Well…in planning our second trip as a family to WDW, my husband asked me the other night if I would be completely happy if we went to DW every other year. I responded by saying, I’d be happy with every year…haha!
I had never considered DVC (though we have rented DVC points twice now). I just started looking at it. It’s not cheap. Has anyone done any real cost analyses and pro/con lists about purchasing? Because there is the initial cost and then all the dues during the year. But, of course, there are other discounts and perks with the membership. And, I believe you don’t get membership perks if you buy second hand, right? That’s basically what I’m doing now with renting points - using the points, but not getting the membership perks.
I agree. Financing it makes it less worthwhile IMO. And buying resale will save you almost 50% in some cases. You forego some perks with resale but the perks are never guaranteed and the value of the perks will not balance out the difference in cost.
We had been tossing the idea around for a good 2 years or more and just closed after saving and researching. We are very excited and look forward to our first stay as Owners.
I would make sure you look at the cost per year. If you buy a Copper Creek contract, you are buying for 50 years. You can always see it later but it is purchase price for 50. Some resale resorts expire in 1942.
This is true. I would suggest, as well, that one consider their age and the fact that annual dues never go away until the contract is complete. For us, that made length of contract less important. While the cost per year is potentially greater because of the shorter contract, I will be less worried about whether I can afford the annual dues after I am retired. I hope my kids will want to assume the contract from us, but even my son will be nearing middle age before the contract is done - who knows what he will be up to and interested in by then!
There are several brokers who specialize in DVC resale. A quick Google search will bring them up. Probably the two biggest are DVC Resale Market and Resales DVC.
as @OBNurseNH said, there are several brokers. What we did was found 3 or 4 of the main brokers and we just watched the listings until we found the price and the points we wanted. Don’t forget Disney gets ROFR. You also need to consider how many points are left when you buy resale, some people use up all the points and sell while some owners are selling properties with full points.
I have never heard of anyone doing what we did, proud to say I came up with this tip on my own. We found a property with full points and an excellent price at BLT where we wanted to stay. Our agent told us there was no way Disney would pass on the price we got with a full contract. So I negotiated with the seller and made our purchase contingent on the owner using up all of the points that would’ve expired before we finished closing, plus the following years points to book us a 2 bedroom villa at the GF. This basically used up 2 years worth of points, one of which would’ve expired anyway, and got us a trip AND presumably lessened Disney’s interest in the property bc most of the points were used as opposed to a full contract. After all of this we ended up riding out Hurricane Irma at the GF on our first DVC experience bc we couldn’t cancel the trip under these circumstances
Your agent will be able to explain this better but what I remember was Disney tries to scare you into thinking you will miss out on a bunch of perks that honestly do not add up to the savings you get by going resale. The perks are things like discounted food and souvenirs which you can get through certain credit cards anyway. There are also DVC exclusive parties and rest areas that you wont have access to in the parks(example there is a DVC private lounge somewhere in Epcot that I am not worried about missing out on). You do have access to all the physical properties at the resort. I might not be remembering this correctly but essentially there is building covenant that cannot be changed and it dictates your rights as a property owner and it cannot be changed. The other member benefits I mentioned, you won’t have access to and they can change them at anytime, and they do.
One thing you might want to ask as a new topic is what if anything do DVC members regret? I will say I have certain regrets about things I did not know about before booking. We like to go in September and they typically offer the free dining plan then, as a DVC member you do not qualify for certain promotions like free dining. Also, we are doing the dining plan this year(we swore we never would again being DVC members with a kitchen, but the wife is pregnant this year), there is a separate price for DDP for DVC members and it is not a discount. So I am slowly finding out that DVC members do miss out on certain promotions.
Recently Disney has been taking contracts that are NOT loaded. Their reasoning seems to change often. Awesome how that worked out for you. But buyers need to watch trends.
Agreed and thanks. You are absolutely right. I didn’t mean to suggest they wouldn’t take an empty contract. They will jump on anything for any reason which changes often as you pointed out. My point is only that the better the price and the more points on the contract, the more likely Disney is to execute their ROFR. Anything you can do to alter one of those variables increases your odds Disney will pass on the contract. And as the buyer I didn’t want to raise the price on myself, so I just had the seller use up all the points.
I rennet seeing a board somewhere (DVCOwners.com?) where they had a section for people to enter the details of their contract and the results of ROFR. Helps you to understand what WDW is doing at the moment.
