What should I buy?

[boston]

1) Is there a vacation destination you wish to visit most of the time or on a regular basis? if so where?

Yes, Hawaii. But flexible.

2) Do you want to visit your home resort at least half the time, or do you want to trade more than half the time?

At least half the time.

3) What are your 5 top trade destinations?

• Europe/Greece/Iceland
• Caribbean/Japan/Thailand
• Australia/New Zealand
• US/CDN/INTL ski destinations
• Big cities like NY London, Paris - but also less mainstream places.

4) How many people do you usually travel with - total, including yourself?

4 People - we also have friends who could travel with us, making 8 people at times.

5) Can you travel any time, or are you locked into the school schedule?

Locked into the school schedule for near term but can make exceptions.

6) Can you make firm plans 12 or more mos. in advance?

Yes. We can plan well in advance and be firm.

7) Can you vacation for a full week at a time?

Heck Yes. Ideally two weeks at a time.

8) What level of accommodations do you prefer on a scale of 1 to 5 stars?

4-5 star if we are looking at hotels/resorts.

9) How much can you afford to spend upfront, without financing?

40k - see questions below.

10) How much can you afford to spend every year for a maintenance fee that will come due right after Christmas, and increase each year?

I mean, ideally as little as possible but I have seen fees in the 3k range per year and it can be done.

11) Are you a detail oriented planner?

Yes but do enjoy unplanned opportunities if they arise.

12) Do you understand that once you buy a timeshare, it may be very difficult to sell or give away, and you are responsible for all fees, until you do?

Yes - although this is the part that makes me most nervous. Mainly because I don’t like having zero option.


Some more detail/questions of my own:

1. Is the wheeling and dealing for weeks painful/laborious? Like am I waking up at 4am on January 1 to get the best trades or else miss out?
2. Is it silly to throw more money at the initial investment so that you have a more desirable trade? Or is it like leasing a car and you want the cheapest down payment possible.
3. We live in the east (not the coast), we are thinking about owning in Hawaii tho - should we own closer to home and just trade to travel?
4. We have been to the Marriott Vacation Club Oahu, and it was nice, but we are brand agnostic at this stage.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/advice you can share!!

 

[rickandcindy23]

Europe is tough, not a lot in Australia that I would call luxurious, especially like timeshares in the U.S.

Marriott has a lot of Caribbean, ski locations, Disneyland Paris location, Thailand, definitely Hawaii.

Hilton has some in the locations you are interested in.

I would buy a good Marriott to use for trade, or buy Hilton for the locations you seem to want.

$40,000 will buy a lot of resales, but $3,000 annually doesn't pay the MF's for $40K worth of timeshares.

 

[Tahiya]

Because you want to visit HI half the time and you are mostly restricted to the school schedule, you might consider an every other year ownership there. 4 or 5 stars means you want a Marriott, Westin, or Hilton. Your preferred islands and times of year for HI travel should influence which timeshare you buy. (e.g. Winter travel: S Kauai. Summer travel: N Kauai.)

Hilton generally has the more reasonable maintenance fees. They are strong in Oahu and the Big Island, with one resort in Maui. Westin has a strong presence in W Maui and a lesser presence (in N Kauai.) Marriott is strong on S Kauai, and has a resort on Oahu and W Maui.

Buying in HI, you likely wouldn't want to exchange that week, so you'd want a lower cost timeshare for trading.

 

[boston]

Thanks for this!

Interesting both of you mention multiple TS - so this is fairly common to own more than one property and use them as trading tools?

 

[rickandcindy23]

Thanks for this!

Interesting both of you mention multiple TS - so this is fairly common to own more than one property and use them as trading tools?

Yep. We own Westin Ka'anpali for personal use (we rent half of our unit each year because it's a lockoff). We own three other weeks on Maui that we use every year without fail because the fees are high, and we love it.

We also own traders to get other resorts. We trade into Orlando frequently. We trade into Southern California a lot as well.

We own points that we use ourselves and rent some. We own some deeded weeks that we rent out, when it works, which it isn't working this year very well.

Getting rid of a bunch of timeshares currently, actually. We do not need this many.

 

[boston]

lol! Ahhhh.. ok this is all super interesting. I guess it’s all about how many weeks and which years (and locations) we want to use for personal use and then have some flexibility for MF offsetting and/or trades.

So are the traders in Maui as well? Just smaller units like 1BDRs ?

 

[rickandcindy23]

lol! Ahhhh.. ok this is all super interesting. I guess it’s all about how many weeks and which years (and locations) we want to use for personal use and then have some flexibility for MF offsetting and/or trades.

So are the traders in Maui as well? Just smaller units like 1BDRs ?

No, you would want to own a Sheraton for Westin trades, or a Marriott for Marriott trades. So much to learn. This is a great place to do it.

 

[Hindsite]

As above you could get a Hawaii TS for use and renting out when you don't use, but beware of using them as traders, as the maint fees are so high that you'll struggle to get the value from trading to other locations. They have high trading power, but not a lot of really like for like to exchange in to as far as maint fee value goes.
Consider getting an independent every other year 2-bed high season week at a resort in driving distance from you, so you have the choice of using it or trading it. Or look at a points system for trading like Worldmark.
If you are trading you'll need to decide on the trading exchange, II or RCI, or possibly both, there are also independents, or you could rent out and use the $ to go where you want.
As for your other questions:
1) Yes, if you want a peak resort in peak season you're going to have to be right on it with the inventory release whenever that is, and/or stalk inventory over a period of several weeks to get what you want. Unless you buy a fixed week where they pre-book it for you.
2) Everything is a trade off and forget any notion that this is an investment. Some people do very well with very little as they understand how to use what they own well. Others pay far to much for what they don't need and have a horrible time. There is a lot of personal preference involved so its not formulaic like car leasing.
3) Do both if you can, so you can meet your various needs.
4) Both if you can

Remember if you are looking to trade, that trading, what you can get for your ownership and even access to a trading platform, is a discretionary benefit and can change or be removed at any time. Have an exit plan, buying resale makes that easier, so if your need change or the terms of your ownership no longer suit you, you can move on without too much pain. Learn to use it well and you can get the benefit from any initial down payment in the first 2-5 years with a resale.

 

[jp10558]

If you're firm on 2 weeks, I think you could probably make TS work for you. Most people recommend renting to try out a bunch of different systems first. IDK how necessary that is but it can't hurt. You may want to consider multiple systems because different ones work better for different things.

That said, if I was going to suggest what I probably consider the best bang for buck in getting potential access to the most options in one go - would be Craig lodges in Scotland in HGVC. The reason is you can buy direct from them, and they'll be way under your limits. I might suggest looking for 2 weeks in a 2BR or 3BR Plantium season I lean towards 3BR to get more HGVC pts for not a lot more MFs, but I haven't run all the numbers on that. This'll set your purchase price under $12,000 and MFs around $3,000. It should net you over 22,800 HGVC points yearly. I'd also once in the system look to add Interval International membership at around $100 a year IIRC.

What you get is 9 month out club booking in Hawaii which should be possible if you're not super picky about which resort. At least some do 2BR for 11,200 pts for a week in prime season, you might well do OK with 1BR - IDK how much space you need. So you should be able to club book 2 weeks right there *if* you're on at 276 days before checkout exactly an/or walk the reservations.

Along with this, you'll have RCI access - if you don't use all your club points, you can see if you have enough for an exchange - 2BR is 7,600pts or so and $300. This isn't necessarily the cheapest, but you can go to Wyndham properties and lots of independents this way, which expands your Eastern US access.

Craig gets DEX and if you also join II you can in either use an entire Craig week as a deposit for an exchange. This would eat 1/2 of your HGVC points though. Better IMO is to look for RCI Extra Vacations and Last Calls, and II Getaways. Dex has... meh cash rates, but they're there as well. The benefit here is without committing to MFs yearly you can add as many weeks as you want in the "leftovers" *if* they work for you. This isn't as bad as some people at TUG make it sound - many places have deals in the summer if it's "off season" like Massanutten (which BTW has a lot of fun stuff to do that isn't skiing in the summer IMHO). I've seen weeks at around $750, and they often have last calls where you're waiting for 45 days out, but can get a 2BR week for sub $450.

You're going to need to use the owned weeks via points in HGVC or via ongoing search exchanges for the prime bookings though, which is school holidays. So if you are OK with ski resort but for summer stuff (really, read up on what they have) and getting RIGHT ON the bookings for say winter holidays in Hawaii somewhere, you're probably going to do good.

The other thing is - if you want to do Europe A LOT and their countryside, exchanges can work OK, as can extra vacations in RCI - but those aren't in the cities. If you want to do the Cities, you should consider something like the Hilton Honors hotel points maxing strategies via the AMEX cards etc, OR look at Hapimag if you're going to go there at least once every 5 years. Hapimag straight up lets you trial them for cash for 3 trips, but IDK what that means exactly. They don't work like the US timeshares, there's shares that equal 60 points, and each booking takes so many points. You can supposedly get the shares for 2200 EUR or so. The 60 pts will build up for up to the 5 years like I said, so you could build points on one share over 4 years to have 240 points. Or you can buy multiple shares. The MFs are around 400 EUR a share a year. However, when you book with the points you also have to pay a ~500 EUR local management fee, so it's not anywhere near as cheap to use as US timeshares where usually (if you own) the most there is would be parking and maybe a $70 booking fee.

 

[boston]

Woah. Ok yes. This is excellent - thanks for taking the time to map that out!

I’m starting to see into this a little more… like Neo and the Matrix code - it’s more than just a property and week swaps. There is value vs time vs trade vs MF etc, plus multiple networks. Still so much to learn. I am literally a sponge right now.

I have a chance to go to an HGVC presentation in Hawaii this week so I can see behind the curtain a little on that - and have also been lurking on RedWeek following the great advice here.