Newbie Help: Does View Matter & Offer Question

[KSUGirl]

We want to purchase a resale timeshare at the Marriott Maui Ocean Club. We have been there several times before via our neighbors. Each time we have stayed in an island view room, had a great view and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We plan on trading occasionally through RCI or II.
Right now we are trying to decide whether to spend the extra $ for a better view. It really doesn't matter much to us personally but wondered if it would trade differently?
As a side note...when we make an offer...we are concerned about ROFR. Is it legal to up our offer (the amount of CC) and ask the seller to pay closing costs in order to show a better selling price?
Thanks!

 

[vacationtime1]

View category matters enormously at the Maui Ocean Club. If you have stayed there "several times" in island view rooms and had a "great view" each time, you have been very, very lucky. But view category doesn't matter a bit if you are trading; all similarly sized MOC suites trade the same, regardless of view.

If you expect to trade frequently, you should consider buying every other year ("eoy"). Maintenance fees on Maui are very high, and you would probably do better not throwing a Maui week into Interval to trade.

Don't worry abut ROFR. It is often exercised unpredictably and if your purchase is ROFR'd, there will always be another unit to purchase.

 

[WalnutBaron]

To reinforce something Robert said, trading a high maintenance fee property in Hawaii is not a good use of the property. You can buy a much lower-priced trader unit in Orlando or Las Vegas, for example, that will have lower MF's and a lower upfront cost to own, and you can then deposit that unit with II or RCI for use in trading. If you know you want to visit Maui every year and use your unit, that would be a good use of your ownership. If not, consider the EOY option and supplement your Maui Marriott with a lower-priced, lower MF property elsewhere to trade.

 

[sts1732]

I agree with vacationtime...........view is everything. What one likes, another may not. Especially if you were to rent it. Most people want to see, and hear the ocean. As to "trading differently" the only thing that matters is number of BDR's(2 bed verses studio, 1 BDR.) you have verses what you want to trade into. As to ROFR, that is always up in the air(are they buying everything back, to low, etc.) If you want the reassurance that your offer would go thru, and you wanted to offer more, that is your choice. Do your home work and see what is being ROFR'ed in the resort you want, also see the list of recent resale's. That will give you an idea of what's ROFR'ed and what's not. We recently sold one of ours, and the buyer was concerned about ROFR, and really wanted the property, offered 2.5K more than asking. It would have probably gone thru at the asking price but............He got the property and we got 2.5K more than asked. Everything is a bargaining chip in the beginning, before it goes to contract to be submitted.