Thinking of Buying 25 points for Convenience

[bwbuddy5]

You might be better off buying a large, loaded contract, use the points for your trip, and then sell the contract stripped.

If the contract has points that expire before your trip, just rent them out.

Closing costs on small contracts are usually prohibitively expensive and eat into your savings.

That is definitely an interesting idea. Not sure the folks that depend upon my cash flow would appreciate it!

 

[Dean]

That is definitely an interesting idea. Not sure the folks that depend upon my cash flow would appreciate it!

Buy, use once and sell it will have a significant cost. You're at somewhere around $3500 on a 150 point contract assuming using 300 pts even ignoring any lost value on the contract for the RTU being shorter and the used points. That's simply closing, dues on the points used and sales commission. I would guess that approach would cost about $5K on 300 points used and add the risk of ROFR buying in and the aggravations of selling on the back end. IF you move it to 400 points the cost goes up about $1000 more. You'd probably need to use 400 points just to break even compared to renting. The underlying premise was my reason for questioning whether you'd go more than this one trip. While I think every third year is workable for some situations, normally every other year is my cutoff for whether buying is reasonable. But in this case every third year might put you where it'd be reasonable, or even if it was every 4 or 5 years, one could rent out in between.

Assuming 400 points for the trip in question and a studio every few years, it might work like this. Buy 120 points resale and 25 retail with an April or June UY (assuming that'd be good long term), bank the 2017 points added to 2018 and borrowing most of the 2019 points. Rent any points that you couldn't bank to 2018 UY. Bank the 2019 points to 2020 then use or rent them going forward as applicable. That assumes you could get a good value out of the retail perks, if not, just buy 150 points resale which might save more than the retail purchase would anyway. I'd discourage the transfer route due to the limitations of booking. The other benefit that owning gives you is access to special view types like AKV value or BWV standard for a single resort. But I wouldn't buy and sell just for the one trip.

 

[mustinjourney]

Buy, use once and sell it will have a significant cost. You're at somewhere around $3500 on a 150 point contract assuming using 300 pts even ignoring any lost value on the contract for the RTU being shorter and the used points. That's simply closing, dues on the points used and sales commission. I would guess that approach would cost about $5K on 300 points used and add the risk of ROFR buying in and the aggravations of selling on the back end. IF you move it to 400 points the cost goes up about $1000 more. You'd probably need to use 400 points just to break even compared to renting. The underlying premise was my reason for questioning whether you'd go more than this one trip. While I think every third year is workable for some situations, normally every other year is my cutoff for whether buying is reasonable. But in this case every third year might put you where it'd be reasonable, or even if it was every 4 or 5 years, one could rent out in between.

Assuming 400 points for the trip in question and a studio every few years, it might work like this. Buy 120 points resale and 25 retail with an April or June UY (assuming that'd be good long term), bank the 2017 points added to 2018 and borrowing most of the 2019 points. Rent any points that you couldn't bank to 2018 UY. Bank the 2019 points to 2020 then use or rent them going forward as applicable. That assumes you could get a good value out of the retail perks, if not, just buy 150 points resale which might save more than the retail purchase would anyway. I'd discourage the transfer route due to the limitations of booking. The other benefit that owning gives you is access to special view types like AKV value or BWV standard for a single resort. But I wouldn't buy and sell just for the one trip.

I have seen instances where someone bought a very large BCV contract (over 300 points) at around $110 a point, stripped three years worth of points, and then flipped it a month later for about $100 a point. I believe they rented out almost all of the points -- but it is possible to come out ahead. Certainly not normal, and is somewhat risky if the market shifts on you -- but is possible. Certainly only something I'd attempt if I had some cash lying around not doing anything else -- and I didn't have to have access to it for at least 5 months.

 

[Dean]

I have seen instances where someone bought a very large BCV contract (over 300 points) at around $110 a point, stripped three years worth of points, and then flipped it a month later for about $100 a point. I believe they rented out almost all of the points -- but it is possible to come out ahead. Certainly not normal, and is somewhat risky if the market shifts on you -- but is possible. Certainly only something I'd attempt if I had some cash lying around not doing anything else -- and I didn't have to have access to it for at least 5 months.

It could happen but it's unlikely. Just too much risk and the upside isn't that much at best. IN this case one would have to hold it for over a year as well. The only way one could sell it a month later would be if they transferred points.

 

[Orsino]

25 points is fine, if you have a plan for using those points to the end of the contract. If you don't then, I don't think it is a good idea.

We often will buy a big transfer of points over renting points when taking family or friends with us. I like having the control (and it really came in handy when we had to cancel!). So that part of the plan I like. Just be sure you actually want the 25 points and can use them.