Direct Purchase Financing

Quartermouse

Earning My Ears
Joined
Jun 21, 2021
Hi all. My wife and I are wanting to purchase a Riviera contract direct from Disney. When speaking with a case member today regarding the financing, we were quoted a rate of 14.99% if we financed direct through Disney. My question is, are you allowed to secure you're own financing when you buy direct or are you obligated to use who Disney wants to use? We both have good credit scores, so that rate was a surprise to us. TIA.
 
Yes you can secure your own financing and pay Disney cash.
Disney I think has better rates than that also. If you put more money down and pick a shorter term. That's normal what they quoted if it's 10% down, 10 years I believe, even for excellent credit. Yes, it's a bad deal...but it's typical.
 
FYI I used Disney financing 11 years ago when I joined to get the incentive while at WDW. As soon as I got home though I paid it off with emergency funds, and then made payments to my emergency fund. I don't recommend that as a smart strategy, but it was better than the interest payments. :idea:
 


I hear ya. We did a literal double-take when we were told that rate.
I'm positive you can secure your own financing. To DVC it's functionally the same as a cash purchase. However, I'm not sure what the going rate is for banks willing to finance timeshares. You'll need excellent credit for a good rate.
 
I'm positive you can secure your own financing. To DVC it's functionally the same as a cash purchase. However, I'm not sure what the going rate is for banks willing to finance timeshares. You'll need excellent credit for a good rate.
Unlike a mortgage or auto loan, most banks will consider it a personal loan, and the rates are not going to be very good.
 


Hi all. My wife and I are wanting to purchase a Riviera contract direct from Disney. When speaking with a case member today regarding the financing, we were quoted a rate of 14.99% if we financed direct through Disney. My question is, are you allowed to secure you're own financing when you buy direct or are you obligated to use who Disney wants to use? We both have good credit scores, so that rate was a surprise to us. TIA.
Are you able to put the purchase on a 0% credit card? If not, there’s always the Disney credit card with 0% for 6 months on direct DVC contract purchases. We purchased our contracts this way and then just paid them off when the 0% was about to end.
 
We were going to finance but they quoted 10% interest. My husband said we will just use our next couple of years from our vacation fund. Since we mostly vacation at Disney then it sort of worked out. We only bought 100 + 25 pts direct AKV and so the purchase price was not much more than our vacation budget. This was in 2019.

I would love to have a minimum of 500 pts but our next purchase will be resale.

I do not recommend financing through Disney.
 
Definitely look at Lightstream. They have several terms and no early payment penalty.

If you apply for the Disney Visa, you could get 6 months same as cash and if you need more time, get other financing at the 6 month mark to pay off the Visa before it charges interest.
 
Yikes that rate.

dvc is a “luxury” item, if you can’t pay cash, you can’t afford it to me. Save up instead then just pay cash.
I see this a lot, and while I don’t completely disagree the idea of it, there‘s much more to the equation than just paying cash. For example, we financed our resale through Lightstream because most of our discretionary cash was tied up in stock during a downturn in the market, I’d rather pay some interest than sell off stocks at a loss just so I could say I paid cash for a luxury item. And we ended up paying it off in about 5 months.

Also this mindset is essentially saying “if you can’t afford to pay for your next 50 years of vacations in cash now, than you can’t afford to vacation.” Sure, if you are retired and don’t have earnings coming in other than your retirement investments, I’d agree, you can’t afford to pay interest for a luxury item. But someone who is still working, earning money, might not have a lump sum of 30 grand in their account they can afford to just lay down for future vacations, but they surely can afford a reasonable interest rate that still will save them money over the long haul. Another example, were you to buy 150 points at RIV direct today, you’d get the $2250 incentive discount. On a Lightstream loan for 3 years at 5.99%, paid off in just over 2 years you’d pay a similar amount in interest to the incentive. If you saved for 2 years then bought, will the incentive be there? Mostly likely not. Will the current prices remain the same for those 2 years? Absolutely not. My point is, there are situations and math that can support that financing isn’t the bad deal everyone plays it up to be. If all things were equal, sure, pay cash, but they aren’t, so sometimes reasonable financing makes sense.

Two caveats, Disney financing is not reasonable, nor is paying it off over 10 years.

I‘ll add another vote for looking into Lightstream, super easy, they’ll send you the money the same day at reasonable rates. Also, remember, Disney will let you split up your direct payments over 90 days.
 
Although I’ll just pay cash if I buy more points, I’m always curious when I read the recommendations to use your Chase Visa w/ 6 months free interest to buy DVC - if you want the minimum blue card 150 points at Riviera that’s $30,000 - do most folks have that amount of credit on their Chase Visa?
 
Our credit limit on the Disney chase is 24k. For some reason I think we were only able to use it for the deposit (this could have been because a few of our contracts are resale- I can't remember because it was years ago). We ended up paying half in cash and financed the rest through Vacation Club Loans and then paid that off early. The rates were much lower than Disney even with A+ credit.
 
Although I’ll just pay cash if I buy more points, I’m always curious when I read the recommendations to use your Chase Visa w/ 6 months free interest to buy DVC - if you want the minimum blue card 150 points at Riviera that’s $30,000 - do most folks have that amount of credit on their Chase Visa?
Most folks? Probably not. Do keep in mind that if you have multiple Chase cards (such as Marriott Visa, United Visa, Sapphire, Freedom, etc.), they might let you move some of your available credit around to different cards. I did this when I bought CCV points back in 2017 just to get the 2x points on the Disney Premier.
 
If you put the purchase on a Disney Visa for the 6 months, can you then transfer it to Lightstream? Or will they only finance at the onset of the contract?
 
If you put the purchase on a Disney Visa for the 6 months, can you then transfer it to Lightstream? Or will they only finance at the onset of the contract?
A timeshare loan through Lightstream really just sets the term and rates. They don’t ask to see anything to confirm what or where you are buying. You apply, if approved, they deposit the money into your bank account and you do with as you please. So yes, you could use the Disney card, if not paid off by the end of the 6 months you could get the Lightstream loan to pay off the rest.
 
Also, remember, Disney will let you split up your direct payments over 90 days.
Not always true... We bought OKW direct before the increase, and my guide was very resistant on this. They wanted full payment a couple weeks after downpayment. I ended up getting him to split it into two payments over a month because I didn't have quite enough room on the card. (see next)


Although I’ll just pay cash if I buy more points, I’m always curious when I read the recommendations to use your Chase Visa w/ 6 months free interest to buy DVC - if you want the minimum blue card 150 points at Riviera that’s $30,000 - do most folks have that amount of credit on their Chase Visa?

My OKW purchase was right around $20000. I charged the downpayment and we were also on our vacation at the time, so all that hit the card too, so I did not quite have enough to cover the whole thing. I called and asked for an increase and they increased it by about $2000 🙄 Still not enough. So, when they wanted payment, I charged half and paid off the trip and deposit that billing period and then had them put the remainder on the card. I have $2.95 available on my card right now. 😂

If you put the purchase on a Disney Visa for the 6 months, can you then transfer it to Lightstream? Or will they only finance at the onset of the contract?

This is what I plan to do. Pay off aggressively over the next 6 months, then get lightstream for the remainder. They deposit the money straight to you within a day and they never ask to see any proof or paperwork, although you do technically enter the contract with them promising to use the money for what you say. When I got my AKV resale I had already sent the money from our savings to them and used the Lightstream deposit to pay it back into our savings. I paid $450 in interest on that loan, which I think was very reasonable, especially compared to Disney. I could sell it at a profit now.
 

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