Wife and I have made the decision to own
DVC. Of course, there are questions now, and more along the way.
We're looking at contracts in the range of 120-160 points to start with.
First off, is there any advantage to buying two smaller contracts at different resorts (with the same UY, ideally) vs one at a single resort? I assume that to book at 11 months, you'd have to have enough points at your home resort to book the entire stay, vs using points from both contracts?
I realize that one disadvantage is that it's almost a certainty that we'd be paying more per point up front.
Advantages and disadvantages. There are really 2 issues, multiple contracts and different home resorts. For multiple smaller contracts you'll pay more, roughly $10 a point more plus an extra $500 or so for each additional closing. IMO it's expensive insurance since you're talking an extra $2000 on the size you're looking at assumine that's the total you end up with. I don't believe it's EVER a good idea to plan to buy now to sell later for usage, there may be a situation where it's reasonable as a speculation to rent or sell later for investment purposes. You also limit yourself to a lot less contracts and often worse contracts so that further drives down the value and can easily cost you an additional one year of points. So the difference can easily be $3K or more total difference at this level. Now if one can find a single buyer with contracts together, you can sometimes have it both ways. It happens but it's fairly rare from what I've seen.
Multiple home resorts can be a good idea, it depends on specifics. I'm not a big fan of multiple small resort contracts for this purpose as a rule but there are some very specific situations where it can be a good choice. However, I don't think it's ever a good choice for a new inexperienced buyer. IMO new buyers essentially never have enough information to make a good choice for this specialized circumstance and tend to overpay without enough benefit, the same is usually true for high end purchases as well (Poly, VGF). You need the experience you can only get over time and with usage to do so.
If you judge that you need a total of 120-160 and would prefer 2 contracts, make your best decisions about where you'd like to end up including home resort(s) and number of points. before you proceed with other decisions. Then talk to a broker and give them a couple of choices. Maybe chose a single resort that you feel is your #1 and tell them you want to look for 2 different contracts, one for your minimum total and one for your minimum at that resort. Then you can take the best one that comes along. You want your prefered or more difficult to get resort first if you do multiple smaller contracts because it's much more difficult to match up the second contract as a rule. If that leads you to less than you need, get into the system and get your feet wet before buying more.
Here are a few scenarios. It assumes the 120-160 total, the answers would be be different if one wanted 2 in that range. I'm also assuming most points used at the home resort and generally at the 11 month window.
Want VGF or Poly most of the time - may as well bite the bullet and buy there. It'll cost a lot more but that's part of your up front process.
Want BWV & AKV - I'd buy BWV only esp if the standard view rooms were the focus. You can basically always get AKV, usually without the wait list. An alternative for 2 smaller ones would be BWV and AKV but I'd only do this if the value or concierge rooms were a focus at AKV and I'd buy BWV first.
Want BLT & SSR, buy just BLT for the size, but buy both for larger numbers
Want BCV & BLT, likely have to buy both or compromise and take chances.
Want SSR & AKV, buy just SSR, it's not really any more expensive to buy SSR for AKV using standard than it is buying AKV for value most of the time.
Personally, I'd likely just buy the one and get the best contract in the size range noted. IF one had a larger size range, I'd suggest less than the total and see how it worked then reevaluate later. Say one judged they needed 220, maybe buy the 120-160 best available then see how it went. That's the other advantage to multiple contracts, it allows one to test out the system and make a better decision on the second contract.
Bill
