I sold a Las Vegas Timeshare I owned last year; I was really lucky to sell it for $5K and got maximum value out of it for the 9 years of ownership, which I acquired developer-resale. There are incredible deals for timeshares in general. I wouldn't pay anything more than $2K for a 2bedroom TS in Vegas unless it's the Marriott Grand Chateau TS. If you join the Marriott TS family, trading into Vegas is not that difficult so you might want to consider purchasing a Marriott at another location.
Las Vegas: anyone looking to buy there?
- Thread starter Orchidflower
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I sold a Las Vegas Timeshare I owned last year; I was really lucky to sell it for $5K and got maximum value out of it for the 9 years of ownership, which I acquired developer-resale. There are incredible deals for timeshares in general. I wouldn't pay anything more than $2K for a 2bedroom TS in Vegas unless it's the Marriott Grand Chateau TS. If you join the Marriott TS family, trading into Vegas is not that difficult so you might want to consider purchasing a Marriott at another location.
clifp
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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Thanks for the info Chris. A couple of other questions are there are additional fees on top of the maintenance fee, or does that pretty much cover the cost of staying at the unit. Second, in the 9 years you owned the unit how much did it appreciate and how much did the maintenance fee increase?
There are no other fees associated with routine timeshare ownership, but timeshare resorts do occasionally have "special assessments" to take care of extraordinary incidents or when the homeowner's association hasn't managed the resort/facility well and has to play catch-up on a lot of delayed maintenance and care. Maintenance fees generally increase over time. Depends on the nature of the resort/facility and quality of management, like any other condominium/fractional interest ownership. Some maintenance fees are ridiculous. In general, the cost of maintenance fees should be lower than the cost of renting a week at the timeshare resort.
If you want to trade or exchange your timeshare, you generally need to join a timeshare exchange company that has the resort in its inventory. There's an annual membership fee and a trade/exchange fee as well. RCI and Interval International are the two biggest exchange companies. Exchanges or trades depend on value and demand of the week or "points" your timeshare attracts. There are two type of timeshare programs: weeks-based and points based. Marriott, for example, is weeks-based; Disney is points-based.
The Timeshares Users Group (TUG) is the best place to learn about timeshares: Timeshare Users Group - The first and largest online community of timeshare owners providing timeshare resort reviews, timeshare ratings, FREE timeshare advice and FREE Timeshare Classified ads!. It has an active forum, where friendly and good advice is dispensed.
Timeshares don't really appreciated unless you bought at rock-bottom resale prices or rock-bottom preconstruction prices from a reputable developer. Typically, timeshares depreciate in value and are generally a depreciating asset. However, if you buy resale, there are some who have made money off resale purchases.
Most people who are active in timesharing believe timeshares result in great prepaid vacation experiences -- they are not viewed by most of us as "investments" despite the fact that timeshares are interests in property.
My unit did not appreciate from an "investment" standpoint; I overpaid for the unit from the developer's resale inventory; I got back over half of what I paid, but I used the unit to trade into top notch resorts in Hawaii, Florida, Cancun, among other places; I got lots of "bonus trades" on this unit for many years; my maintenance fees were reasonable for many years. After Marriott built its timeshare in Vegas, I really didn't need my unit as I could always trade into the Marriott Grand Chateau timeshare. My maintenance fees went from $395 to $550 during my ownership period, with one major special assessment of $700. The resort started having quality issues and it no longer exacted a high trading premium especially after Marriott built its timeshare resort. BTW, now is a great time to buy Marriott timeshares on the resale market because Marriott has generally not been exercising its right of first refusal for these sales. The timeshare resale market is depressed like the overall real estate market. There are quite a few threads on TUG about these issues.
NW-Bound
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Yes, it's just you, as I have seen plenty of people of the opposite opinion as evidenced by the houses there.
Seriously, this being the only time I have been in Las Vegas long enough to drive around exploring away from the strip, I have seen enough that I'd rather stay in my corners of Arizona. But that may be just me.
But I'd like to mention the area of Lake Las Vegas again. The only unknown in my mind is the HOA fee to maintain its upscale look. If I didn't have two houses already, I would seriously enquire in this area.
See the enclosed youtube video of Bocelli's concert with the lake as the backdrop. The Ponte Vecchio knockoff you see is part of the Ritz-Carlton resort. The $120K condo I referred to in an earlier post of this thread was on the hill on the far side of the lake, not seen in the video.
YouTube - Andrea Bocelli - Besame Mucho (2006)
And by the way, I knew of the song "Besame Mucho" some time in my early teen years, as sung by Connie Francis. The song writer was a young Mexican girl, not a Spanish man as I had imagined. From Wikipedia,
"Bésame Mucho" is a Spanish language song written in 1940 by Mexican Consuelo Velázquez before her sixteenth birthday. The phrase "bésame mucho" can be translated into English as "kiss me a lot". According to Velázquez, she wrote this song even though she had never been kissed yet at the time. She was inspired by the aria "Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor" from the Spanish 1916 opera Goyescas by Enrique Granados.
