@maxpot46 I appreciate that you shared your calculations. A couple of questions and comments:
1) Does first day incentive mean bonus points? If so, how does that equate to your term "weeks rent" - do you divide the number of bonus points by the point value of the week you own? (If that is the case we received 8 weeks with our purchase.)
2) The value depreciation rate on our NYC developer unit since 2014 when we first purchased has averaged 14% decline a year over 5 years or a total of 70% decline in value if we were to sell today. The first day bonus value we received comes no where near compensating for this depreciation rate.
If we purchased resale about the same time we bought developer we would not have had extra points, but the value of our unit would have declined by about 40% (not great but not 70%); but instead of losing tens of thousands, it would have been thousands which is much easier to digest. An older resort would result in an even smaller decline in value because it because it would be fully depreciated and close to ROFR value.
Bottom Line: There is an opportunity cost of the capital that we lost by going developer because that's money we will never recover that we never expected to lose on "scarce" NYC real estate. Our story is not unique. Just talk to all the Westin, Hyatt, HGVC, and Marriott owners who lost tens of thousands across the country and still pay ever increasing maintenance fees - this is why people are skeptical.
3) FWIW our NYC maintenance fee has been increasing by 5% a year for the past few years. Last year it was 5.48%. 2.5% is way too low.
4)
A key advantage of renting or investing is that you have the flexibility to stop the expense at any time. Lose a job? Health issue? Economic downturn? Simple, travel less and hold off on expenses for a few years. You cannot do that with a timeshare because you are locked into the expense. Economics would dictate that there should be a significant return for the risk involved of locking in your spending. However the high up front purchase price of developer doesn't provide sufficient reward due to the rapid decline in value. Resale reduces this risk tremendously but as developers increase MF to the point that there is no savings below renting the unit, the economic value of taking on TS risk vs. other options decline as well.