So, I've literally read myself to sleep the last 2 nights and it wasn't until I found this site that I'm starting to get more level-headed again about my very fresh purchase into the upcoming Nanea Villa's in Maui, so thank you for sharing your experiences and expertise.
It seems to me that most reviews of timeshares in general are pretty negative, so I wanted to get off the timeshare witch-hunt vibe that other reviews online seem to focus on, as I get it, people generally only offer reviews when they've had a horrible experience, and not necessarily when they have a great one. Like I said, I'm starting to look at my purchase as half glass full again, after reading a lot of your posts/comments.
I'm still concerned, however, that this purchase might not be totally right for me and my family of 4 (wife and 2 young kids under the age of 5), and our lifestyle moving forward, so I wanted to run some things by you good folks before my Friday (11/6/15) deadline to cancel.
Forgive my naivety, as I'm just starting to learn all the nomenclature and acronyms that all you timeshare-savvy folks have developed, but let me review with you what I've purchased, and hopefully you can all give me some feedback as to if this SVN network and it's other perks are a good idea for me. I know, ultimately, no one can tell me what's best for me, but I need a little validation on some of the things that I bought into were indeed good things, so here we go.
We purchased a resort-view EOY 1 week package that offers me 148k StarOptions at my home resort at Nanea. For our incentives, we got the Gold Status w/ SPG, 70k StarPoints and 4 certificates to buy 90k StarPoints at like $1875. Outside of some resort credits and other small extras, thats pretty much the package, and it's like $31k for the mortgage portion and MF of $1331 or something very close (my sales guy told me that this also includes my $99 banking fee for points if I want to roll them over, so that number can fluctuate slightly if I don't roll points over in any given use year).
First off, I appreciated the fact that he just kind of rolled all the potential fees/costs together into a number for me to digest if that works financially, and then broke it down to explain that it could go down but not really up (unless of course MF's are raised for that year, which I understand historically has been about 4% at the neighboring Westin Villa property since it's inception).
My wife and I intend to use our StarOptions, but we aren't necessarily hell bent on going to Maui every time, and in fact, are looking at the conversion to StarPoints option as a great flexible ownership perk. I understand its not always the best value, dollar-to-point, but we see ourselves using StarPoints a lot as our kids are getting to the age that they can stay w/ family for a weekend and we can start taking getaways together again. We love the idea that we can stay at all the high end 1200 fine hotels in the network all across the world using our newfound big chunk of StarPoints, and will continue to look for smart ways to accrue those points via the SPG AMEX card and other avenues. Suffice it to say, we love nice hotels, but honestly, when I'm staring at the booking screen as a renter, I almost never willingly pay $350+/night for a room, so using these SPG points to take advantage of what we normally would not do, seems very appealing to us.
In terms of using the StarOptions, we are relatively close to Palm Springs, AZ and CO so perhaps those EOY points might last longer to take shorter trips in slower parts of the year to these villas w/ extended family. My point here is that our ownership at Nanea isn't the prime focus of our ownership, while we do look forward to staying there and enjoying those villas in the future. It was more so getting into a group that has a flexible and powerful network to stay in luxury hotels/villas across the world under the Starwood group. The inheritable lifetime Gold Status seems to also offer a lot of attractive benefits, especially if we do use the StarPoints and hotel network more than we do the SVN Villa network.
So, all that said, my fears still are:
A.) We are spending way more than needed to achieve Gold Status w/ SPG. 25 nights a year in SPG hotels seems expensive, but I've heard from a friend Gold status can be achieved by using a SPG AMEX and charging over $25k/year on stuff. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Thoughts?
B.) MF's will skyrocket and my supposed "low" early phase buy-in price was just a lure and I will regret having to pay high MF's for the rest of my life. I know, no one can predict inflation perfectly, but just wondering if you SVN owners out there feel like you're being gouged by MF's (especially in the Maui properties that are purpose-built, and not pre-existing resorts that need lots of renovation)
C.) Booking at other villas in the SVN network will be near impossible and we will only have a shot at going back to our home report, Nanea, on those years we actually do decide to use the StarOptions and go on our week vacation.
D.) My initial investment for the mortgage is really just a large chunk money-suck, as that equity will never be returned to my kids or future lineage since timeshare sales rarely turn a profit, much less break even, when they are finally sold.
Thanks in advance for hearing me out, and offering any advice or thoughts...cheers folks!
It seems to me that most reviews of timeshares in general are pretty negative, so I wanted to get off the timeshare witch-hunt vibe that other reviews online seem to focus on, as I get it, people generally only offer reviews when they've had a horrible experience, and not necessarily when they have a great one. Like I said, I'm starting to look at my purchase as half glass full again, after reading a lot of your posts/comments.
I'm still concerned, however, that this purchase might not be totally right for me and my family of 4 (wife and 2 young kids under the age of 5), and our lifestyle moving forward, so I wanted to run some things by you good folks before my Friday (11/6/15) deadline to cancel.
Forgive my naivety, as I'm just starting to learn all the nomenclature and acronyms that all you timeshare-savvy folks have developed, but let me review with you what I've purchased, and hopefully you can all give me some feedback as to if this SVN network and it's other perks are a good idea for me. I know, ultimately, no one can tell me what's best for me, but I need a little validation on some of the things that I bought into were indeed good things, so here we go.
We purchased a resort-view EOY 1 week package that offers me 148k StarOptions at my home resort at Nanea. For our incentives, we got the Gold Status w/ SPG, 70k StarPoints and 4 certificates to buy 90k StarPoints at like $1875. Outside of some resort credits and other small extras, thats pretty much the package, and it's like $31k for the mortgage portion and MF of $1331 or something very close (my sales guy told me that this also includes my $99 banking fee for points if I want to roll them over, so that number can fluctuate slightly if I don't roll points over in any given use year).
First off, I appreciated the fact that he just kind of rolled all the potential fees/costs together into a number for me to digest if that works financially, and then broke it down to explain that it could go down but not really up (unless of course MF's are raised for that year, which I understand historically has been about 4% at the neighboring Westin Villa property since it's inception).
My wife and I intend to use our StarOptions, but we aren't necessarily hell bent on going to Maui every time, and in fact, are looking at the conversion to StarPoints option as a great flexible ownership perk. I understand its not always the best value, dollar-to-point, but we see ourselves using StarPoints a lot as our kids are getting to the age that they can stay w/ family for a weekend and we can start taking getaways together again. We love the idea that we can stay at all the high end 1200 fine hotels in the network all across the world using our newfound big chunk of StarPoints, and will continue to look for smart ways to accrue those points via the SPG AMEX card and other avenues. Suffice it to say, we love nice hotels, but honestly, when I'm staring at the booking screen as a renter, I almost never willingly pay $350+/night for a room, so using these SPG points to take advantage of what we normally would not do, seems very appealing to us.
In terms of using the StarOptions, we are relatively close to Palm Springs, AZ and CO so perhaps those EOY points might last longer to take shorter trips in slower parts of the year to these villas w/ extended family. My point here is that our ownership at Nanea isn't the prime focus of our ownership, while we do look forward to staying there and enjoying those villas in the future. It was more so getting into a group that has a flexible and powerful network to stay in luxury hotels/villas across the world under the Starwood group. The inheritable lifetime Gold Status seems to also offer a lot of attractive benefits, especially if we do use the StarPoints and hotel network more than we do the SVN Villa network.
So, all that said, my fears still are:
A.) We are spending way more than needed to achieve Gold Status w/ SPG. 25 nights a year in SPG hotels seems expensive, but I've heard from a friend Gold status can be achieved by using a SPG AMEX and charging over $25k/year on stuff. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Thoughts?
B.) MF's will skyrocket and my supposed "low" early phase buy-in price was just a lure and I will regret having to pay high MF's for the rest of my life. I know, no one can predict inflation perfectly, but just wondering if you SVN owners out there feel like you're being gouged by MF's (especially in the Maui properties that are purpose-built, and not pre-existing resorts that need lots of renovation)
C.) Booking at other villas in the SVN network will be near impossible and we will only have a shot at going back to our home report, Nanea, on those years we actually do decide to use the StarOptions and go on our week vacation.
D.) My initial investment for the mortgage is really just a large chunk money-suck, as that equity will never be returned to my kids or future lineage since timeshare sales rarely turn a profit, much less break even, when they are finally sold.
Thanks in advance for hearing me out, and offering any advice or thoughts...cheers folks!
this same deal will still be available next week, next month, and next year. 
