We took the HGVC tour of the new timeshare resort by Hilton on the North end of the strip. According to the salesman, Circus Circus and the Riviera are soon to become dust. According to him, it's already a done deal. LOL

You know what they say about TS saleman, if their lips are moving, they could be lying.

I don't doubt that those two will meet the wrecking ball sometime in the relatively near future but I'm not aware of any immeadiate plans to bring these two down. My personal feeling is that they're just a little embaressed to have such a nice new resort around a couple of older resorts that have seen better days.

The new Hilton is far from done though. They have three more towers they're going to be building. This is going to be a HUGE TS resort. They're breaking ground on the second tower very soon. When it's done it will fit into the anticipated renewal of the North end very well.

Doug,
While I agree the new Hilton project is very nice, and the north end does need a shot in the arm. I'm not so sure time shares are going to deliver it. Generally time share people are not hard gamblers. Most of those want the action in the lobby of thier hotel. As of yet, I've heard no mention of a Hilton Casino as part of the time share? So it won't draw people. It may help already exisiting properties close by, but like you mentioned Circus Circus and the Riv, aint where I'll be hanging out much. Sahara probably will benifit the most from this project, don't you think?

No, I don't think the Hilton will turn the North end around. It will fit nicely with redevelopement of the north end should it ever happen. I think Hitlon is speculating on that and has positioned itself in what it believes will be the next miracle mile.

As far as north end casino's benefiting? I'm not sure about that. I disagree that TS ocupants are that much different that regular Vegas visitors. They still go for the shows, food and gambing. They are different in that they typically go for 7 nights rather than 3 or 4. Unless the north end casino's offer something to compete with midstrip and south end, those staying at the new Hilton will just go south with everyone else.

Mostly, what I found amusing was the salesmans comments that Circus Circus and the Riviera where going to be torn down. Not that they expected they would be torn down, he said they WOULD be imploded. I was listening to the salepeople at Polo Towers while we were enjoying a beverage in the owners lounge. They were STILL telling everyone that the HI Boardwalk would be the next resort to be imploded and rebuilt. They told us that in '98 also. At this moment I'm not aware of any plans to implode that one either. In fact, since we were told that, the Desert Inn has been imploded, Silver City's plans have changed two or three times, The El Rancho has been imploded but nothing has been built yet, the New Frontier has submitted plans and changed their minds and the Tropicana has submitte plans for redevelopement.

So where are these TS salesmen getting their information from.

Doug, I think it's called wishful thinking! LOL

I can't see CC being taken down, it's positioned right for it's market, and the property is paid for. The Riv I could see one day coming down. Even driving by it looks old and tired.

Doug, are you a glutton for punishment? I have friend that take advantage of all these time share pitches to get free this and free that. However, they said that they now pressure you for up to 4 hours and its very intense. Their not doing any more of these.

Whats the deal on vegas timeshares. Why would someone want one. Don't you buy a week or two weeks and there the same weeks that supposedly you can trade?

Let me guess that the going rate is about 10K for one week?

Last question Doug, do you also have a monthly maintenance fee for upkeep?

Chris,

We have timeshare in Florida and yes the going rate about 7 yrs age was 10K. There is also a yearly maintainance and taxes bill, it can vary based on where you own it. Then there are fees to belong to the exchange company, so you can go other places, then you also have to pay to exchange! It is not a bargin at all, and it is very gruling to sit and listen to them.

Your friend must be pretty strong to sit through them and not buy anything. They just kept bringing in people to break you, 1st the salesperson, then asst mgr, mgr, his boss, etc...

I would never listen to another pitch again! and wish I hadn't listened to the first one.

Boy, lot's of questions. Let's see if I can cover them.

Actually, we went to the Hilton TS to upgrade the membership we already had. Before going in, we owned an every other year usage (one week) at the HGVC LV Hilton. We wanted to upgrade to an every year usage and more points. So the sales presentation was pretty mild. Mostly how much does it cost and where do we sign. Otherwise, we don't do them anymore. Most now obligate you to 2 hours. After that you can tell them to blow and get your freebies. You sometimes have to be forceful about leaving after THEIR time is up.

Why own? We prefer staying in 1,000-2,000 sq ft condo's as to 300-400 sq. ft hotel rooms. It's just a travel preference and you do pay a hefty price.

You actually purchase a 1/52 share of a condo. So yes, you are buying a week. Most are now floating weeks so you can book any week you want. Some, like Hilton have seasons. Low seasons cost less, high seasons cost more. Others are fixed weeks were you can use the condo on that week only. I prefer floating weeks since our vacation plans can change from year to year.

Yes the weeks can be traded. We have traded our for Lake Tahoe, Branson, MO, Orlando, Williamsburg, VA, Palm Beach, FL, Aviemore, Scotland, and New Orleans in the French Quarter. We also traded one week for a discounted Alaskan Cruise.

10K for a week bought from the developer? You're a little low unless you want one of the properties that are 10 miles or so off the strip. A one bedroom unit at Grandvista, a new resort 5 miles (or more) South of Mandalay Bay was going for $10,000. A two bedroom at the new HGVC in high season was $25,000. Polo Towers had a few units in November from $10,000 (one bedroom) to $15,000 (two bedroom). The Villa's at Polo Towers 2 bedroom units were going for close to $30,000. I've seen Aruba timeshares and peak ski season weeks go for around $50,000.

If you buy resale I've seen Jockey Club two bedroom units on the Vegas strip from $3,500 and Polo Towers from $5,000 for two bedroom units.

Maintenance fee's are billed yearly. Grandvista is selling with a yearly MF of $295 for a one bedroom unit. It's low because they aren't actually built yet. Polo Towers one bedroom units MF are around $495, two bedroom units are $625. Villa's at Polo Towers are $800 for a two bedroom unit. HGVC two bedroom units are $625. MF's cover insurance, payroll, utilities, taxes routine maintenance and a slush fund to pay for intermitant building repairs (painting, new carpet et...) and unforseen expenses.

Timeshare is definately not for everyone but we really like it. It's very hard for us to stay in just a motel/hotel room anymore. At present I own three 2 bedroom units and one 3 bedroom unit. If I wanted to I could get 8 weeks of vacation every year out of these units but we stick with using just the 4 weeks. Since they are all larger than one bedroom we sometimes bring family with us. Other times we use a feature called Lock-Off and use the one bedroom unit, lock-off the 2nd bedroom, then trade it for a one bedroom unit in overdeveloped area's like Branson, MO or Orlando, FL and use those for a long weekend break. This way we get a one bedroom condo for less than the price of a motel room at a Holiday Inn.

Is any of this cheaper than just renting hotel rooms? No, it's not. But we are more comfortable and enjoy or vacations more than we ever did. To us that's worth a lot. You'd actually have to stay in one like our 3 bedroom in Palm Beach Shores, FL that has the ocean front view with two balconey's to enjoy the ocean while sipping coffee in the morning. What a wonderful way to relax and not have to fight the crowds.

We are a couple whom have never even considered buying a timeshare! I know some that have them and love them! I like to stay free at our Casino (good price) but everyone's different. Does anyone ever make a profit on selling them after a few years? Odd, if you look in your local newspaper there seems to always be some firm that wants to buy them, at a discount of course! There also always seems to be some for sale, at a profit of course! What with all the fees and purchase price does the weekly or daily fee turn out to be?.......
To each his own...

Oh no, now you want me to do MATH. :p

Price is something best not really thought about if you buy from the developer, it looks pretty good if you buy resale. It will never beat free but......we only gamble maybe $40/day through quarter machines these days. Needless to say we don't get many offers and none of the ones we do get are free. BTW, have you ever done the math on those "free" rooms? That number will usually make you cry as well since the caino only gives you back a certain % of you expected loss. Of course, the expected loss is generally higher than the house edge but it's still not pretty. Which is why we never played for the comps.

And now, the math. Let's take the current developer price of the new Hilton Grand Vacations Club on the Las Vegas Strip. This won't be a straight line but more like a dogs hind leg. I'll try to keep it as straight forward as I can.

First, there are different seasons. A two bedroom unit with 1045 sq ft is a little under $25,000, so let's just use that figure. Most of the time, a salesman will tell you that you need to use the property for at LEAST 10 years to break even so I'll use that figure as well. Maintenance fee's run $625/year for any 2 bedroom unit at Hilton so that figure at least stay's constant.

One more figure to toss out before starting. HGVC has seasons and uses a point based reservation system to make reservations. Platinum season for a two bedroom unit takes 7,000 points for a 7 night reservation. If you prefer to stay during Gold seaon, the points are only 5,000 for the same unit and in Silver season, 3,500 points. So cost can be relative to when you want to go to Vegas as well.

Confused yet? I'll try to straighten out this ugly bad of snakes just a litte.

Based on 10 years of usage, a purchase price of $25,000 and $625/year MF's, your nightly cost of a 2 bedroom unit is $446.42 per night. Now before you pass out, keep in mind it is a two bedroom condo with full kitchen, living room, two full baths and washer/dryer combo. To compare it to a hotel room is really comparing apples to oranges. You would need to ask your host what the cost would be to get into a two bedroom suite (if they have one) to get a better comparison on value.

That's the straight forward method. Now for the twists and turns. Lets say you wanted to stay two weeks rather than one. You can do that by exercising a provision called Lock-Off. There's a connecting door that can be locked, essentially giving you a one bedroom condo AND a deluxe hotel room that has a mini fridge, microwave oven, small talbe et.... In this case, the cost per night is cut in half to $223.21 per night. Again over a 10 year period.

Another way to do things would be to own 7,000 points but stay in a lower point value seaon. If you stay in Silver season, you could stay in a full two bedroom suite for two full weeks. In this case, the two bedroom unit would cost you $223.21.

BUT, Silver season cost less so, if you wanted to use the lock off provision, you could stay even longer. While a two bedroom unit is 3,500 points for a week, a studio unit is only 1,100 points. Essentially, you could stay in a studio unit for six weeks and still have some points left over. That gets the cost down to $75.04/night.

So what have we learned? It's still expensive no matter how you look at it IF you buy from the developer. You'll never really be ahead unless you plan on keeping the unit for 20+ years.

Now, if you buy resale, just cut most of these costs in half. HGVC exercises what is know as right of first refusal. In other words, every offer to buy a unit offered for sale by an owner has to be approved by HGVC. if the price is low enough, they can exercise ROFR and purchase the unit at that price, then resell it themselves for a profit. This keeps the price to purchase a resale unit rather high compared to the developers who don't use ROFR. Typically, I believe the best you'll do on Hilton resales is $12,500 for 7,000 points. So, just cut all the above numbers in half.

OK, now my head hurts. I need to go find a glass of wine and soak in a hot tub for at least 30 minutes.

I didn't purchase TS because it was "such a darn good financial decision" like some of the salesman will try to sell you on. We bought it because the rooms are extremely comfortable to stay in. We've made several exchanges and I sit around with my free time planning on where we might want to go to next. We also travel a LOT more than we used to since I refuse to allow money to go to waste. It used to be quite the struggle to get us out of town one week every 4 or 5 year. Now, we vacation 5 times each year. Four are TS vacations and one is a cruise. I no longer live to work but work to vacation. Life's been good ever since.

Doug, Congrats on your comfort and satisfaction. I'm sure it's hard to explain it or justify it to some people.

Here's a little humor. It is not intended to make fun of you or oppose your justification....

I want to buy a home in Vegas. Suppose I am a tightwad and want to pay $25 a day. I will live in it 365 days per year. I will pay for it for 30 years. How much house can I buy?

Do the math! <vbg>

Doug: You gave the right answers!! You Win!! So now I will set you up with a friend of mine who sells Yachts in Florida!! I do see your points and like I said some people would go no other way! We have stayed at our Casino/Hotel so long that they would probably send us invitations with out looking anymore...("Boyd Group Properties"..the "Fremont") and they are somewhat known for easy comps! The wife plays nowhere else and may not even leave the Casino during our usual five day trip unless I con her into a new restaurant!.. :rolleyes:
One thing..our Casino is just run of the mill rooms; but it is all we really want? They tried to give us a suite once (big deal) but we went back to our normal lifestyle after one night!..

JMT,
If my calculator is working correctly, you'd pay $273,750. But that's not the question is it. The question is, how much house can you buy? That's going to depend on the interest rate. It will take me a few moments longer to do the calculations but it's probably around $80,000 to $120,000. I know, quite a large difference but I'm not that great at estimating anymore. That's why I don't bet the spread in sports betting. <g>

Mick,
It's just a different way of traveling. On a cruise ship, the have inside cabins, large two bedroom suites and everything in between. I have a friend that only books inside cabins because she doesn't spend much time in the cabin. We, on the other hand, book balcony cabins. We enjoy sitting on the balcony enjoying a cup of coffee or snacks from room service. True it may only be water out there but we find it very relaxing. To each his own. <vbg>

JMT,

I missed it by a couple thousand dollars. Assuming 6% interest and assuming that you're not including taxes or insurance in the payment, you could afford $126,831 or a monthly payment of $760.41. This, of course, is not including leap years, which would allow you to afford slightly more house.

If you include insurance and taxes, you can probably add a couple hundred more to the payment or just buy about 25% to 33% less house.

First, thanks for the info Doug. You make good points. As long as your happy, that's all that matters. I also agree that those comps are not free and never were. I don't play for comps myself. I think if forces me to stay in a losing situation longer than I should if I'm trying to build points.

We have 4 years to retire, Heres what I've discovered by comparing options on a spreadsheet.
(1) You need at least a 34 ft motor home to be comfortable. Besides the 100,000 add gas, meals, parking, insurance and maintenance and its not cheap.Probably cheaper to just buy a townhome except you don't get the variety of travel but the cost would be comparable. Most expensive is trying to travel in car place to place for three months to escape Minnesota Winter. This option with gas meals lodging is one of the most expensive ones. At $200 a day it ads up to $18,000 for three months. Forgit that. Townhome and motor home would be cheaper option.

Least expensive is just renting a nice condo or townhome for three months. At 2,000 per month (avg price for a nice place/location) this is cheap compared to all other options. Plus, if you don't like the area, you go elsewhere, no strings attached, no ownership. Probably the optiopn were leaning towards.

My father had a philosophy about traveling 'If you fill the glovebox full of money, you can buy anything you forgot to pack or need down the road'

I've looked at motor homes and travel trailers myself a couple of times. It will be many years before I get around to purchasing one. At least I think it will. <vbg>

Rather than buy the motor home, I'm more inclined to go with a 5th wheel or travel trailer. There not as costly and the truck used to pull it detaches. I wouldn't need to pull a car.

The problem is the truck needed to pull the trailer. If you don't want to have problems going over the mountains, a diesel is really the way to go. With the trailer running around $35,000 to $50,000 and the truck getting upwards of $35,000, I just don't see myself buying one right now. Especially since it would be used only for weekend trips.

We thought about this before purchasing into timeshare. We have less initial capital invested and still have comfortable accomadations. Plus, they can be exchanged for other units around the world. The trick is you have to be somewhat flexible in what you're asking for. Flexible in what resorts you'll accept as an exchange as well as travel dates. It helps if you can plan you vacations from six months to one year in advance.

One other option we didn't think about, but I wish we would have, is just buying a condo in Vegas. There are some pretty decent ones for around $200,000. When you're not in residence they will rent them out for you if that's what you want to do. In our case it would have possibly provided some modest income that we may have been able to use to rent a condo somewhere else, provided us a place to stay in Vegas for as many weeks as we desired or even just for weekend trips and provided us a place to retire to if that's what we wanted. Plus, the condo would actually HOLD it's value. Of course I considered this AFTER I had purchased 4 weeks of TS. <g> Maybe in another 5 years or so, I'll look into it again. Somehow owning a condo in Vegas on one of the coasts appeals to me. At least more so than owning and trying to store a motor home or travel trailer when I'm not using it.

I agree Doug, that I would do a 5th wheel over the trailer any day. You have more room and flexibility that you do with the motor home.

Yes you do have to buy the truck but you have the use of it as a first or second vehicle that you don't get with a trailer.

Thanks for this extremely interesting topic. I don't know if this has been discussed yet because I have yet to have the time to read the above in detail, but if one pays $25,000 for a one week fee simple interest in a time share, that would mean that the overall value of that unit would be $1,250,000+. (I only use a 50 week period figureing the unit might be "closed down" for two weeks each year for maintenance).

I would assume that the basic value of that unit would be $300,000 plus or minus a $100,000.

That is a decent profit for the TS Sales Office.

Can anyone elaborate on these figures?

I've looked at those numbers before which made me understand why some of the major hotel chains have jumped on the bandwagon for timeshare developement. It's a nice profit without ongoing expenses of running the resort. They get to keep their name on it, rent out unused units and the owners pay for the upkeep and staff in the form of maintenance fee's. Of course, they have to keep building them to keep the profits rolling in. Seems that at some point the entire market will become oversaturated which, of course, will lower the value to those of us that own. At the same time, those that have developed will have made a nice profit and then moved on to other things.

There are other expenses involved for the developer that you might not find with the typical condo sale. For instance, I'm sure those lovely people standing at the high traffic areas asking the question, "How long are you in town," or "Would you like to see a show for free?" cost a little bit of money. There's also the sales staff that enjoy explaining the many values of owning a timeshare to prospective suckers......sorry, owners.....for at least 90 minutes of your vacation time. Of course, sometimes their watch breaks and it takes a little longer than 90 minutes. The developer also gets to pay taxes on all of the unsold property during developement plus picks up the tab for housekeeping, front desk, promotional sales offers, ect...during developement.

I've never tried to put pen to paper to figure out just how much each individual condo costs the developer but it must be low enough that it's a good business for them. Otherwise you would be able to walk down the strip and only have to deal with the porn slappers rather than fend off that ever present questions of "Where are you from?" "How long will you be in town?" and "Would you like to see a show for free?"

doug (or others): I wish to ask; "Why does anyone buy a timeshare from the issuing company?"As was said you seem to always find timeshares listed in the newspapers with a price that is anywhere from 33% to 50% of the normal asking price? I am not in the market for one but know several whom own them and are very happy for whatever reason...

Irish, I really don't know for sure, but I suspect that very few people go on vacation with the intentions of buying a timeshare. I suspect that they go on vacation with fun and relazation on their minds. Once they get lured into a sales office via a show ticket (or whatever), a professional salesman tries to change their minds.

I know that some people really enjoy their timeshares. I know others that hate to admit that they got suckered.

Well, it's easy? TS developers have all the legal contracts, the financing and all the inventory. Plus, some of the major companies like Hilton and Marriott have built into their contracts a little thing called Right of First Refusal. If you want to resell your unit, they reserve the right to review the sales contract and block that sale by purchasing the unit themselves, then reselling it through their sales department for a profit. More and more TS developers are using this to encourage people to buy through them and discourage resales.

As for us, we own 4. All four have been purchased from the developer. The first was just like JMT said. We were on vacation, we hadn't thought about it or researched it and, since we hadn't been taking regular vacations it sounded like a good way to "force" myself to plan timeoff. It worked but I could have bought that unit for a lot less. Try $5,000 rather than $18,900. Oh well, live and learn.

The next two were location and time specific. One is an Ocean Front unit in Palm Beach, FL. The developement was pretty new and there were very few units on the resale market and no Ocean Front 3 bedroom units in the season we wanted. Since it was post 9/11, they were slashing prices and offering some pretty good incentives to purchase. For buying we received a bonus week that we used to go to Scotland plus a 7 night Alaskan cruise in an outside cabin with Royal Caribbean.

The other was an 18th floor strip view room at Polo Towers. I've never seen one of these units on the resale market but then again, I haven't been searching for one. In our case, we bought preconstruction so there wasn't really even a developer inventory, let alone a resale inventory when we purchased. Because it was preconstruciton, we got a much better price for the unit.

The final unit we were just lazy I suppose. We purchased an every other year usage at the Hilton Grand Vacation Club LV Hilton. You don't see EOY resales through Hilton all that often. This year we upgraded with Hilton to an every year usage at the new Hilton on the north end of the strip. Again, no resales at this property yet AND Hilton exercises ROFR.

I feel that most are like JMT says. Vacationers that never really think about purchasing, get roped into a sales presentation, then end up buying before they know what hit 'em. Thus, you get a lot of unsatisfied owners and a lot of complaints about the industry.

Doug, Did you make first contact with the other three properties prior to leaving on vacation, such as an advertisement in the media or your own research? Or did you go just on a regular vacation and happen to run across a deal that you liked?

After purchasing our first unit, we decided that we wanted at least one more two bedroom lock off unit. With a lock off unit, you can lock a door from the one bedroom master suite and the second bedroom and use both at different times. This allows you to us two units to get a total of 4 weeks worth of vacation.

We started making phone calls from home to developers. Marriott has a great reputation for quality and they're own marketing department handles resales of it's members and reposesed units. Unfortunately, most of what they had was in Orlando and neither of us really cares for Orlando. The worry was what if something happened in the future and we couldn't trade. We also called Polo Towers, our first purchase, to see what they had to offer.

Polo Towers offered a good price on preconstruction units scheduled to be built the next year. They offered us an unit on the 18th floor with a strip view for $4,000 less than the first unit we purchased plus, now maintenance fee's until it was done and accomadation certificates with our exchange company to be used anywhere we wanted to go, other than Vegas until the unit was purchased. That was our second purchase.

The thrid purchase didn't start out as intentional. We used one of those accomadation certificates to exchange into a Marriott TS in Palm Beach, Fl. I had this habit of going on tours for the freebies. All the way there, Shelley made me promise NO MORE TOURS. She'd had enough of them.

We'd been there two days when she turned to me and told me, "I want to own a unit here." Well, I told her we'd go on the tour and if they offered a good enough deal, I'd buy. This was the December following 9/11. Developers were pretty skitish not knowing if the general pubic was going to still have an appatite for TS's.

Needless to say they did offer us a good deal. We ended up purchasing a 3 bedroom ocean front unit. We also were given an extra accomadation certificate to be used for an additional week with our exchange company and a certificate that could be used for a 7 night cruise with Royal Caribbean for an ocean view cabin. The certificate took us to Scotland and the cruise took us to Alaska.

The fourth purchase came after we took the TS tour at the LV Hilton. We had both read about Hilton's flexabilty with their point based reservation system and thought it would be something we were interested. Besides, we now had an odd number of TS weeks and an even number of children. After looking the program over but not liking the price, we were offered an every other year contract that was at a price we could afford. So once again, we purchased.

This year, we upgraded our every other year ownership with Hilton to an every year usage owenership at the new Hilton property on the strip. It's probabaly more than we really need but we like the property quite a bit and have had some issues with Polo Towers management of the property.

At this point, that will be it for us. I don't have any more vacation time to use even if I did find something else I liked. We're happy with the units and their locations and feel we have as much flexablity as one can hope for with timeshare units. One thing I do know, we've come to the point where we HATE staying in a hotel room. There's nothing like stretching out in a condo with all the amenities compared to being stuck in a room with a bed and a TV.