new to wyndham/fairfied resorts

[Hostelling Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hostelling]

If done properly ebay is safe timeshare purchase

If you look you will see that real estate in not a typical bid at ebay...not binding. Your bid only infers you have a strong interest in the purchase.

If you win the bid always, I said always, close the sale through a title transfer company of good repute. If you can, use a company of your own choice. Just as when you bought your primary home, the money will be held in escrow by the title transfer co. until the title transfer is done. A deposit of $500 should suffice (no maintenance fees etc. they will come soon enough when you are the owner).

When looking at the posts bear in mind the cheap ones are cheap because the points package is to small (not enough to use any where) or the sale is by a title transfer company hoping to saddle you with inflated closing costs, fees, etc.

But first, and put this at the top of your list, know the value of what you are buying (same as when you bought your home), just because you are buying only part interest in this real estate does not reduce the need to buy wisely.

How to learn the value? Ebay has, most likely, become the highest weekly volume of new time share listings on the web.

Register at the ebay web site (costs zero) and then you will be able to do an advance search for completed auctions. Look up the brand and location you have an interest in and see what the "winning bids" came in at. Here is a sample:

Gold Crown FAIRFIELD POINTS Sedona Arizona TIMESHARE
154,000 Fairfield Points - Visa/Mastercard -NO RESERVE!
37 bids (winning bid $2,451.00) March 21 19:00

Finally dont get in a bidding war, set you price and stick with it, in fact dont bid until the auction is in its last hour (the best method is to snipe the auction - but topic is for another time). If you dont get that one there will be others to come.

Good hunting...and this information...did not come with a sales pitch attached, as the day you bought.

P.S. the extra point package....it does come with 2 years of maintenance fees....read the fine print...you will also find they have signed you up for a travel club (leasure plan) that is not manditory but will drive up your monthly fees.

[Jya-Ning Silver Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close Jya-Ning]

$11,500.00 deed is in sedona no add'l fees for "bonus points" "I hope", we signed off on $29.00 a mo. maintainence inc. the extra 217,000 so basically we paid 11.5K for 300 and some odd thousand points for the 1st 2 yrs, then 168,000 every other year after that. in my pea brain breaking it down over 5 yrs it appeared we would break even then pay only the $29.00 a month plus any extra points we may need from that point on. am i totally wrong?

I did not know there is new units build in Sedona. I thought all units has been sold out, but I maybe wrong, I am not in this as business.

You don't need me to talk you out of this deal. But just to do some comparsion, I will ask you some questions

Why you think 5 years you can break even? Is that the term of your mortgage? I thought it is 7 years. At this moment, you put 10% deposit, so you borrow 90%. At rate 13.9%, in 7 years, you will pay $17,400. Plus $29 per month at today's MF, or $700 for 168k Every 2 year. Except first 2 years you get 300k. So every year, you pay $2,850. You think you can break even at 5 year? How many vacation you believe you can get from these points? What each vacation week you think will cost you if you just try to find a rent?
$2,850 is for lodging cost. The travel (Air, car toll), entertainment cost (meal, ticket) usually is twice that money, so you have budget of like $9,000 per year?

What are the VIP benefits? How many you think you will use most of the time? How much you think it save you in 2 year span (remember, you only are VIP in 2 years).

What is the value you give to Plus Partner (which is allow you to use FF point to get RCI nightly stay or use it in hotel, air)

What is the value you give to the bonus point?

If you use FF internal reservation, 1BD Sedona requires 126k 2 BD require 189k in prime time. So why 168k. It is 2 1 BD at value season (week 2 - 4). Go to site like myresortnetwork or redweek or vacationtimesharerentals, and chek the week to see if you want to rent, how much it will cost you.

If you use RCI, and deposit all 28k, it gives you 6 weeks in 2 year span, every week will cost extra $169 exchange fee. With MF $116 it cost you $285 per week. What will you think your avg. exchange week will cost you if you just rent from open market?

Now I will give you some of my number.

People usually say it loss 80%. I think it loss 90%. Use 85%. Based on that, the resell value is $1,725 for 84k (168 EOY). Let us use $2,400 in case I overbid. So that left you $15,000 in saving. Say you still pay the same amount of money every month, except now instead paying FF, you pay to your Wife and kids. After 7 years, you got 15,000 in your pocket.

You pay the same MF. If you put 15,000 into bond, after tax, you get 3% return, or $450 to help you in MF every year. Your MF today is $348. You can actually put that money in a index and hope it beat the inflation in long run and still get your MF covered for life. Of course, I did not count the time value at this moment, so you may barely cover the MF at that time. But still, your chance of cover the MF is good.

I don't know any VIP benefit can beat that. If you know any benefit that better than this, let me know.

Now, Plus Partner charges $2,400. RCI points actually charge $299. So I will use $2,400 as the value. The point rented at this moment is over $6 per 1K. But I believe bonus points can not be mixed use with regular points, so I use $6 per 1K. It give you the value $1,300 Total value is $3,700 if bonus does not charge you MF. I did see posts say the new bonus points does not charge MF, but have no idea if that is true or not.

So it is your choice. $3,700 saving now, or $15,000 saving 7 years later.

However, the retail price I heard over last 7 years are around the range of $122 to $165 per 1K, and usually the smaller the point package the higher the price. So I will bet after 7 years, if you still like to buy a developer point package to get PP and bonus points, it will still be that much cost. And $165 is one that did not neg. at all.

As to how safe it is to bid on eBay, I think you can learn that after you rescind. My assessment is it does not take too much effort to make it very close to the same risk level of purchase from retail if you consider how many times you will actaully not get the contract. And consider the loss of resell value, the retail purchase actually is 10 times risk then resell purchase.

Jya-Ning

[gynot007 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close gynot007]

all of you and tug'ers to

thankyou so much for all of your input, my wife and i are certainly not made of money, just wanted to get away a couple times a year and not have to stay in the motel down the street from your resort. we have decided to hold off, and when we can we will seek a week somewhere nice maybe buy a block of points to get our feet wet and will certainly stay invoved with this wondeful sight, we got real lucky1 you guys ROCK.

[timeos2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close timeos2]

You already did the hard part

thankyou so much for all of your input, my wife and i are certainly not made of money, just wanted to get away a couple times a year and not have to stay in the motel down the street from your resort. we have decided to hold off, and when we can we will seek a week somewhere nice maybe buy a block of points to get our feet wet and will certainly stay invoved with this wondeful sight, we got real lucky1 you guys ROCK.

I assume this means you plan to rescind. Good move. Now don't be afraid to act on buying the much more reasonably priced resale points. You have it right that staying in a luxurious two or three - even a one - bedroom timeshare is much better and no more expensive than the Motel 6 room you cram into. Remember how nice that unit you bought looked even at $22K per every year use. Now buy it at $4000 or less for every year and start enjoying being "forced" to vacation at least once a year. All the stuff the weasel said about why the price was good was lies but the underlying concept, bought at the right price, is golden. FInd some points and start traveling.

[Jya-Ning Silver Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close Jya-Ning]

FF Wyndham Chat Session.

There will be a chat session about Fairfield on April 18th. It is opened to everyone. I assume it will have a formal announcement in the near future. You may want to attend if you like the concept and the quality of FF resorts.

If you want to buy resell, there are a few reputable resell agent you can look. You can consider joint Yahoo Fairfield-timeshare group to see their link. Or just asking around.

Otherwise, I will check the closing company first. Just asking around. If the seller using a good closing company, I don't have problem put a bid.

Always check the MF and ask SA in the Yahoo group. Don't need to trust the ad. If you can get contract number, you can check with resort to verify it.

You should read Hostelling's post for advice on purchase eBay resell. Actually, don't bid until the last second that your bid can be accepted (depends on your internet connection speed, DW only put in bid at 10 sec, I usually put on 28sec so give other guy a change or 2 to compete if they really want that TS). If you are not in a hurry, wait till fall time when people start to ready to dump their TS. There is an eBay sampled completed list in this forum under resort company and FF.

Good luck

Jya-Ning

[Bill4728 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Bill4728]

I believe the key point of this post is that FF/Wyndham can be purchased at approximatly a 90% discount over the developer. That is a huge amount of money.

A similar product also branded wyndham is worldmark which sells at a ~55% discount ( $0.85 vs $1.75). With Worldmark though there is no reasons at all to buy from the developer. Since the developer gives you nothing which you don't get with all resale offering.

[nursetanya1973 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close nursetanya1973]

thankyou so much for all of your input, my wife and i are certainly not made of money, just wanted to get away a couple times a year and not have to stay in the motel down the street from your resort. we have decided to hold off, and when we can we will seek a week somewhere nice maybe buy a block of points to get our feet wet and will certainly stay invoved with this wondeful sight, we got real lucky1 you guys ROCK.

You did check your papers and follow the directions to rescind exactly, right? If you missed a step, or just put a stop on your payment, it is legally binding, and you are going to get to keep your great "deal", whether you like it or not.

The paper usually have to be sent registered mail, possibly to more than one address. The address is probably not the resort or anything on the letterhead.

Just a heads-up. Good decision to wait and learn. I love both of my resale purchases, and you will too.

[gynot007 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close gynot007]

Backing Out

still don't know how to spell "recendsion" but never the less fallowed the directions on the paperwork and sent a letter directly to the developer in orlando as well as copies to FF Sedona in the envelope they were expecting to get a voided check back in so they could wthdraw MFs directly from our checking account!!!! wasn't comfortable with that from the beginning. i will fallow up with phone calls to both tommorow. the one to the developer is with u.s. post office "overnight express registered"

[nursetanya1973 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close nursetanya1973]

Good, glad you found and followed the rescission process. I don't think that FF is guilty of it, but I have heard that in some shadier places, the salesman conveniently leave that piece of paperwork out. Go figure.

Tanya

PS. Not that we can't read through misspellings or anything, but if you are ever trying to find the correct spelling of a word, there is a button at the top right of the reply page that lets you use the spell checker. It is "ABC" with a check mark under it. I have to scroll to the right to see it. I use it every time, or my typos would be horrendous.

[Hostelling Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hostelling]

Use Points Credit Card

still don't know how to spell "recendsion" but never the less fallowed the directions on the paperwork and sent a letter directly to the developer in orlando as well as copies to FF Sedona in the envelope they were expecting to get a voided check back in so they could wthdraw MFs directly from our checking account!!!! wasn't comfortable with that from the beginning. i will fallow up with phone calls to both tommorow. the one to the developer is with u.s. post office "overnight express registered"

I dont allow direct withdrawl from the checking account, no security and cant dispute/reverse inproper charges (such as for the leasure plan after it was cancelled). Instead I allow maintenance fees to be direct charged to a credit card, which is also ok with Fairfield. This way I can change the choice of card from time to time to take advantage of the best card deals out there, dollars back, points, travel miles etc.

[bnoble Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close bnoble]

I do this too. It's not obvious from the owner site that this is possible, but it is listed as an option in the directory---just call Wynfield Financial, and they'll set it up. Unlike paper billing, there is no extra charge for direct-to-credit-card billing.

[gynot007 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close gynot007]

backed out yesterday

by registered overnight express delivary (1) to the developer in orlando and (1) to the fairfield site in sedona

[Thom Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Thom]

i bought retail ..sorry i ever did

I vote recend/cancel the deal gynot...... i wish i had ...i didn't do my homework on it either ....you can buy resale fer pennies on the dollar and get the approx. same benefits as ppl who pay full retail price. Contact a real estate lawyer if you have too. But at the least send a registered letter stating that you are going to cancel the deal and want to start the paperwork to do so. they'll drag their feet past the cancelation period, no doubt, and use that as a excuse to avoid cancelling the sale. thats why you may need a lawyer's letterhead to get things moving. Get that letter in the mail ASAP.

Thom