept that they don't agree and that's fine.

If you find a Summit Watch 2 br platinum unit for sale for less than $10k, let me know because I'm going to buy it. I want to trade up my bronzes for platinum. I'll just donate my bronze units to charity if I can replace them with platinums.

 

[ondeadlin]

I prefer to believe I'm in my own camp, Boca, not predicting the complete collapse Perry is, but aware prices appear to be getting lower each day, and the annual eBay timeshare dump we see when 2009 MF come due in January is looming.

My point is simply to be wary. The trend is obvious, and there's a considerable lurking danger in that fact that if people are walking away from timeshares right now the way they're walking away from houses, we won't see that until the 2010 MFs explode at resorts that are particularly hard hit.

Is that going to happen? I don't know, but it could.

So, again, I think it's a good time to be wary.

 

[thinze3]

I prefer to believe I'm in my own camp, Boca, not predicting the complete collapse Perry is, but aware prices appear to be getting lower each day, and the annual eBay timeshare dump we see when 2009 MF come due in January is looming.

My point is simply to be wary. The trend is obvious, and there's a considerable lurking danger in that fact that if people are walking away from timeshares right now the way they're walking away from houses, we won't see that until the 2010 MFs explode at resorts that are particularly hard hit.

Is that going to happen? I don't know, but it could.

So, again, I think it's a good time to be wary.

So when would be a good time to buy? Let's say you wanted to purchase a BeachPlace platiunum unit. Retail is $30K and resale hase been $12-15K the last two years. At what price would you wait to make a purchase?

Do you think MBP will be worth $1 within the next year or so as Perry has suggested? Generalities have been tossed around but I would like to hear specifics.

Terry

 

[BocaBum99]

So when would be a good time to buy? Let's say you wanted to purchase a BeachPlace platiunum unit. Retail is $30K and resale hase been $12-15K the last two years. At what price would you wait to make a purchase?

Do you think MBP will be worth $1 within the next year or so as Perry has suggested? Generalities have been tossed around but I would like to hear specifics.

Terry

Terry,

I think you set up an excellent question. The answer regarding buying and selling should always be followed with "at what price?"

In ondeadlin's thread entitled, "Please don't buy into the idea this is a buying opporunity," he clearly indicates that the TIME is not right to buy. But, TIME is NOT the right metric to determine whether or not a person should buy. PRICE is the determinant.

What if you did get an opportunity to purchase a Beachplace Tower platinum 2br for $1? If that was NOW, then that would be a fantastic deal NOW.

One of the major falacies of Ondeadlin's logic for not buying now is he assumes that the resale market is fairly efficient. When a market is efficient, the standard deviation of price around the mean is very very small. That is the definition of an efficient market. Buyers and seller are knowledgeable about the market price and therefore don't deviate from it much.

But, timesharing is an extremely inefficient market. Even in its hey day 2 last year, on a given day, a person would pay $20k for a unit. Another person paid $5k. And yet another paid someone $2995 to take it off their hands. The standard deviation is very large indicating inefficiency.

It's the same now with the major difference that Marriott is no longer competing for many units meaning that buyers have an edge in this market for the first time ever. If someone sees that $3000 Marriott, they have a chance to get it whereas last year they didn't.

So, despite what Perry and Ondeadlin's opinion about this not being a good time to buy, they are just plain not in the majority in that opinion and the rest of us have solid logic for believing so.

 

[GregT]

This is a fascinating thread -- we are trying to determine if this is a good time to buy timeshares.

It's the same answer as always -- if you can afford the upfront (and assume you flush the upfront payment) and are not concerned about the ongoing MF's and probably increases in MF's then it's a great time, as always, to be a buyer. But we should be prudent about making sure all bases are covered before further commitments. It's not an investment, it's an expense. If you can salvage a little bit of the upfront cost someday, then good for you, but don't buy it assuming it will appreciate.

I don't know the details of what's Perry's expecting, but in my opinion, it's going to get worse, alot worse. I'm a predictor of a Great Recession, not a return of the Great Depression, more like 1974 than 1933. Personal (and corporate) liquidity is what matters, having sufficient cash reserves. I am thrilled and encouraged by Ben Bernanke's actions, but all this will still take time to resolve. It's one thing to talk about massive layoffs, it's another to experience the reality of what comes from having massive layoffs.

This will be very painful for many good folks. If you have the cash reserves to survive it, it will be a feast to pick up cheap assets of all kinds, including timeshares. But timeshares are different because they will never meaningfully appreciate, they are a toy -- you might get a modest profit, but it won't generate the returns a different asset might. Take the same money and buy discounted homes or stocks that yield something, and use the dividend to buy your timeshare.

So please, don't bang on Perry, don't bang on Boca, these only distract the issue. It's the same as always, use only your play money for timeshares, money you'll never miss.

And please don't minimize my comments by asking if I understand the Fed -- yes I do - and despite the Fed, it's going to get much worse before it gets better. But I may differ from Perry in that I don't predict a dollar crash, and I think we will be emerging from this in 12 months.

So, during that time, and, please forgive me for being a viking, but I will be an opportunistic buyer of true assets, with timeshares, as always, treated as a toy and bought with gambling money.

 

[ondeadlin]

So when would be a good time to buy? Let's say you wanted to purchase a BeachPlace platiunum unit. Retail is $30K and resale hase been $12-15K the last two years. At what price would you wait to make a purchase?

Do you think MBP will be worth $1 within the next year or so as Perry has suggested? Generalities have been tossed around but I would like to hear specifics.

Terry

Terry, my advice is today the same as it's always been for timeshares: The right time to buy is when you truly intend to use the property, you believe you can afford the purchase and will be comfortable losing a large portion of your investment, because timeshares typically depreciate more than they appreciate.

Maybe the "comfortable losing a large portion of your investment" part deserves a little more emphasis today, maybe not, that's essentially our debate here.

That isn't to say that folks like Boca - who invest a tremendous amount of time and enterprise acquiring above-average skills and knowledge of the marketplace - can't game the system and see their purchases appreciate more than they depreciate. But the average person doesn't have the time or dedication to do that IMO.

 

[PerryM]

Hers's a guiding light...

I like Zillow – it has always pegged our house price correctly.

The average US house was $238k in Sep ’06 and is now $210k – a loss of 12%. My suggestion is that when Marriott lowers the selling price of the same exact unit 12% buy then; either from Marriott or resale depending what goodies are being offered by Marriott and if there is that internal exchange system that rumors tout.

It’s that simple.

Beyond that simple method you might as well flip a coin.

P.S.
This is a moving percentage - if Marriott lowers the price to 12% in 6 months you must check Zillow and see what the new percentage is for the average US home.

At some point timeshares will stop the 40 year climb and start to follow reality - it will be important to keep a list of those high sales prices for ALL timeshares.

 

[BocaBum99]

I like Zillow – it has always pegged our house price correctly.

The average US house was $238k in Sep ’06 and is now $210k – a loss of 12%. My suggestion is that when Marriott lowers the selling price of the same exact unit 12% buy then; either from Marriott or resale depending what goodies are being offered by Marriott and if there is that internal exchange system that rumors tout.

It’s that simple.

Beyond that simple method you might as well flip a coin.

P.S.
This is a moving percentage - if Marriott lowers the price to 12% in 6 months you must check Zillow and see what the new percentage is for the average US home.

At some point timeshares will stop the 40 year climb and start to follow reality - it will be important to keep a list of those high sales prices for ALL timeshares.

I can't believe you just posted this message. Do you even realize how flawed your post is? You are using the exact same logic for real estate as you did the Dow Jones Industrial averages. You claimed it had over 13% average annual return and therefore made the decision to buy and hold and recommend it the day before it peaked and lost 36% of its value. Using this type of gross averaging will lead you to make very dubious predictions.

Let me illuminate:

1) Usually, numbers such as the ones your reported are MEDIAN numbers, not mean. All this indicates is the 50 percentile sale made during the period. This gives you an indication of a trend in how much buyers are paying in aggregate. It does NOT tell you how much a given house has appreciated or depreciated. To arrive at that number you need to do a comparative market analysis for an individual house over time time periods and then calculate the compound annual growth rate over that period. Then, do it for collections of houses in the same geography. That gives you the best indication of how much housing prices are actually increasing vs. decreasing in that geography.

Moreover, if the median priced home selling at $238k was a 3 bedroom ranch home with 1500 square feet in living space and the $210k home was a 1 bedroom studio unit with 500 square feet, you can actually say that home prices have increased since the median cost per square foot has increased.

2) Various geographies and even neighborhoods have varying compound annual growth rates based on various market factors including changes in taste, availability of mortgages for that level of house and family income in the area. There is no gross average across all households that you can apply to all houses like you did. Using the stock analogy, it would be like saying that Caterpillar and General Motors stock should rise and fall the same amount because they are both industrial manufacturers. Jim Cramer said it well today. He said the major difference between these companies is that one is making great products cheaper and the other is making terrible products more expensive, therefore a difference is stock price appreciation.

3) Even if the numbers you used were homogenous across all homes, let's take a closer look at what they mean. If an individual homeowner purchased the median priced home in Sept 2006 at $238k and that house was now appraised at $210k, that does represent 12% loss in home value. But, it's leveraged. If they only put 5% down, they have negative equity in their home of ($16,100) excluding closing costs on both sides of a potential sale. That is over 200% loss of invested capital. That's right. An investment of $11,900 turns into a negative equity of ($16,100). No wonder owners are just walking away. And this is just with houses that have decreased only 12%. If you have an average of 12%, there are some homes that have lost 30-40% and other that have lost only 5-8%.

Moreover, look at how small a change in foreclosure rates nearly brought down the entire financial industry in the US and the world. In Nov 2008, one in every 488 homes were sent foreclosure notices. On an annual basis, that is about 2.5%. That's right, it took ONLY 2.5% of the households to create this entire financial industry mess.

So, using the change in median home values is extremely unreliable in determing the likely market value change in home values. And, don't blow off 12% as a minor loss that is easy to absorb. It's not.

 

[m61376]

Perry-
Following this logic, then, wouldn't it be fair to say that purchasing a timeshare now at 12% or less of a discount from the selling prices a year ago would be considered a bargain? Maybe I'm missing something in the argument here, but that would seem a reasonable conclusion from your post.

While I don't look at ownership as an investment (unless you want to consider the salesperson line of "investing in your family" ) but I do feel, like the real estate market, it will turn around again. After all, you are still buying a piece of property, and there is inherent value to that- especially if it is prime real estate like a beachfront or ski location or in a prime vacation destination. Unless you feel that you'll be able to buy a beachfront condo or ski house, etc., for $1 in the future (and, I'd love a piece of that real estate purchase), then I don't see how you can predict that 1/52nd of one will be worth that.

I do think that what you buy may be a big factor here; sad to say, but I think certain groups are going to remain harder hit than others and take longer to bounce back, and that the recovery to more normal lifestyles will occur faster at the upper ends. That said, I think the appeal of Marriotts and the like will bounce back faster than some of the lesser resorts.

Given the marketplace, why hasn't DVC dived? If all timeshares suddenly have devaluated and the bubble just burst, then why not Disney? Despite, the hype, they are not magical and their owners not immune. I am sure there are desperate Disney sellers just like Marriott and Starwood and the like. I think the difference that we are seeing is that Disney is not letting these hit the general marketplace for consumption (they are still buying them back via ROFR). Is there any other explanation here that I am missing?

Unless you have a crystal ball, there is no way of telling for sure. I do agree that discretion is important and that disposable income should be used if making a purchase. I think it may be a unique opportunity to buy that extra unit you've toyed with the idea of buying if you have the money in the bank to do so; financing now would be a terrible idea. I hope that this time next year we will look back smugly and say we made such a good decision, despite the naysayers. As for buying for profiteering- I'm not sure about that- although I do think that there have been some isolated buys, like Terry's BPT and a few others, that might truly turn out to be an investment in a year or two.

This will be an interesting thread to resurrect at this time next year.

 

[PerryM]

Simpler the better...

Local home developers in our area are selling new homes reflecting the loss in real estate - they are selling for less than 2 years ago; why not timeshare developers?

I see no reason why timeshare developers should live in a fantasy world and be exempt from reality - on the whole you can buy real estate for 12% less than 2 years ago - that's what a loss of 12% means. It’s that simple. Hell, most of the resort areas have suffered double that rate - maybe you might want to wait for Marriott to lower their prices 25% - you won't get any arguments from me on that number either.

So if a person wants to buy a timeshare, why give the developers an additional 12% - 25% that they don’t deserve? Why are they so special? This trickles down to the resale market too.

I do understand that the timeshare real estate brokers won’t get much business with this simple mechanical way of putting the decision back on the developer’s back but I don’t care about them. I hope its clear by now.

Folks what ever happened to the “If their lips are moving they must be…” come on my folks, my advice results in timeshare brokers, that would be BocaBum99 and others here, getting less money in their pockets – of course they're going to go ballistic. I'm advising folks to neither buy or sell timeshares until the developers wake up to reality - it's that simple. What's wrong with that logic? At some point they will be forced to wake up to reality.

In fact, the more they attack me the more I must be impacting them or folks who have a relationship with them. I can simply look at the attacks and gage that I must be doing something right; job well done.

Wait for it folks.....wait...wait....wait for the developers to wake up to reality. That goes for timeshare brokers as a whole too.

I'm simply one timeshare owner expressing my opinion - it seems to drive the brokers mad.

P.S.
This whole argument seems surreal - kind of like what Detroit is going thru now. Reality will force them to wake up too.


Going on vacation for 2 weeks and won't even bring the laptop - hope you all have a great holiday season.

I'll be back next year and will gladly answer any questions.

All the best for 2009.

Perry

 

[m61376]

So, Perry, why wouldn't a resale week priced at >12% less than it was a year ago be a good value/purchase? I understand with your rationale that Marriott and other developers should be lowering their retail prices, but in line with your argument, if resale prices are reflecting this decrease, why aren't they a good value now?

 

[thinze3]

It appears to me that this is all about risk vs reward. Perry, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe your view is that there is still great downside potential in the timeshare market and the potential implosion of a view timeshare developers. If this is true, I can easily understand your view.

I on the other hand do not believe there is 'great' downside potential for the most prime timeshares, already priced at very affordable prices . Some downside potential - yes, but great downside potential - no. I more so believe that trying to time the market can cost you a great purchase opportunity or two. When the credit market frees up a bit, and both buyers and developers have full access to this credit, these Marriott resale opportunites can be gone in a hurry.

Assuming that Marriott wil have access to plenty of cash, they will begin buying back these resales in droves. BeachPlace at $7K, Ocean Pointe and NCV at $10K is much cheaper than developement cost of $15-20K. Marriott has to turn dollars to make money and you can bet they will continue turning dollars.

As far as prices, YIKES! Marriott did get a little out of control with places like Marco Islnad and the new Maui towers. I do believe that Marriott has begun lowering prices in their way of doing business. Last month they were offering discounts at NCV and a few months ago, they were offering the 'other half' of an OEY at 40% of annual cost. I checked yesterday and found that Oceana Palms is the same price as it was last year. BUT here is the difference. Marriott offered me FULL retail price on my Legends Edge as a trade in. That's right FULL retail price!

This is Marriott's way of 'lowering' their prices, and I do expect even better bargains to come along from them in the nears future. Maybe they'll offer buyers of Marco Island a free silver week at another resort.

Anyhow, yes I do know that there is a downside risk in todays timeshare world, but I strongly believe that the Marriott risk-reward currently tilts in favor of reward.

Terry

 

[BocaBum99]

I do understand that the timeshare real estate brokers won’t get much business with this simple mechanical way of putting the decision back on the developer’s back but I don’t care about them. I hope its clear by now.

Folks what ever happened to the “If their lips are moving they must be…” come on my folks, my advice results in timeshare brokers, that would be BocaBum99 and others here, getting less money in their pockets – of course they're going to go ballistic. I'm advising folks to neither buy or sell timeshares until the developers wake up to reality - it's that simple. What's wrong with that logic? At some point they will be forced to wake up to reality.

In fact, the more they attack me the more I must be impacting them or folks who have a relationship with them. I can simply look at the attacks and gage that I must be doing something right; job well done.

Wait for it folks.....wait...wait....wait for the developers to wake up to reality. That goes for timeshare brokers as a whole too.

I'm simply one timeshare owner expressing my opinion - it seems to drive the brokers mad.

Perry,

Come back soon. You've made this message board interesting again. It's boring when you go hiatus. More importantly, I need for you to come back so I can plan my investment actions. Let me know when you want to sell your condo hotel. That will be a clear signal to buy. In fact, whatever you bought yours at, I'll offer you 25% sight unseen.

 

[timeos2]

Prime time still depends on the other 48 +/- weeks

I on the other hand do not believe there is 'great' downside potential for the most prime timeshares, already priced at very affordable prices . Some downside potential - yes, but great downside potential - no. I more so believe that trying to time the market can cost you a great purchase opportunity or two. When the credit market frees up a bit, and both buyers and developers have full access to this credit, these Marriott resale opportunites can be gone in a hurry.

The problem with that theory is that operationally there is no difference between a prime week at resort "X" and the (majority) of weeks which would be considered lesser value times. The annual fees - the only item you are certain of dealing with once you buy - could potentially sky rocket as the non-prime owners drop out (can't sell at any price or feel the annual fees aren't worth paying compared to value received) thus making even the prime weeks unattractive to purchase/own. This is in fact the most likely outcome at most largely seasonal resorts. It has started at many even before the economic problems and will accelerate in the near term as people deal with those unprecedented changes.

The questions surrounding all timeshares as a sustainable model preclude any purchase except one where you plan to use the resort or system, understand your upfront money may never be recovered much less provide any gain and that fees may rise quickly and without any recourse to owners. If you feel the value is there given those likely occurrences then its a great time to buy a deal. If you plan on any of those factors in reverse (fees holding steady or dropping, resale value rising, buying to flip, rent or otherwise use to make money) you are taking a real risk That can lead to great rewards or big losses but its a risk regardless. How sure are you that things will change as you believe they will? You pay your money and you take your chances.