Loriannf
TUG Member
Hi all, we just returned from our week at WSJ and scheduled an owner's update - they don't have a general one anymore, you have to privately schedule. Several things of interest to note:
1) If you own in Buildings 41 and 42, 31 and probably 32 (the "older" units), you're going to be assessed a special assessment in the range of $1400 - 1900 next year because they are completely redoing the units. Buildings 41 and 42 will be done in September/October 06; Building 32 is probably not going to be done this year, but soon. Supposedly they are putting in around $60-70,000 per unit on the upgrades. The decor will be somewhere in between the "urban" look of the "new units" and the current, more island themed decor.
2) Inventory is getting very low. We were looking to buy a week 16, 3 bedroom, but they are completely sold out in all unit sizes for week 16. We own week 17, 3 bedroom, so we ended up buying a week 18 (gasp, yes from the developer) 3 bedroom, building 43. There were two other week 18 3 bedrooms available, but were in the "older" buildings and thus subject to the "assessment." When factoring in the assessment, and the fact that the maintenance fees are the same, and that they were giving us 120,000 StarPoints, we decided to buy from Starwood. We had been looking for resale, but adjacent weeks to ours were not coming up and we didn't want to take the risk of buying a week and trying to shift it to coincide with our current week.
3) For those of you interested, there is still a Week 7 3 bedroom available, listed at about $112,000. There were several other Platinum Plus 3 bedrooms available (around 9 weeks), and the price was averaging $75,000.00.
4) Storage rooms are available to some owners of more than 2 weeks, but at
an annual fee of $500.00. We tried to get them to give us one, but no deal. When we first bought WSJ, they were giving people who owned 3 weeks storage units as part of the deal, so we thought we'd try to get one, until we found out that now there's a fee.
If anyone has any questions, post here, or email me and I'll try to answer.
Lori
1) If you own in Buildings 41 and 42, 31 and probably 32 (the "older" units), you're going to be assessed a special assessment in the range of $1400 - 1900 next year because they are completely redoing the units. Buildings 41 and 42 will be done in September/October 06; Building 32 is probably not going to be done this year, but soon. Supposedly they are putting in around $60-70,000 per unit on the upgrades. The decor will be somewhere in between the "urban" look of the "new units" and the current, more island themed decor.
2) Inventory is getting very low. We were looking to buy a week 16, 3 bedroom, but they are completely sold out in all unit sizes for week 16. We own week 17, 3 bedroom, so we ended up buying a week 18 (gasp, yes from the developer) 3 bedroom, building 43. There were two other week 18 3 bedrooms available, but were in the "older" buildings and thus subject to the "assessment." When factoring in the assessment, and the fact that the maintenance fees are the same, and that they were giving us 120,000 StarPoints, we decided to buy from Starwood. We had been looking for resale, but adjacent weeks to ours were not coming up and we didn't want to take the risk of buying a week and trying to shift it to coincide with our current week.
3) For those of you interested, there is still a Week 7 3 bedroom available, listed at about $112,000. There were several other Platinum Plus 3 bedrooms available (around 9 weeks), and the price was averaging $75,000.00.
4) Storage rooms are available to some owners of more than 2 weeks, but at
an annual fee of $500.00. We tried to get them to give us one, but no deal. When we first bought WSJ, they were giving people who owned 3 weeks storage units as part of the deal, so we thought we'd try to get one, until we found out that now there's a fee.
If anyone has any questions, post here, or email me and I'll try to answer.
Lori