Is owning worth it?

[Mida]

i have a timeshare at the Gardens at West Maui. It’s rating is okay. It’s harder to get what I want in exchange ( I like nicer resorts). I don’t know if I want to keep it. Is it worth keeping? Is it worth having any timeshare?

 

[rickandcindy23]

I was always able to rent Gardens for a little over maintenance fees, but I did sell mine and I got what I paid for it. It took a couple of years. I didn't lose money, and that was a good thing. Ours was a one bed, 2 bath, so it was very rentable. If you can get MF's from a rental, you are doing good. If you can get $100 over MF's at Gardens, you are doing great. Reserve whale season, specifically a good spring break week or President's Day, if you can get that.

You will have a tough time selling it for much of anything, just a warning, because most people want to own something much fancier or oceanfront. Even oceanfront units go cheap, unless they are a brand name like Westin, Marriott or Hyatt. I can pretty much guarantee that a broker won't be able to help you.

Gardens is in a unique location, golf course view, across from one of the most beautiful beaches on Maui. It's prime real estate, a simple walk across the street to Napili Beach. I think it's an ideal spot for an inexpensive stay on Maui. I would have kept ours, had we not found our oceanfront units for sale on eBay--dirt cheap. I liked that Gardens has a king bed, even though it overwhelmed the bedroom, and I liked the extra bathroom for guests (we only had guests once, and it was our son and daughter-in-law with us). It's got a great kitchen, too. It would be an ideal little apartment to own outright to live on Maui.

 

[Steve Fatula]

You'll likely get answers all over the place. It depends how you use it, where you bought, and what you want. For example, on a recent trip to Australia last year, I stayed at 4 different places, none of which were "mine". In effective maintenance fees (the way I value trades, how much of my maintenance fees did this cost me), the cost of those places was around $2,000. So, the question became, could I rent those places for $2,000, and the answer was I could rent one of them for $2,000 for a week. So, it would have been way more. I valued them on various sites to see what they would rent for, and, my total for the 4 places came out to almost $10,000. Could one rent cheaper places? The answer was a little bit, but, some places are just expensive and I don't want a hotel room. So, there's close to $8,000 for one trip in cost difference. Been owning for 20 years myself. We're in the minority that go to presentations as well. For the "cost" of 4 presentations (we get Marriott rewards points for them, total 6 hours sitting), we got two free flights also to Australia, round trip. That was worth $3,000 in the season we went. So, just counting airfare and places to stay, we were over $10,000 ahead for one (admittedly long) trip. The picture shown above my name on the left is from one of those places in Australia.

On the other end of the scale, you have many people who don't know how to use it, don't want to learn, and just use it in the most minimal way possible. Some of them are also convinced all timeshares for anyone anywhere for any reason are bad. For those people, the answer is likely it's not financially worth it. And always depends what you paid, what you got, where, when, etc. My original ownership from 20 years ago, which funded this trip, cost me around 12k at the time (discounting the price for the incentives which I did use). So, this one trip virtually paid for my original developer buy in.

Many timeshare owners will say that simply isn't possible. But it is! Is this the way it works out for most people? No.

 

[Mida]

I was always able to rent Gardens for a little over maintenance fees, but I did sell mine and I got what I paid for it. It took a couple of years. I didn't lose money, and that was a good thing. Ours was a one bed, 2 bath, so it was very rentable. If you can get MF's from a rental, you are doing good. If you can get $100 over MF's at Gardens, you are doing great. Reserve whale season, specifically a good spring break week or President's Day, if you can get that.

You will have a tough time selling it for much of anything, just a warning, because most people want to own something much fancier or oceanfront. Even oceanfront units go cheap, unless they are a brand name like Westin, Marriott or Hyatt. I can pretty much guarantee that a broker won't be able to help you.

Gardens is in a unique location, golf course view, across from one of the most beautiful beaches on Maui. It's prime real estate, a simple walk across the street to Napili Beach. I think it's an ideal spot for an inexpensive stay on Maui. I would have kept ours, had we not found our oceanfront units for sale on eBay--dirt cheap. I liked that Gardens has a king bed, even though it overwhelmed the bedroom, and I liked the extra bathroom for guests (we only had guests once, and it was our son and daughter-in-law with us). It's got a great kitchen, too. It would be an ideal little apartment to own outright to live on Maui.

Thank you for your reply. I also want to own something fancier or oceanfront. Honestly, I haven’t stayed there. This was given to us by my mother as she cannot pay the MFs. When we visited maui, we stayed at sands of kahana which was great. Not fancy but at least on a beach. When is whale season? How did you sell yours?

 

[Mida]

You'll likely get answers all over the place. It depends how you use it, where you bought, and what you want. For example, on a recent trip to Australia last year, I stayed at 4 different places, none of which were "mine". In effective maintenance fees (the way I value trades, how much of my maintenance fees did this cost me), the cost of those places was around $2,000. So, the question became, could I rent those places for $2,000, and the answer was I could rent one of them for $2,000 for a week. So, it would have been way more. I valued them on various sites to see what they would rent for, and, my total for the 4 places came out to almost $10,000. Could one rent cheaper places? The answer was a little bit, but, some places are just expensive and I don't want a hotel room. So, there's close to $8,000 for one trip in cost difference. Been owning for 20 years myself. We're in the minority that go to presentations as well. For the "cost" of 4 presentations (we get Marriott rewards points for them, total 6 hours sitting), we got two free flights also to Australia, round trip. That was worth $3,000 in the season we went. So, just counting airfare and places to stay, we were over $10,000 ahead for one (admittedly long) trip. The picture shown above my name on the left is from one of those places in Australia.

On the other end of the scale, you have many people who don't know how to use it, don't want to learn, and just use it in the most minimal way possible. Some of them are also convinced all timeshares for anyone anywhere for any reason are bad. For those people, the answer is likely it's not financially worth it. And always depends what you paid, what you got, where, when, etc. My original ownership from 20 years ago, which funded this trip, cost me around 12k at the time (discounting the price for the incentives which I did use). So, this one trip virtually paid for my original developer buy in.

Many timeshare owners will say that simply isn't possible. But it is! Is this the way it works out for most people? No.

Thank you for replying. I own in Maui at the gardens of West maui. I like fancier places or oceanfront so what I own doesn’t get me what I want very often. May I ask how you got free flights and how to work this to my advantage? Where and what type of timeshare has good trading power?

 

[Steve Fatula]

Oh, I am not qualified to answer where or what has good trading power, I am sure there are many folks here who know way more than I about that. I know about squeezing value though. The free flights came from attending 4 Marriott presentations where they try to sell you, that was 110,000 points. Those Marriott rewards points allow me to trade for I think 50,000 United miles. I did the old credit card trick too, so I got around 60,000 miles for just signing up for the Mileageplus Amex card. So, the other 10,000 points I needed was easy, charge maint fees, whatever, normal purchases. I knew I was going 6-8 months in advance, so, it was easy to rack up the 10,000 more points needed for 2 roundtrip flights. Note these were coach, some understandably don't like to fly that far in coach.

We too like fancier places (and dislike hotels), oceanfront not really our thing, though we don't dislike it.

So, not sure how your system works or anything else as my only experience is with Marriott, MVCI. Each system is different and likely requires different ways of getting the most out of it. Whatever company you are with, you should likely post in that forum to get the most out of your timeshare. Mostly, when exchanging with Interval, our technique is to not care necessary where or when, just what we can get, usually within a month or 2, something comes up that catches our eye. So, we like to keep going to different places, so, this fits perfectly with that. So, if a nice oceanfront 2BR in some place we have not been to comes up for a trade, and, it's nice, we'll do it. So, flexibility allows one to generally get the best deals.

 

[rickandcindy23]

Thank you for your reply. I also want to own something fancier or oceanfront. Honestly, I haven’t stayed there. This was given to us by my mother as she cannot pay the MFs. When we visited maui, we stayed at sands of kahana which was great. Not fancy but at least on a beach. When is whale season? How did you sell yours?

It's tough to sell Gardens at West Maui, but if you can rent it for the cost of MF's or a little extra in your wallet, you should do that. I never had a single problem renting it for about $100 over fees.

Whale season weeks are ridiculously priced at hotels. Whale season is right before Christmas through mid-April, but peak season is mid-Feb to mid-March. Seems the whales just kind of disappear by mid-April. Getting a week during a busy time like President's week is ideal because it is the busiest.

The hotel right across from Gardens commands $335 + tax per night for a simple hotel room. It's across the street! But it's oceanfront, and there is the difference. It's a big difference.

I sold mine with an ad on My Resort Network, which I ran for two or more years to sell it. If I did it over again, I would sell it on Redweek. If you have the 1 bed, 2 bath, which is the popular unit type at Gardens, you can probably get a little bit for it. But if you are willing to give it away, you could give it away pretty quickly. I would stay there first, so you can tell people about it. It's very nice. I don't like to downplay the resort. It's got the most gorgeous gardens and it backs to a beautiful golf course. The value of the real estate underlying that resort is probably staggering. But you will have a tough time selling it for $2,000. Soleil management charges $550 for transfer and closing costs can be minimal at about $200 through Legal Timeshare Transfers.

I would not own anywhere other than where we own, I really would love to be able to afford Westin oceanfront, or Marriott oceanfront, but the buy-in is very high, even for a resale. The fees are higher than ours too. But our fees are climbing to a ridiculous point, and I wonder why, but Soleil Management is not very communicative.

There are only four units here at Hono Koa that are oceanfront. The buy-in cost was very low through ebay, and the fees are manageable, but they do rise every year and we pay a special payment to the owner of the land. this building is on a long-term land lease.

We used to own a week at Sands. Owning at Sands had its advantages and disadvantages. One of the biggest issues for us was the fact that you only get a view unit every-other-year as a guarantee. When you find out that an exchanger got the best unit in the place, while you are staring at a BBQ grill from the first floor, it is difficult to accept for those fees and taxes. It's especially a huge turnoff for an owner paying in excess of $1,800. Plus, the units are not as close to the water as I would like. I love whale watching from our lanai. Ironically, we went whale watching this past Tuesday and had better whale watching that morning, before we left, than we got on the boat for 2 hours. There was a baby whale constantly breaching, and that was an unusual sight. Enjoying his/her time out of the womb, I assume? The experts on the boat said that whales do that when they are very young. They are floppy as newborns.

Kahana Beach has one bedrooms that are guaranteed oceanfront. Those have two bathrooms and sleep up to four. Most of what you see for sale are the studios, which outnumber the one bedrooms six to one. I doubt the sleep sofa is comfortable enough for another couple. It's also beach front because it shares the beach with Sands.

 

[rickandcindy23]

You should consider moving this thread to a different category, like Buying, Selling, Renting or Hawaii. You will get more replies from people who know more than I know.

 

[Makai Guy]

Is it worth having any timeshare?

I used to own a couple of weeks in Princeville, Kauai. I always felt it was about a financial break even with staying in a motel, but with much better amenities. Our weeks always exchanged pretty well, but in order to get the best exchanges it did require us to plan a year or so ahead. To get the best exchanges you need to deposit your week and put in a request for what you want. If it's not in inventory, place an ongoing search, and you'll be put in the queue to get first crack at your request as a matching deposit comes in. The exchanges you see online (and that they tell you are in current inventory) are the ones not claimed by anybody with an ongoing search. If your style is more to act spontaneously and go on impulse, owning timeshares may not be the best thing for you.

We always felt the biggest advantage of owning timeshares is that it forced us to actually TAKE a nice vacation instead of just going to some mediocre motel at the last minute.

 

[Lanswitch]

i have a timeshare at the Gardens at West Maui. It’s rating is okay. It’s harder to get what I want in exchange ( I like nicer resorts). I don’t know if I want to keep it. Is it worth keeping? Is it worth having any timeshare?

I can only offer my experiences with trading The Gardens at West Maui 1BR 2BA which I purchased for $1 (including all fees paid by the seller) a number of years ago.
We have exchanged it through II a few times and got some GREAT exchanges!
One exchange was for a 2 BR Lock Off at the Marriott Newport Coast for a week and another was for a Marriott Ko’olina 1 BR for a week. The other years we have gifted to friends and relatives.
In 2019 we are planning to use TGW ourselves and coupling it to an “Explorer Package” at the Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resorts Villas which is the other Hawaiian timeshare we own.
Was it worth owning The Gardens? I think so.

 

[Lansdowne]

You'll likely get answers all over the place. It depends how you use it, where you bought, and what you want. For example, on a recent trip to Australia last year, I stayed at 4 different places, none of which were "mine". In effective maintenance fees (the way I value trades, how much of my maintenance fees did this cost me), the cost of those places was around $2,000. So, the question became, could I rent those places for $2,000, and the answer was I could rent one of them for $2,000 for a week. So, it would have been way more. I valued them on various sites to see what they would rent for, and, my total for the 4 places came out to almost $10,000. Could one rent cheaper places? The answer was a little bit, but, some places are just expensive and I don't want a hotel room. So, there's close to $8,000 for one trip in cost difference. Been owning for 20 years myself. We're in the minority that go to presentations as well. For the "cost" of 4 presentations (we get Marriott rewards points for them, total 6 hours sitting), we got two free flights also to Australia, round trip. That was worth $3,000 in the season we went. So, just counting airfare and places to stay, we were over $10,000 ahead for one (admittedly long) trip. The picture shown above my name on the left is from one of those places in Australia.

On the other end of the scale, you have many people who don't know how to use it, don't want to learn, and just use it in the most minimal way possible. Some of them are also convinced all timeshares for anyone anywhere for any reason are bad. For those people, the answer is likely it's not financially worth it. And always depends what you paid, what you got, where, when, etc. My original ownership from 20 years ago, which funded this trip, cost me around 12k at the time (discounting the price for the incentives which I did use). So, this one trip virtually paid for my original developer buy in.

Many timeshare owners will say that simply isn't possible. But it is! Is this the way it works out for most people? No.

Great response - totally agree with you. You have to review how you use your time share. Also look at your holdings, including your points with MARRIOTT and Starwood (in our case) to determine if your expenditure was worth it. We own timeshares in Orlando, Williamsburg, Palm Dessert and Oahu - properly managed we can spend 3 months on travel just using these holdings. Yeah it does suck paying your maintenance fees but you more than make up for it when you hang out in Hawaii for a couple of weeks in a two bedroom, looking at a beach when it is freezing back home. I also emphasize the need to educate yourself on how best to use your timeshare - we go to those stupid presentations just to pick up pointers and to talk to other owners and to tap into their experiences. Finally, one benefit that we just experienced was in selecting our retirement home. We decided on a place a little off the beaten path with tons of amenities knowing that with our timeshare holdings we could always take off somewhere with a little more excitement. The savings in Home costs may not have paid for all our timeshares but came close.

 

[jcaprn]

i have a timeshare at the Gardens at West Maui. It’s rating is okay. It’s harder to get what I want in exchange ( I like nicer resorts). I don’t know if I want to keep it. Is it worth keeping? Is it worth having any timeshare?

The good:

• Having a kitchen saves money- and makes it more enjoyable. I really don't like to eat out for every meal so having the timeshare is a positive in terms of money and comfort. Staying at an equivalent place outside of the timeshare is not either possible or if it was possible, it would cost too much.
• We go to places we otherwise might not have gone to and in the off-season times which, it turns out we enjoy - there are less crowds and the areas we visited have been enjoyable even in the off-season (particularly Samoset in Maine). I check the prices for the places we stay and we have done well financially.
• We have the option of using the Last Minute Vacations from RCI, which, are $240 to $289 or so, and look like great deals. That could be useful for us in the future...we haven't gone on one of these yet, but we have looked and had some options we felt were good. So I see that being a feature we will take advantage of. We have some friends who got a week away through another friends RCI last minute deal and they had a good winter week of snowmobiling in Northern WI.
• We were able to go to a festival in Massachusetts and stay in a time share for 1/3 of our points. That was an excellent use of our points.
• We usually get 2-3 stays (not necessarily for full weeks) for our 1 week timeshare points (Holiday Inn Vacation Club).
• With points we can usually do a 4-5 day stay Sun to Thursday for cheap and can go see other areas on the weekends.
• The best thing about it is this: I am cheap. So before our timeshare I would fret over the costs and potential costs, and we would go on infrequent vacations. With the timeshare, my cheapness leads me to want to get the most out of our points and I plan MORE vacations. I want to get 2 or 3 stays every year and we do (some shorter some longer).
• The Holiday Inn Club does offer deals every once in a while to Lake Geneva which is 2 hours away and a really nice quick get away, so we enjoy that and it is usually for a low amount of points in the off season. Once we stayed in summer (high season for just three days- over a weekend, which works for us since we live nearby for about 2/3 of our points).
• Holiday Inn has added some great new resort options which will save money (won't have to use RCI as much).

The Bad:

• RCI has costs when not using the last minute vacations, so that is added on top of the yearly maintenance fee.
• Maintenance fees keep going up.
• Fees at RCI go up.
• We actually paid the full price on our unit- when we could have gotten it for $1. So if you consider that- which I prefer to just forget, then no! Not worth it yet (probably it will never make up for that).But if you got yours for almost nothing, then you are doing ok. Also the feeling like a fool part of that still nags at me.
• You are usually away from city centers, and need a car to get to the resort, and often to travel to area attractions.
• You are prescribed where you can stay on points. Of course you can mix this up with traveling using hotels. So you need to be more creative to get around the 'middle of nowhere' resorts that are meant to be a destination in themselves.

I worry I won't be able to sell it when the time comes, but I also think that for now, I would miss it if I didn't have it. I am certain I will go on more vacations with it and I would say that is what tips the scale for me--- and why I am not trying to sell it now. I have some great memories already of trips to Quebec City area (Canada), Maine, Massachusetts, and several Wisconsin trips. I don't think I would have those memories without the timeshare. This is the start of our 4th year.

 

[theo]

We own (all resale) fixed weeks where and when we seek to go each year, largely to escape part of New England winter.
Also have coastal Maine weeks in post-tourist early fall, which we always enjoy. The model works for us --- for now.
I do not want to ever again own more than one home (been there, done that, never again) and timesharing essentially provides several de facto "vacation homes" --- without the associated responsibilities, headaches and costs.

As long as maint. fees remain within a range in which we see "value", we're in for the long haul. If or when maintenance fees exceed our undefined pain threshold, we will likely shift from being "owners" to becoming "occasional tenants".

 

[Steve Fatula]

Speaking of vacation homes, we’ve encountered a few timeshares like this one, which seem like vacation homes. Good enough for us! You get your own building.

 

[Lanswitch]

UPDATE!!!!
Since I posted this we have exchanged our 1 Bedroom at TGWM again through II and obtained a 2 Bedroom at the Marriott Desert Springs Villa II, week 52. We ALSO just exchanged it for an upcoming stay at the Marriott Grand Chateau in Las Vegas in December (a 1 bedroom this time).

Previous post:
I can only offer my experiences with trading The Gardens at West Maui 1BR 2BA which I purchased for $1 (including all fees paid by the seller) a number of years ago.
We have exchanged it through II a few times and got some GREAT exchanges!
One exchange was for a 2 BR Lock Off at the Marriott Newport Coast for a week and another was for a Marriott Ko’olina 1 BR for a week. The other years we have gifted to friends and relatives.
In 2019 we are planning to use TGW ourselves and coupling it to an “Explorer Package” at the Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resorts Villas which is the other Hawaiian timeshare we own.
Was it worth owning The Gardens? I think so.[/QUOTE]

 

[bogey21]

We own (all resale) fixed weeks where and when we seek to go each year, largely to escape part of New England winter. Also have coastal Maine weeks in post-tourist early fall, which we always enjoy. The model works for us --- for now.

This is the same model I used for almost 10 years. In addition to being Fixed Weeks mine were also Fixed Units. Mine were all HOA Controlled Independents most of which would work with me to swap my Week for another at no cost. The key is owning at places you want to visit every year...

George