Aulani - Direct or Resale?

[carolinainmymind]

Hi all, we are just returning from 8-nights at Aulani. We really liked it. We are currently BLT owners and we booked on points at the 7-month mark...it wasn't impossible but did require planning and walking the reservation. We are recent East to West Coast transplants and strongly considering adding on some points at Aulani to match vacation planning for where we live now. We bought our original points direct because we like the stability of knowing we bought direct, but with the add-on I'm strongly thinking about resale. Would love any thoughts or opinions from this board, which has been a great source of well rounded info for us in the past. Would you go direct or resale for an Aulani add-on? Anyone out there who's added on at Aulani (after already owning at a WDW area DVC)? If so, how did you do it?

Supplemental Info...we will be adding about 200 points, there are some strong direct developer credits running right now, and we will time with our existing use year no matter whether we do direct or resale.

TIA!!!!!!!!

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

Resale.

The price difference is too big to ignore and since you already own there's no reason to go direct for benefits.

You can try and find a subsidized contract and get lower dues too.

Of course, being west coast can you have some flexibility in your travel? Finding low airfares and then seeing if there's resort availability is a plus and you may not even need Aulani points.

 

[chicagodisneyguy]

I'm assuming you currently have somewhere between 100 to 200 BLT direct points which would qualify you for all DVC perks. That's a great benefit to have. As far as the Aulani purchase, I'm seeing a lot of contracts in the 160-250 pt range listed between $85 to $115 per point. I would think if you were patient you could easily get a 200 pt contract for around $90 to $100. Direct looks to be $182 minus developer credits ($12.5/point in your case). Just a rough estimate of $170 direct - $110 high end resale your looking at $12,000 saving on a resale. I haven't included any closing costs on either side as I don't have those costs in front of me, but even if those are $2k cheaper going direct you're still saving $10,000. Also as Kat4disney states you might be able to find a subsidized contract which would save you a decent amount over the life of the contract.

I own 200 BLT points and have used those twice to stay at Aulani. If Chicago wasn't so far I would have added on there. If I was in your shoes, I'd probably bid around $85/point on any 200-225 pt contract that fits your use year and wait for someone to bite or drop their price. Luckily for you Aulani contracts aren't as in demand as GCV or BCV. I think you can wait for the buyers to hit your bid vs lifting offers. Good luck!

 

[_auroraborealis_]

Plus, if you are buying to stay at AUL the dire t benefits are not a factor, really.

 

[keaster]

We just purchased Aulani resale, the difference between direct and resale was too big too ignore. It's a 400 point contact with subsidized dues. It had 217 banked points which seller already paid dues on, plus seller agreed to pay all closing costs. The subsidized dues contracts tend to go quickly any time I've seen them come up!

 

[John-DVC]

I would go resale. The prices for Aulani resale is very good right now. I got 2 contracts this year at 250 and 350 points. Averaged out at $80 (not subsidized). I think aiming for $80ish is reasonable and half the price of direct after adding up the resale fees.

One negative for me was how long it took to close after we passed rofr. It took roughly 3-4 months on both contracts. Just saying this in case you have plans to book again soon and hoping for a quick close (prob possible,my experiences may be just bad luck).

Good luck.

 

[mnra]

who did every one use for resale purchase since we have tried fidelity and seems like the people running it are clueless. Resales show up for days after offer made then when you call you can't get straight answers. Also I was told that Disney no longer lets banked points be purchased is that true

thanks all

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

who did every one use for resale purchase since we have tried fidelity and seems like the people running it are clueless. Resales show up for days after offer made then when you call you can't get straight answers. Also I was told that Disney no longer lets banked points be purchased is that true

thanks all

You mean that they ROFR all contracts with banked points? That is incorrect.

 

[mnra]

no they said that bank points had to stay with original owner and not be sold with the contract. It was not fidelity that said that is was another broker

 

[renzmari]

no they said that bank points had to stay with original owner and not be sold with the contract. It was not fidelity that said that is was another broker

That is not correct as we just purchased a contract with 2016 and 2017 banked points. They are all ours to do with what we want.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

no they said that bank points had to stay with original owner and not be sold with the contract. It was not fidelity that said that is was another broker

Nope.

Find a different broker - that one lied to you if it was indicated as a "had to". Or perhaps you misunderstood something?

A seller cannot keep only some banked points while selling the contact. They would have needed to be transferred prior to banking or they go with the contact. Or a wait to close date if they are using them.

 

[Disn3yVision]

Subsidized resale for sure if you can find it

 

[MattKreps]

Resale for sure. But you may consider if you really need Aulani Points vs lower cost and lower maintenance from another resort and just book at 7 months. Seems like Aulani is pretty good for getting rooms by many accounts, so why not buy lower cost and just book at 7 months.

 

[carolinainmymind]

Hi all...sorry to go dark. It's been a busy couple of weeks. Thank you for all of the great advice. The overwhelming response was resale, so we started researching straight away. Within a few days a subsidized dues contract popped up but it was a bit smaller than we wanted. We debated back and forth and we were about to put in an offer, when ANOTHER subsidized dues contract popped up. This one was much closer to the overall points we wanted, so we jumped on it. We put in a pretty solid offer that was under asking but definitely within market value and the sellers accepted. We are very excited. Now we just have to wait on this ROFR process (new acronymn for me I hear that Disney has rarely bought back Aulani even with subsidized dues. We've also been told ROFR for Aulani usually moves quickly since they rarely buy back, so also optimistic. Fingers crossed but waiting is definitely the hardest part.

To answer a few of the questions that popped up on along the thread. @KAT4DISNEY asked about flexibility in travel. Yep, we are finding that if we can plan about 7-9 months out, we can get flights in the 300-500 pp range (factoring in some airline miles, etc), which is way cheaper than we can travel back to Orlando. We decided the 11-month booking window would be critical to flexing the days we wanted to fly out and sort of drove our decision a bit more. The 11-month booking window is also helpful because the week that we choose to go each year is the West Coast "mid-winter" break and it is HARD to book Aulani at 7-months that week. We did it, but we had to stay highest cost rooms. Now we can book standard or island-view, which we thought was preferable to the pool and ocean-view rooms (our opinion

@chicagodisneyguy, yep we are well over that range at BLT so we should keep our benefits, so win We were, however, finding some pretty great developer credits right now at Aulani though, we calculated $159 / pt for 200 pts with developer and resort credit (that direct sales team was willing to covert as a developer credit since we didn't book during stay). That price per point would have been tempting if we didn't already have the benefits. And, since we've never once used Concierge Collection, we didn't feel we were losing too much.

If I can answer any questions for future researchers, feel free to PM me.

THANK YOU ALL!!!!

 

[chicagodisneyguy]

Congrats on the pending contract! Sounds like you got a great contract.

 

[KevCoz]

Hi all...sorry to go dark. It's been a busy couple of weeks. Thank you for all of the great advice. The overwhelming response was resale, so we started researching straight away. Within a few days a subsidized dues contract popped up but it was a bit smaller than we wanted. We debated back and forth and we were about to put in an offer, when ANOTHER subsidized dues contract popped up. This one was much closer to the overall points we wanted, so we jumped on it. We put in a pretty solid offer that was under asking but definitely within market value and the sellers accepted. We are very excited. Now we just have to wait on this ROFR process (new acronymn for me I hear that Disney has rarely bought back Aulani even with subsidized dues. We've also been told ROFR for Aulani usually moves quickly since they rarely buy back, so also optimistic. Fingers crossed but waiting is definitely the hardest part.

To answer a few of the questions that popped up on along the thread. @KAT4DISNEY asked about flexibility in travel. Yep, we are finding that if we can plan about 7-9 months out, we can get flights in the 300-500 pp range (factoring in some airline miles, etc), which is way cheaper than we can travel back to Orlando. We decided the 11-month booking window would be critical to flexing the days we wanted to fly out and sort of drove our decision a bit more. The 11-month booking window is also helpful because the week that we choose to go each year is the West Coast "mid-winter" break and it is HARD to book Aulani at 7-months that week. We did it, but we had to stay highest cost rooms. Now we can book standard or island-view, which we thought was preferable to the pool and ocean-view rooms (our opinion

@chicagodisneyguy, yep we are well over that range at BLT so we should keep our benefits, so win We were, however, finding some pretty great developer credits right now at Aulani though, we calculated $159 / pt for 200 pts with developer and resort credit (that direct sales team was willing to covert as a developer credit since we didn't book during stay). That price per point would have been tempting if we didn't already have the benefits. And, since we've never once used Concierge Collection, we didn't feel we were losing too much.

If I can answer any questions for future researchers, feel free to PM me.

THANK YOU ALL!!!!

How can you tell if a contract is subsidized or not? Is it in the listing details?

 

[keaster]

How can you tell if a contract is subsidized or not? Is it in the listing details?

Yes they put it in the listing as it is a big selling feature