I have a question for those of you who have no expectation of residual value for your Marriott time share.
Why would you purchase a property with the expectation that it would have no residual value? You as an owner have a responsibility to pay for upkeep as long as you own that property. I understand that you feel that what you paid for was the right to use that property for one week for vacations as long as you own it, is that correct? Do you not have any concern how much that week costs you? If Marriott makes decisions that lower the value of your property to zero and it costs extra money to get trading privileges, the value could go to less than zero, i.e. you may have to pay someone to take over your responsibilities to the property.
If money is of no concern why buy at all? The ultimate freedom would be to rent from Marriott all the weeks you want, when you want, and where you want to go and that way you would have no further downward risk.
One reason I bought was to save money, and the less my timeshare is worth when I sell it the more the weeks I use cost me.
ray
Well, this is a question that must take into consideration a whole lot of factors ...
We weren't able to take yearly vacations for most of our younger years because of financial constraints, and now that we can, the timeshare model of "forced vacations" was a big incentive to get into the game. Old habits die hard, and we wanted to combat against those old once-in-a-great-while vacation habits.
We don't like very much at all staying in hotel rooms, but do like the accommodations that are offered with the certain timeshare configurations that we considered purchasing (multi bedrooms, kitchen, living room, etc) combined with the resort amenities that are generally associated with hotels.
If you compare hotel room vacation costs to timeshare vacation costs, it's true that you can probably spend less over a lifetime (especially if you purchase developer) by sticking to hotel rooms. However, if you compare timeshare ownership costs to timeshare rental costs, you will almost always come out ahead even in the case of direct purchases. Consider, during our stay at Barony this past May, the notice in the unit indicated that nightly rental rates at that time were $815 (or $850, not exactly sure) per night. Granted, m/f associated with timeshare ownership increase every year, but so will rental rates. Plus, a specific timeshare unit configuration may not always be available in the rental pool.
Similarly, if you compare timeshare ownership costs to vacation property ownership costs, sometimes you come out ahead with the timeshare. We did anyway, because we were comparing the Hilton Head Island luxury oceanfront condominium that we'd stayed in for three years to the MVCI oceanfront resorts where we eventually purchased. $4M, at least, as well as taxes and insurance (subject to resale market fluctuations) for a property we weren't able to stay in for more than ten months of the year and didn't want to enter into any rental agreement for, versus MVCI ownership for the exact amount of weeks we could use subject to understood limitations? No-brainer.
As for resale v. developer? Well, the more I read these boards the more I realize that we were extremely lucky the day that we chose to visit an MVCI sales office. We went in armed with some knowledge from reading these boards and the disboards, and a copy of the latest local Timeshare Resales (or whatever it was called) magazine, and ran into a sales person who explained the product exactly as what I'd read here it should be. She didn't use any rumors or lies or threats to try to influence us, and she didn't offer any speculative info beyond what we asked for ("Yes, only one - the ability to trade for MRP. ... Yes, MVCI can make changes if the contract language protects such things. ... No, there are no changes that will definitely be rolled out to immediately impact whatever you may buy today." - etc. paraphrased.) It was the possible changes combined with the developer v. resale discussions that I'd read on TUG that concerned us, and so we chose to purchase developer-direct simply to hedge our bets against any possible future changes.
I honestly think that our good fortune in meeting up with that particular salesperson is the single most important reason why I generally will try to see Marriott/MVCI's point of view during discussions here. As much as it's reported here that salespeople are the scum of the earth
, that's not been my experience at all.
And finally, timeshare ownership is an intensely personal financial decision that can generate all of those feelings behind that old "three things not to discuss - finances, religion and politics" axiom. Suffice it to say that our ownership/purchase works for us in our financial situation when we consider all the rewards and risks. I'm sure the same could be said by at least 95% of the TUG members.
