CCV Direct or More Resale (CCV or SSR)

[intamin]

I often debate RIV resale - we love the resort and have a nice # of direct points. And while being ‘stuck’ there sounds lovely, the issue for me is that sometimes circumstances take us to other resorts.

Example: we have two large family trips planned over the next year and for various reasons, we’re staying at BCV and POLY. I could have put my foot down and said we were staying at RIV but I want to make sure this trip works for everyone. In fact, the next time we could potentially stay at RIV would’t be until spring break 2027, and even that looks unlikely.

I understand conceptually that if we were to stay, having those cheap restricted points could help bump us up to better rooms when combined with our direct - but in those scenarios my direct points are basically becoming restricted as well.

I guess you could buy enough RIV resale that you could use them as standalone but for a host of reasons I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it.

All that said…I have no doubt that down the road I’ll be kicking myself for not buying RIV resale when I had the chance!!!

Yeah that's why I don't own RIV resale; however, I could see stripping out a small resale RIV to supplement direct points every 3 years say for example if you were guaranteed doing a large family gathering in a RIV GV for a week every few years to spare. That's when I would consider a 200 pointer. But for most people myself included who predominantly stay in studios and 1BRs I would probably do 50-100 point resale. Book at 11 months with a combo of your current UY direct and resale points, once closer to the holding deadline and you know you're going to stay at RIV, fully strip and spare the direct points. I wouldn't buy so much RIV resale to the point that I MUST stay there every single year.

 

[Girlstar30]

I would be terrified to buy a restricted resort resale in a state i dont live in. Gunna take some hard-core stalking if you cancel and would hate to be forced to dump all my points in a large room I dont need. Its already tough now cant imagine if it gets worse

 

[airjay75]

I think it could be fun figuring out how to manage some resale RIV with direct RIV. I feel like it would sort of be unlocking a new level of DVC booking skills. I could see booking some reservations with your current year points and then as you get closer to your travel dates and firming up your dates, borrowing on your resale contract to the max to then freeing up some of your direct points to bank. They key would be to use those resale points on very certain travel and to probably be trying to empty out all the points and then letting them build back up.

And worst case, you just dump them in Interval International if you end up in a position where you’re going to lose them.

 

[tx911]

I think it could be fun figuring out how to manage some resale RIV with direct RIV. I feel like it would sort of be unlocking a new level of DVC booking skills. I could see booking some reservations with your current year points and then as you get closer to your travel dates and firming up your dates, borrowing on your resale contract to the max to then freeing up some of your direct points to bank. They key would be to use those resale points on very certain travel and to probably be trying to empty out all the points and then letting them build back up.

And worst case, you just dump them in Interval International if you end up in a position where you’re going to lose them.

I can't imagine a year not going to Riv at least once!

 

[Brian Noble]

I guess you could buy enough RIV resale that you could use them as standalone but for a host of reasons I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it.

I did this, but I kept it simple: see below.

I think it could be fun figuring out how to manage some resale RIV with direct RIV. I feel like it would sort of be unlocking a new level of DVC booking skills.

My account is roughly 50/50 developer/resale, all at RIV. My point total is a bit more than it would take to stay in a full week in my preferred villa size and season at RIV. My plan is to alternate between RIV and "not RIV", using two years' worth of developer points for the "not RIV" year, and two years of resale points for the RIV year.

For example, for my 2026 stay, I am using developer points from UY25 and UY26. For my 2027 stay, I will use resale points from UY26 and UY27.

But, because most of the other resorts have point charts are a little more forgiving that RIV's is, I will be able to use a few developer points here and there for other things---that could be supplementing restricted points at RIV, or it could be for the infrequent "extra" long weekend.

Things are not quite this clean, for a variety of reasons, so I also have a rule of thumb for how I would prefer to use points for RIV stays. I want to use them in this order: Banked resale, current-year resale, banked developer, borrowed resale, current year developer, borrowed developer.

The thing that gets a little wonky is that because of the way DVC pulls points, all banked points are used before any current year points are, and so there would be times when using any banked developer would potentially come before current-year resale. I have to do some digging to see if DVC will let me use points "out of order" (where "order" is the order determined by the booking tool) and if not may have to think a little bit about what to do there.

But, I think having "a rule" about how to use points makes the which points to use decisions simpler, and not conditional on hypothetical, unplanned trips.