DVC plans to target commercial renters

[Chuck S]

Charing people for the right to rent spec rentals isn’t discouraging it, it’s facilitating it and profiting off of it— though I will concede that taking a $100 cut does make it less desirable to spec rent for a short stay. I’m not judging the board (which is a commercial enterprise) or you personally, but I wouldn’t categorize it as trying to help owners combat spec rentals.

Remember the rules here, if you've read them, it is $125 for ONE spec rental per year, or $250 for a maximum of 3 Spec Rentals per year. AND all threads on the Rental Board are only open for one month. It is highly doubtful a "commercial renter" will bother with that, considereing they need to also check their thread or PMs for inquiries about renting their reservation. Would you bother renting here if you were a commercial renter with (what people here tend to believe) every value and standard studio booked? You really think that doesn't discourage commercial renters from listing here?

 

[sethschroeder]

And again, I'm not arguing that rentals aren't allowed under the law, as they very clearly are. I'm simply asking where it says that if Don owns a timeshare, he has a guaranteed right under Florida law to use it as a rental property, and that that right can't be abrogated by the condominium association or any other entity.

I think everyone is concentrated on the wrong thing:

The question is are you allowed to have a friend use your DVC points for a stay?


If you answer yes - you are fine and will never get stopped from renting (as long as its not spec rentals and is of very low volume 1 or 2 per year)

If you answer no - then I would want you to point out where in my DVC contract it states I can't have a reservation under someone else's name (I dont care about a specific Florida law possibly allowing restrictions because the law is there to enforce my contract in this instance)

EDIT: to clarify this does not mean someone doing 5/10/20/50 different reservations for random people won't be found and stopped. I am talking about you giving away a random reservation or renting out 150 points you wont be using one year.

 

[sethschroeder]

I wouldn’t be that worried if a member has 20 reservations under their own name. It’s 20 for others that is currently more problematic. And even there, let’s say Disney triggers a review because a person frequently gifts stays to their kids. It’s pretty easy to prove a familial relationship (eg repeated use by the same people, in friends and family, etc).

I dont know all the data Disney has access to but between what they have, what is contractual with the county (that Disney can pull), and what exists a public information this is something a data person and AI person could work out over time.

Heck with spec rentals typically being on public facing sites its something that Disney could even data scrape from various resources to keep a data base for cross reference.

 

[Nabas]

I think everyone is concentrated on the wrong thing:

The question is are you allowed to have a friend use your DVC points for a stay?


If you answer yes - you are fine and will never get stopped from renting (as long as its not spec rentals and is of very low volume 1 or 2 per year)

If you answer no - then I would want you to point out where in my DVC contract it states I can't have a reservation under someone else's name (I dont care about a specific Florida law possibly allowing restrictions because the law is there to enforce my contract in this instance)

The POS clearly states that DVC is for use by “Owners”, “guests”, and “invitees”. There is no question you can have friends use your DVC points. You even can have people you don’t like use them!

You also can have “lessees” use your points, so renting is allowed.

However, the POS also expresses forbids “commercial purposes”. In courts, this usually is interpreted as meaning with an intention to make a profit.

 

[Brian Noble]

if they make $500k a year they don’t want that to go away anytime soon.

The thing is, that revenue stream is probably gone *while* they fight it—at the very least until they can convince a judge to grant an injunction. And that’s while you are paying a lawyer’s hourly rate.

“I can’t interrupt my business revenue to fight this lawsuit” is probably not a winning strategy if you are claiming it’s not a business.

Other developers in this situation essentially starve out the mega-renter. They don’t have to win. They just need to drag it out long enough.

 

[Sandisw]

Some food for thought.....if DVC did find a way to define a spec rental as using the membership for a commercial purpose ( I do not think they will), where does that leave a FW owner in renting what they bought?

Yes, a FW owner can cancel and book with their points, but they specifically bought a FW....so, how would a ban such as above impact these owners?

If an owner has FW 47 bought in VGF Resort Studio and a random VGF owner books that same week using points, and both advertise it for rent, how would DVC get around saying one owner is in violation and the other is not?

 

[JOLT]

I dont think they can say all spec rentals are for commercial purpose.

If I book an AKL Value studio over MLK weekend and plan to stay but my children say a month or 2 before they want to go somewhere else and I rent it to help pay for where my kids want to go. I dont think Disney would call that commercial.

I can see Disney flagging your account and reaching out to you if 70% of your points are booked in a different last name for 2+ years.

 

[nalababybear]

Some food for thought.....if DVC did find a way to define a spec rental as using the membership for a commercial purpose ( I do not think they will), where does that leave a FW owner in renting what they bought?

Yes, a FW owner can cancel and book with their points, but they specifically bought a FW....so, how would a ban such as above impact these owners?

If an owner has FW 47 bought in VGF Resort Studio and a random VGF owner books that same week using points, and both advertise it for rent, how would DVC get around saying one owner is in violation and the other is not?

And that's the issue of enforcement and how it's a giant time suck on both sides that would make DVC ownership onerous and not the darling to which members pretty much ubiquitously praise as a consumption product that one commits to 30-50 years.

 

[J-Dog]

I've not been following this thread as much as many of you, so maybe this has been brought up before in the last 800+ posts.

But, why can't DVD just use some kind of online security algorithm to prevent the spec renters' scraping programs from catching-up all the most-desirable booking times and categories?

It seems to me that most of the nameless rabble of DVC owners, like us, are most upset over the big rental sites renting out huge numbers of the most desirable bookings before we can even book them. And I think most of us agree that is accomplished by using anti-competitive computer programs to book those, right?

So, maybe I'm an idiot/not a tech guy and don't know what I'm talking about, but why can't DVD just employ of of those "are you a human?" questionnaire things during booking to prevent most of those problems that make most of us mad?

If they could do that, it obviously wouldn't stop spec renting, but it would at the very least require the commercial renters to literally have a guy getting up early in the morning to book stuff, same as the rest of us.

What am I missing here? Why is that not a solution?

 

[DonMacGregor]

I dont think they can say all spec rentals are for commercial purpose.

If I book an AKL Value studio over MLK weekend and plan to stay but my children say a month or 2 before they want to go somewhere else and I rent it to help pay for where my kids want to go. I dont think Disney would call that commercial.

I can see Disney flagging your account and reaching out to you if 70% of your points are booked in a different last name for 2+ years.

On their face, there’s a clear difference between a confirmed reservation and a spec rental. Spec rentals are those reservations never intended to be used by the owner and made specifically for the purpose of renting to a third party, often targeting the most highly sought after or valuable rooms. That’s unambiguous.

The task is determining what confirmed reservations are simply unused vacations as in your example, versus those that are spec rentals in sheep’s clothing.

 

[theMoreDisneytheBetter]

Confirmed reservation for highly desirable dates/room times listed on a third party site immediately after booking = definitely spec rental. But let’s say that Disney starts cracking down on these (would be pretty easy for them to identify the members behind them, or they can always “book” the reservation and then see what membership it is attached to)…then the spec renter would just wait and post closer to the reservation date.

Alternatively they could look at every single rental of an AKL value studio (something where to pool of rooms is limited) over the past year and see which memberships had a non-owner stay in them. Seems like a pretty easy place to start.

 

[tom1944]

As a resale purchaser I wonder how much if any amount commercial renters drove up the sales price of resale contracts?

If there are who knows how many commercial renters driven out of the business does that substantially reduce resale contract prices?

Does it impact the prices enough to put pressure on Disney's direct prices to some extent?

 

[Nabas]

For reference, the legal definition of “commercial purposes” (source: Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School):

used for commercial purposes​

(10) Used for commercial purposes .— The term “used for commercial purposes” means the carriage of persons or property for any fare, fee, rate, charge or other consideration, or directly or indirectly in connection with any business, or other undertaking intended for profit.

 

[sethschroeder]

The POS clearly states that DVC is for use by “Owners”, “guests”, and “invitees”. There is no question you can have friends use your DVC points. You even can have people you don’t like use them!

You also can have “lessees” use your points, so renting is allowed.

However, the POS also expresses forbids “commercial purposes”. In courts, this usually is interpreted as meaning with an intention to make a profit.

My point was to get vast majority people out of the weeds and realize this isn't going to impact them.

The people negatively impacted by this (unless maybe you are selling your contract) are the ones who already know what they are doing is over the line but do anyways as they figure they wont get caught.

 

[VGCgroupie]

My point was to get vast majority people out of the weeds and realize this isn't going to impact them.

The people negatively impacted by this (unless maybe you are selling your contract) are the ones who already know what they are doing is over the line but do anyways as they figure they wont get caught.

Exactly.

 

[Massachusetts]

Remember the rules here, if you've read them, it is $125 for ONE spec rental per year, or $250 for a maximum of 3 Spec Rentals per year. AND all threads on the Rental Board are only open for one month. It is highly doubtful a "commercial renter" will bother with that, considereing they need to also check their thread or PMs for inquiries about renting their reservation. Would you bother renting here if you were a commercial renter with (what people here tend to believe) every value and standard studio booked? You really think that doesn't discourage commercial renters from listing here?

I am one of the ones that paid the $250 this year. I purchased a bunch of points resale this year - all of the contracts were "loaded". We did 6 rentals - 4 on demand/transfer transactions through disboards at $20/pt and 2 "spec" rentals through another service. Neither spec rental worked on disboards. One was a last minute studio booked under 30 days. The other was 1 bedroom (expiring points booked under 5 months) that I originally planned to use but decided that 2 trips in 2025 is probably enough. The "spec" rentals went for an average of $15/pt.

Put me in the camp that supports rental flexibility outside of high demand rooms/seasons and firmly against bots and LLC's. I am not going to be chasing those hard to get rooms anytime soon due to the size of my travel party(s) but I can understand people's frustration.

 

[Genie+]

For reference, the legal definition of “commercial purposes”:

used for commercial purposes​

(10) Used for commercial purposes .— The term “used for commercial purposes” means the carriage of persons or property for any fare, fee, rate, charge or other consideration, or directly or indirectly in connection with any business, or other undertaking intended for profit.

And our contracts don’t just say ‘Not for Commercial Use’. They say: Commercial Use Prohibited

The FAQ goes straight to the point concerning our ability to rent:


‘Commercial purposes is expressly prohibited’.

Commercial purpose includes pattern of rental activity OR other occupancy…’

Coming down the pike though-



States are fighting to get their tax dollars back. Vacation rentals on advertising platforms. DVC rental brokers/websites?

 

[xdan0920]

Remember the rules here, if you've read them, it is $125 for ONE spec rental per year, or $250 for a maximum of 3 Spec Rentals per year. AND all threads on the Rental Board are only open for one month. It is highly doubtful a "commercial renter" will bother with that, considereing they need to also check their thread or PMs for inquiries about renting their reservation. Would you bother renting here if you were a commercial renter with (what people here tend to believe) every value and standard studio booked? You really think that doesn't discourage commercial renters from listing here?

If the Dis really wanted to discourage spec renting, they would just not allow it. Instead they charge for it.

 

[Genie+]

The whole world is catching up with the information age after the fact. I do not expect the DVC rental landscape to continue on unchanged. I’d be much more surprised if things in 2029 were barely different than 2019.

 

[xdan0920]

And that's the issue of enforcement and how it's a giant time suck on both sides that would make DVC ownership onerous and not the darling to which members pretty much ubiquitously praise as a consumption product that one commits to 30-50 years.

You keep saying this as if it’s a fact. The truth is, many of us want it to be more onerous to rent.