Thinking about purchasing deeded week

[Dean]

I would like to support this point because I often forget this now that I own GO and GC. BTW, I co-run an II FB group with 15K members. I am going to cut and paste some your post because your overall full view is spot on. It might not matter to you but I will give Dean from the Tug group credit. If nothing else, it promotes TUG.

Supporting your Bucket point. When I bought my first resale in 1995 Marriott Monarch ($12,500) , I also purchased a 2 bedroom resale Resort World of Orlando ($3,500). They were consecutive summer fixed weeks so I never cared about TDI. I am not sure it was even around. Resort World was my first trader, never having stayed in the 20 years I owned it. I no longer remember the II ratings back than, but it was on par with Marriott. I traded the Resorts for the Monarch and exchanged my Monarch for 130K Marriott Reward Points. Over the years, Resort World minimized the MF increases at the expense of the quality of the resort and hence II rating. The management changed from Resort World to Celebrity and finally Legacy Vacation. I gave it away in 2015. At that point the MF of Resorts was half of the Monarch. I just reviewed my trades. If you notice, there are years I had no exchanges. I started to look for Marriott exchanges within 60 days of travel to make up for lost value. Sometimes my work, desirable availability or air fares did not support this approach. In case it is not obvious, I was tied to a school schedule. If unit size is not listed, it was a 2 bedroom.

Marriott's Monarch at Sea Pines 4 times - 1996-2000 (elected points each year). 440,000 travel award for 4 round trip tickets anywhere in world AA flew plus 2 one week stays at any Marriott and a discount on hertz rental though I do not remember the amount. My wife,2 sons and I did a London/Paris/Madrid/Malaga 23 day trip in 2000. This was when the rewards program was best in breed
Marriott's Heritage Club Labor Day Weekend 2001 ( We wanted to golf this year. All free rounds were at the Heritage Golf Club)
====== This is where I noticed the change in trade value
Marriott's Villas at Doral - Christmas 2002
Star Island Resort and Club - Christmas 2003 (gave this to my BIL)
Marriott Vacation Club Pulse Boston 1 bedroom Christmas 2004
Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort July - 2006 (gave this to my BIL)
Villa Roma Resort Lodges - Christmas 2007 - My nephew from Florida wanted to go skiing.
ESJ Towers Hotel 1 bedroom Thanksgiving - 2008
Water's Edge Resort and Spa 1 Bedroom Labor day 2009
Marriott's Fairway Villas - New Years 2011
Marriott's Aruba Surf Club - Studio April 2013
Marriott's Aruba Surf Club - August (within 60 day Trade) 2013
Marriott's Canyon Villas at Desert - 1 bedroom Christmas 2014
Marriott's Ocean Pointe Studio - Christmas 2015

You're welcome to use anything you deem helpful. I don't need any credit but anything that helps other members and TUG is always good in my book.

 

[DeeCee]

We are owners at Marriott Surfwatch in HH. We purchased a legacy gold week resale 6 years ago. I did not read everything completely through on this thread, so I'm probably off the mark here....but....if I may say, and this is just a suggestion but one that we decided to go with when we bought....buy where you want to stay the most. When we were looking into buying our first timeshare (which is DVC back in 2000, and is a point system) one of the things that kept coming up in my research was to buy where you want to stay the most (home resort with a booking advantage). It was a key point then and a key point when we bought our Surfwatch week. We went with where we want to be the most and when we want to travel there. So for us, gold season allows us to book a Spring or a Fall week each year, which is preferable for our travel times. And, we have done both seasons and love each of them the same.

So, if you are open to suggestions, then that is what I would suggest. We never tried to trade it, makes no sense to me to pay II membership and then pay exchange fees in the hopes that something would come up where and when we want to go. THIS is where and when we want to go every year.
That said, we do have the advantage of using DVC points for trading to other places, even though we only trade out once in a while.

Hope this helps and good luck in your decision.

Dee

 

[jme]

We are owners at Marriott Surfwatch in HH. We purchased a legacy gold week resale 6 years ago. I did not read everything completely through on this thread, so I'm probably off the mark here....but....if I may say, and this is just a suggestion but one that we decided to go with when we bought....buy where you want to stay the most. When we were looking into buying our first timeshare (which is DVC back in 2000, and is a point system) one of the things that kept coming up in my research was to buy where you want to stay the most (home resort with a booking advantage). It was a key point then and a key point when we bought our Surfwatch week. We went with where we want to be the most and when we want to travel there. So for us, gold season allows us to book a Spring or a Fall week each year, which is preferable for our travel times. And, we have done both seasons and love each of them the same.

So, if you are open to suggestions, then that is what I would suggest. We never tried to trade it, makes no sense to me to pay II membership and then pay exchange fees in the hopes that something would come up where and when we want to go. THIS is where and when we want to go every year.
That said, we do have the advantage of using DVC points for trading to other places, even though we only trade out once in a while.

Hope this helps and good luck in your decision.

Dee

Sound and solid advice!
The old adage to "buy where you want to go" is still true. That was the prevailing thought 25 years ago on TUG,
and we followed it and have had nothing but awesome experiences.
And that remained true to this day even after the advent of the Destination Points program in 2010.
We enrolled the weeks that qualified, but have never, and won't, buy more Abound (Destination) Points.
So we have some unenrolled resale weeks, but those are pure gravy.
We seldom use the Abound Points program because of the high point requirements (aka, cost!!), but we can still trade into those properties
by using Interval, thus spending basically only that maintenance fee to accomplish it.
(For example, to stay at another resort in high season using Abound Points, we would need to convert a deeded week (even a platinum week),
but obtain addition points to gain that week, so the cost rises tremendously. Why do that?
If we had purchased Abound Points at some point, there's the high cost of the point requirement, plus the high maintenance fee of the points,
plus the uncertainty of the wait list, etc, etc.)

Some of our friends bought deeded weeks at "other" resorts which required flying, etc,
and they now either have sold them, traded them every year, rented them exclusively, or given the stays away.
I would encourage anyone looking at resale purchases of deeded weeks to couple that "ideal resort and season" with a second purchase,
and that being a lockoff deeded week with a long platinum season that would overlap the initial purchase in case they wanted to split and trade back into that resort,
perhaps to turn it into THREE weeks there.

Another option would be to split trade the lockoffs for those "other resort" stays, wherever that may be.
That combination will be hard to beat in performance over the years, and as for flexibility, it's as good as it gets.
We've been all over this country and also to Europe several times, and would use the same purchase strategy if deciding again.
It makes for visits to so many varied destinations, plus staying at the "home resort" annually if desired, and as the family grows and changes,
it allows easy adaptation of travel plans for including the grown-up kids and also grandkids into the mix. The options evolve with the family.