Dont you think that paying mtce fees of 3400$ per month for your FLL 2br to be high - wont it be cheaper to rent an apt for two months?
We bring my 93 year old MIL with us. She looks forward to it all year. She has made friends with other senior "snow birds" and they "hang out" around the pool playing cards and gabbing.
At her age she tends to doze off several times during the day so at night she isn't usually that tired. She watches a lot of tv then. She may decide to fix breakfast at 3:00 a.m.
, take a shower, sing hymns, etc...Hey, she has earned the right to do as she pleases. Having the lock-off unit is a godsend for us. We are able to get a good night's rest without having to ask Mom to be quiet. A childhood girlfriend from the Bahamas, age 90, often times flies up and spends a week or 10 days sharing the lock-off unit with Mom. Of course we all use the entire unit during the day.
Unfortunately I know that Mom will not be with us forever. When she leaves this earth, we will rent out the lock-off part of the unit. The going price is $750. per week during this prime month of February. Then our actual out-of-pocket cost will become about $125. per week. You can't even rent a motel room for one night at that price. There are virtually no one month or 6 week rentals in the area during this time of the year. People who rent at all do so for the season (3-4 months).
Even if the price were the same or less than what we pay for our unit, we would prefer to be at our resort. It is in a prime area, one block from the beach and within walking distance of restaurants, a mall, a park, etc...There's an on-site swimming pool, gym, restaurant, organized activities, etc...plus twice a week cleaning and unlimited towel exchange. I don't think renting someone's apartment or home would provide the same great experience, nor be more cost effective.
If I see something of interest when doing an RCI Points search, I can cancel one of our reserved FLL weeks and use the points to confirm the unit. Or I can borrow points from the following year. Two years ago I saw a 2 bedroom unit available on the southwest coast of Florida at a fabulous resort that is seldom available as an exchange. The owners can rent their weeks out for close to $3,000. that time of the year. I grabbed it for 7500 points, then rented out our FLL unit for the same week. We already had airline tickets and a rental car reserved for those dates. We just had to drive across the Everglades to get to the "replacement" resort.