I don't know what I don't know! (Buying DVC)

[Noodlez]

Thanks Shooby. I guess no regrets from you either then? I’ve yet to hear any horror stories.

Does anyone have any guesses what will happen when the contracts expire? Do you think they’ll offer expansion again or will there suddenly be lots of points for sale? I’m trying to work out if I’ll be too old to care at that age!

[YorkshireT]

September isn't as bad as October for peak but it's getting busier due to bringing forward of Food and Wine. Thus think of it as semi peak. From October it's full peak.
I did post data up from 2015, on 7 month availability, but studios have probably tightened up since then.
End of contracts, who knows but assume it will revert back to Disney as the OKW extension was a mess.
However counter to that they have a lot of resorts ending in 2042 so it's possible they may offer some extensions on some. I suspect though they'll probably see the $ $ signs for a refurbed/ rebuilt and resold Boardwalk and Beach Club. Why turn down another $1bn in revenue when sold as a new resort.
Re use year, main consideration is cancelling, but when buying resale a big consideration is any existing points, banked points or for stripped contracts, when the points next come in. This is so you can make decisions about what to do with banked, and whether the points have come on when you make your first reservation. Thus use year when you buy is often quite important for those reasons.
For example you intend to travel August 19 and a stripped contract comes up for sale with all 2017 and 2018 points already gone. If it has a Feb use year, you can book in September 18, as the points have come on by your intended travel date, coming on in Feb 2019. If however it had a September use year, you couldn't as the points wouldn't be on.
Assume you buy one with banked points. They'd have to be used by the end of the use year, so use year may determine if you can get a trip in by then or will be planning on renting them as soon as you buy.
So use year can be quite important on that initial purchase point use.

[Noodlez]

Thanks again. I'm just looking through your 7 month availability post now. It's very helpful. We're going to have a lot to think about!

[Shooby doo]

No regrets apart from not buying earlier actually! That being said we didn't know about the Resale market then but who knows how much cheaper it would have been. As I said in my other post, perhaps a "downside" of no pressure selling, is that our agent never pushed the ability to buy more points or the bigger rooms & looking from our point of view with a then soon to be teenager, just not enough space in a studio.
We have had a couple of nights offsite, here & there, but never a lengthy stay & if we had to do so then it would be somewhere like Staybridge, as even a microwave & toaster makes a big difference between a DVC Studio & a "normal" Hotel room.
SD

[Noodlez]

I read that as Stalybridge, which really isn’t my preferred holiday destination! :-)

I hope it’s ok to ask a couple of more questions about points? If we didn’t have enough points to book somewhere is there any ability to rent additional points to combine with our own? I’ve seen that DVC members can transfer between each other once a year but I wasn’t sure if this is something that could be paid for or if it’s just meant to be between family and friends.

If we had spare points we wished to rent out, what kind of amount would be considered so small it’s not worth bothering? Is there an amount that nobody would be looking to rent as it’s not enough for a holiday?

I read somewhere about DVC not being for commercial use. Does this just prohibit a business from being operated from a property or would renting points out too regularly be considered? If so, would this be the case from a couple of consecutive years or only if it was never used personally?

Sorry if I sound a bit clueless on all of this!

[Shooby doo]

Not sure how strict they are on the "business" rental, there is supposed to be a maximum number of rentals per year. I've read more than a few posts where "owners" are getting better returns than a % from the bank.
Every now & again you will find someone looking for a small number of points, generally they are short for a stay. Places like Dave's have a minimum 2 night stay for rentals.
Anyone can transfer points, worth noting though that points always keep their HR priority, so ideally at 11 months you should look at points from the same resort.
You can "buy" one off use points,per year, Direct from Disney- I think it's 24 but someone will be along to confirm this!
Keep asking you will always get an answer
SD

[YorkshireT]

You can I believe rent 20 times a year (!) before they will consider it a business, there’s not many individuals who could manage that. Renting is absolutely acceptable.
The return is about $13\14 a point but may rise soon. So if you have SSR you are making about $6.50 a point profit per point per year.
Depending on what you bought in at, yes, at the moment this is quite a nice return. Coupled with ‘as of today’ growth in the points (again especially if you bought resale), the whole thing is currently very satisfactory for many members.
However, I’m always keen to stress that DVC should not be bought as an investment. In a recession, luxury discretionary spending is often the first thing to go, albeit it didn’t hold up too badly last time, but prices were lower anyway and the higher they become perhaps the bigger the fall.
IF the economy holds up, then I can see DVC climbing higher as we head into Star Wars and 50th with all that park investment.
But buying DVC for an investment, you could lose your shirt. Buying it for good holidays and enjoying the side effect of growth, happy days.
Shoo by is spot on, each year member services will rent you up to 24 one time use points. They recently upped the price from $15 each to $17. In fairness they have to keep them higher than rental rates, otherwise you could get them, rent a booking and make a small profit.

[Noodlez]

Thank you both for your help. I think I'm just overthinking this at the moment!

I'm still not really sure about something. If I had banked/borrowed all of my available points but wanted to book something that was far more expensive (e.g. I needed 500 more points) is there a site that this can be done on? The rental sites I've looked at seem to let you rent out your points or pay to rent all of the points for a holiday, but is there somewhere that you can pay to add these to your own? Would this be down to a 'friendly' agreement with another DVCer? Or would I need to rent out my own points and find someone with more who could rent the place I wanted for me to rent from?
This isn't even a real scenario, I'm just trying to get things clear in my mind.

If people aren't able to combine points then do they generally just end up binning the occasional 10/20/30 points as they're not rentable?

Thanks you so much again for replying. That's really good to know about the commercial aspect. We're definitely not doing this as an investment but I was just picturing the scenario where (for some unknown reason) we had to rent out our points for 3 or 4 years and the whole thing got taken off us! I really do like to plan for every eventuality. :-)

[vhm672]

You can buy a small amount of single use points from DVC (24 I think) if you are slightly short on a reservation but these are only available at 7 months I think.

500 points or something of that nature could only be obtained by renting as any non DVC member from someone like David's or by transfer from a member. In the first scenario you can't combine points so you would have two reservations. In the second you need to find a member to do a transfer and members are limited to the amount of transfers they can do.

Losing points is only an issue if you can't use banked points and if you aren't planning on going frequently enough to use all your points either you have bought too many or dvc is not for you. Obviously I am discounting unexpected life events here as there is nothing we can do about these.

If you had to rent for 3-4 years this is not going to be an issue DVC are not going to take your points away.

[Noodlez]

Thanks very much vhm672. I haven't worked out yet what would be too little and what would be too many which is why I'm trying to go through all of the possible options.