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"Trading In" one SVO for another???

Joshadelic

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I have a question for all of you that are more familiar with Starwood's policies than I am.

Say I already own an SVO property and I want to go to the developer and purchase a 2nd property. Can I "trade-in" the property I already own and use it as credit towards the purchase of a more expensive property - like what would be done when trading in a car for a new one??? Or is their policy only that they sometimes requalify your resale purchase if negotiated during the developer purchase?

If they would accept the property I already own as a trade, what value would I expect to get from it (if any)?

~Josh :)
 

myip

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Trade in is allowed for the same property ie: 1 bedroom to 2 bedroom.
gold season to platinum season... Min price different must be met. -- I think it is $10,000. In the process of trading in you can requalify a resale unit to be in SVN.
 

DeniseM

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From SDKath's guide to Requalifying (In owner resources sticky.)

4) Optional, extra savings step: Look for a couple of resale units to “upgrade.” This means you buy a unit inexpensively on resale and Starwood gives you credit for the original purchase price (the price paid by original owner to Starwood). The units you choose for upgrading have to be in locations that Starwood is actively selling AND have reasonable resales so the choices are limited. Try to find units that are selling cheap now but were really pricy when first bought. My PGA 2BR non-LO cost me $500 on ebay but got me $15,000 credit toward a purchase! Options include:
a. SBP, which is still actively selling in Palmetto phase
b. PGA, which allows upgrade to Cascades, it’s sister resort
c. Some limited WKORV and WKORVN inventory still available
d. SVV, which can upgrade to the non-M new phases of SVV (the M phases are sold out)
e. Note that St John takes about a year to close so I would avoid this unit as an upgrade.
f. Lagunamar cannot be upgraded last I heard due to Mexico ownership rules

Now here is the trick. The price between your resale unit that you are upgrading and the new purchase from Starwood has to have a price difference of $8000 in Orlando and $10,000 elsewhere. So if you got $15,000 credit for your PGA resale, the unit you buy from Starwood has to cost $25,000 at least to make it work. Look at the owner sticky with the current developer prices to help figure out which units would meet this criteria. For example, if I bought a PGA 2BR LO Platinum on resale ($19,000 original sales price and credit given to me), I would not have been able to upgrade it at all because the price difference would not have been big enough. I would recommend making an Excel spreadsheet of the different scenarios.

How do you find out what the original purchase price was? You can ask the seller (and hope he is honest) OR you can work with a good Starwood salesperson who is helping you with your journey to 5*land. They can look up the prices by unit number and the week it is deeded.

These upgrade units also have to be closed and in your name before you can do any upgrading. The resale units above are usually cheap ($500-$3000ish), thankfully. But it can save you substantial amounts of money. In the example above, my PGA saved me $14,500!
 
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Joshadelic

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That makes a HUGE difference when they give you the original cost versus what you may have paid on EBay. Is this something that people do very often? I just don't want to go buying cheap properties on EBay and find out when I go to upgrade that I'm not able to do it. Am I pretty much guaranteed to have success if I approached the developer with an upgrade offer???

~Josh :)
 

tlpnet

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It's is completely dependent on inventory and satisfaction of margin (difference between current developer price and origingal developer price paid) as noted in the earlier posts. If there is inventory available and the margin is satisfied, they will do it.

-tim
 
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