I am strongly considering purchasing a smaller dvc resale and the more I get into researching, the more quesitons that come to mind.
With 2 children and a teacher in the family, our disney time is limited to summer, spring break, thanksgiving, and christmas break. I understand the 11 month home resort booking and 7 month non-home booking; however, if we waited and decided 3 months out that we wanted to book a last minute vacation, what are the chances that we would have a few options to pick from? I can imagine the more popular resorts would be booked, but would we at least have a few options to pick from or do you typically have to plan out your vacation by the 7 month mark?
With more and more members joining DVC every day, the importance of planning as far in advance as possible grows. Ideally you would want to be able to plan at the 11 month mark where in many cases you will have the pick of what you want. However, there are times where people get shut out even at that point. I was two hours into my 11 month window for an October Food and Wine reservation at BWV and there was no availability for Boardwalk View or Standard View rooms. However, there was plenty of availability for Garden/Pool view, so I simply booked that. Then there will be another crush on availability at the 7 month mark. From that point on availability decreases as you approach the arrival date. As an added "bonus", DVC turns over unused rooms to the central reservations office (CRO) at 60 days out, opening booking possibilities to a whole other group of people. That being said, I have frequently been able to find availability (even during some of the more busier times) as short as 2 days before the day I wanted to travel. However, this is in no way guaranteed and I wouldn't count on it. So that's the general spiel on availability. To answer your question specifically...
our disney time is limited to summer, spring break, thanksgiving, and christmas break.
Others will weigh in on this as well, but I would suggest that you would have a difficult time booking a last minute trip during July 4 week, Thanksgiving and Christmas break. Not sure when your spring break is, but right now there is availability for many different types of rooms at a few different resorts for mid March, which is only 2 months away. So I think you would have a decent chance at getting something last minute during spring and summer, and possibly even at the other times. It can be done. But just know that the best use of DVC is to book at the 11 and 7 month windows.
As to cancellations, is it correct that if you cancel before 3 months of your reservation, that you do not loose your points and you could reallocate for another trip, bank or rent/transfer? Also, if you were inside of the window of where cancelling would cost you your points, can you change the name of the parties and sale/rent the reservation to a third party (such as on the DIS boards) to at least get some money back?
There are two things at work when it comes to cancellations. The first is the cancellation window and the second is use year. I'm going to give you a very basic answer, but I strongly recommend you do a search for threads on use year here on the DIS and read them. But basically, if you cancel outside of 30 days from your trip, your points are returned to your use year and you can use or bank them just as you would points you never made a reservation with. If you cancel within 30 days of your arrival date, your points go into holding. That means that they cannot be banked and can only be used for a reservation within the next 60 days. Holding points expire at the end of your use year.
If you cancel your reservation and you are within the last 4 months of your use year, you have lost your opportunity to bank those points (although you might be able to get a one time exemption) and you must use them by the end of your use year. An example of this would be if your use year is Jun and you cancel your May 1 trip on March 16. You are within the last 4 months of your use year but outside of the 30 days. It's complicated...read the use year threads and you'll get it.
To your last point, you can rent out your reservation to someone else in order to recoup some (or all) of your money. You can also cancel the reservation and "rent" the points by making a new reservation for someone else, provided it falls within the parameters outlined above. It's a little bit of work but it can definitely be done. (Renting the reservation is significantly more difficult than cancelling and booking a new reservation for a renter. As such short notice, the odds of finding someone who wants your exact dates are not great.)
Finally, for a smaller 50 point contract - do you anticipate these typically holding there resale value over the next 10 - 15 years?
Honestly, nobody can predict what will happen to the resale value of DVC contracts over the next 5 years, never mind the next 15. DVC is unlike just about any other timeshare out there in the fact that their contracts have a significant resale value at all. Many timeshare system contracts can be bought on eBay for $1 from people just looking to stop paying the fees. That being said, resale values have dropped pretty significantly in the past couple of years, before ticking back upwards a bit recently.
Please correct me if I am missing something, but if the smaller contracts hold the value, for a family of 4 who would go maybe every 2-3 years for the next 10 years or so and a 50 point dvc membership would accommodate their needs during this time, this could be a significant savings, even if the membership is resold after 10 - 15 years.
There's more to it than that. Even if the contracts have no value, if you got in for a low enough price and you make good use out of DVC, then you will have gotten a respectable value out of your purchase. I would advise against trying to make the "one trip every three years" thing work, because it is a bit complicated. Once every other year is completely doable though. There are many ways to analyze the short and long term value of contracts. The easiest way is to look at what your lodging would cost you if you didn't have DVC and then what it would cost you by using DVC, accounting for purchase price amortized over however many years you plan on using it and adding in maintenance fees. (Spoiler alert: DVC will most likely work out to be a losing proposition if you typically stay in values, a wash if you typically stay in moderates and a potential savings if you typically stay in deluxes.)
The fact of the matter is that people own DVC because their is a perceived value to it. Saving money is hard to quantify because savings are relative to another purchase. But it is safe to say that you will most likely receive a better
value for your dollars if you purchase DVC than if you book direct.
I sincerely thank you all for your help, advice, and expertise.
Hope it helped. Keep reading the different threads on here and keep asking questions. Good luck with your decision.