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My survey

berend2nd

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1) Where do you want your home resort to be? Branson or Gatlinburg

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? Visit

3) What are your 5 top trade destinations? Florida, Carolinas, Virginia, California, Colorado

4) How many people do you usually travel with? 5

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

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

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

8) What level of accommodations do you prefer on a scale of 1 to 5 stars? 3

9) How much can you afford to spend upfront, without financing? 3000

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? 500

11) Are you a detail oriented planner? Yes

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

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DeniseM

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Thank you for your survey, but your desired maintenance fee is not realistic. For 5 guests, you need a 2 bedroom, and you should expect to pay more like $800-$1,200 for the maintenance fee at a nice resort.
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? 500

Branson and Gatlinburg have more supply than demand, which means that rentals are cheap. It also means that if you own there and want to trade your timeshare, it will have poor trading value. Your best bet is to rent from other owners in Branson or Gatlinburg at a low cost. See the TUG Marketplace, or www.redweek.com for safer owner rentals.
1) Where do you want your home resort to be? Branson or Gatlinburg

Have you seen our Last Minute Rental forum - all rentals are $100 per night or less:

http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/index.php?forums/rentals-offered.45/
 

Passepartout

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From perusing your answers, I think you need to become a timeshare rental expert. There are lots to choose from, no upfront buy-in cost, your 'want' list is full of easy rentals, and your desire for $500 annual fee is unrealistic. Watch the 'last minute rental' forum, or in the Marketplace in the dark blue stripe at the top of the page. LMR's are inside 45 days from move-in at low cost, those in the Marketplace are further out, and can cost more.

Jim
 

berend2nd

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What about perks of being an owner? We have sat through a few presentations in exchange for show tickets and they talk about weekend getaways, discounts and the ability to rent your share to offset MF. Is any of this true or a sales pitch? I wouldn't mind paying higher MF if it was worth it.

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DeniseM

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It is mostly sales pitch - in most cases, you don't get the perks unless you buy from the developer and pay thousands more.

Also - as I stated above, the area you are interested in has more supply than demand, which means it is hard to rent in this area for enough to cover your maintenance fee.
 

Pietin

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As other have said the maintenance expectations are off, I would expect to pay about 750 or more. If you are going with a point system like Wyndham, it is about $6.50 for every 1k point and you need at least 154k for a two bedroom prime, so about 1000 for a week in a two bedroom. You really don't get any perks if you by resale. Other resort make it more difficult for resale owners, I believe Westgate does not allow internal exchanges for resale owners. Each system is different, but you should be able to use your week at an exchange company like RCI or II.

If you rent out you time you may or may not cover your maintenance fee, so I wouldn't buy a timeshare with the intent of making money off the rental ( I know some people have made a living at it but not one timeshare.)

If you are set on buying a timeshare, buy resale. Almost all of the time the perks of a retail purchase do not outweigh the cost. A lot of us have both retail before learning about resale. Go check out eBay and you can get an idea of the real worth of the timeshare you were offered and how many thousands of dollars you can save. You can also get an idea of the maintenance fees it will cost.

Good luck and read a lot here on TUG before buying.
 

vacationtime1

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What about perks of being an owner? We have sat through a few presentations in exchange for show tickets and they talk about weekend getaways, discounts and the ability to rent your share to offset MF. Is any of this true or a sales pitch? I wouldn't mind paying higher MF if it was worth it.

It's a sales pitch. You are wise to figure it out (or at least to pose the question) without having purchased.

I agree with the others -- you are a prime candidate to rent on an ongoing basis. No upfront cost, no commitment, and complete flexibility. Cheap at the places where you are focused.

You would enjoy having access to Interval Getaways and its RCI equivalent -- the exchange companies offering their inventory cheap. The question -- and I leave it for others -- is how to accomplish that without being an owner, because one must be an owner to join Interval or RCI.

Note: the Getaways the developers pitched to you is not limited to people who buy from the developer; one can enroll a resale week in an exchange company and get the perks of Getaways or RCI equivalent.
 
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Heron

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While I agree about the need to become an expert. The question of whether you can take advantage of the biggest perk is whether you can travel last minute. 30 to 45 days and sometimes even further out if off-season, you can get great deals from RCI just by being a member. Especially in places like Branson, Orlando, and Gatlinburg. I personally would look at RCI points. The RCI Points membership is $124 per year. I'd consider buying a triennial 49000 point contract from Grandview at Vegas which is $128 per year. I would also buy a eoy floating 1 -52, 4 bedroom lockoff at the summit at Massanutten which is about $395 per year. I'd use points for deposit to deposit as 2 two bedroom units into RCI Points and get 121000 points eoy which costs $52 to pfd. The Grandview gets 16333 per year. Therefore, you'd have 76833 points to use every year for 128+395+26=$549 average mf per year. Only thing not included is the exchange fee of either $199 or $239 per week and rci membership of $124. You should be able to easily use last calls and extra vacations to get into Branson cheap. Use the points for California and South Carolina. My point isn't to say buy this, my point is to say that if you take the time to learn about timeshares, it is worth it. You aren't going to learn any of that from the developer though.
 

berend2nd

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Thank you for the information everyone!

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taterhed

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Also, you don't necessarily need to be a member of RCI or Interval to rent last minute bargains on timeshares etc... There are a number of sites that rent last minute resort/timeshare units. Some are affiliated with certain groups (corporate, military, law enforcement etc...) but others are open to the general public.

Really, you need to look at rentals first.... If you find that you love it so much you really want to own it, then comeback after renting a season or two and see what the cost difference would be. Of course, rentals in California can be much higher depending on the location and time of year, but it's also not that easy to get peak-season school week reservations at popular resorts--even as an owner. YMMV, but don't drink the kool-aide and make any long-term commitments just yet...

Cheers.
 

HudsHut

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I would buy 10,000 WorldMark points. You could reserve WorldMark Branson as your backup. If you wanted a more luxurious resort, then use Interval International to trade for one of the nicer resorts. When the trade came through, you would cancel WM Branson.
See the resorts that you can reserve via WorldMark without having to use an exchange company to trade.
https://www.worldmarktheclub.com/resorts/
 

Lisa P

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Agree with all of the above. There's rarely a need to buy retail and certainly NOT in these locations. For most school break vacation weeks in Branson or Gatlinburg areas, you could generally rent for the price of maintenance fees or less with early or last minute planning, and the flexibility to accept whichever resorts are available for your dates.

Since you need a 2BR during school breaks, if you want one of the higher demand places with extra nice waterpark features, you'd need to own within those systems and the annual maintenance fees would cost more - ex., Wyndham's Great Smokies Lodge in Sevierville TN or Bluegreen's Wilderness Club at Big Cedar in Branson MO. (Avoid the terrible management company of Westgate, even though they have a nice resort with special water features in the Smoky Mountains.) Those properties (Wyn-GSL, BG-WC@BC, and WG-SM) are generally never available during school breaks for cheap rental. But there are many other, very nice resorts in those areas with lovely resort pool areas and plenty of activities for the kids to enjoy.

Check out online rental sites to see what's available: TUG Marketplace or Redweek (both offer rentals by individual owners), Condo Direct (II's resort rentals) or SkyAuction (RCI's resort rentals). With SkyAuction, pay attention to the added fee per night or per week on top of a winning bid price. You're bound to notice that the Branson and Gatlinburg areas have a good supply, even during school breaks if you are flexible. Membership on TUG would grant you access to the individual Resort Reviews by timeshare users, when you are deciding between resorts. It's ~$15, worthwhile.

5 top trade destinations? Florida, Carolinas, Virginia, California, Colorado

If you truly want to own and you understand that your annual maintenance fees will consistently be $900-$1000 per year... with these destinations in mind, both WorldMark resales and Wyndham resales would be worth considering. You need to learn much more about how these systems work before buying one. If you decide to go for WorkdMark, I'd suggest looking for 10,000-12,000 Premier WM Credits per year, resale, to get you a 2BR prime week's vacation. If you decide to go for Wyndham, I'd suggest looking look for 175,000-224,000 Wyn Points per year, resale, to get you that 2BR prime week - and choose a home resort with the lowest per-point maintenance fees that you can find. For the destinations you've listed, you do not need any particular home resort.

The value in owning in a system like these is the ability to reserve in your other identified locations without an exchange fee. Exchange fees add a couple hundred dollars to the real cost of a vacation week. So, buying a fixed or floating resort week to exchange regularly would not work for you.

Both of the two systems mentioned above offer nice resorts in both the Branson/Lake of the Ozarks area and the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge/Sevierville area. Of the two systems, WM has far more options in California and Colorado with at least one in each of the other states listed. Wyndham has far more options in Florida, the Carolinas and Virginia, with a few in the other states listed. The preferred choice would depend on how often and specifically where you wanted to visit. Both have much to recommend them.

I don't know about WM, but since you pay for RCI membership access though Wyndham's annual dues, you still gain access to cheap extra rental weeks (Last Call or intermittent "sales"). Those may work for an occasional extra week in shoulder season (the week before or after your kids' summer break) in quieter resorts in overdeveloped areas - generally the same stuff that's available on SkyAuction, but $279-$399 for the week, no added fees. Again, look first at rental options to see if you might meet your needs without the upfront costs and annual commitment.
 
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