They don't. They say that your booking activity has exhibited a pattern of behaviors (which considers, say, 10 different factors including room types booked) that clearly points to you operating a commercial enterprise. I'm confused as to what inputs you think are allowable in establishing a pattern of rental activity that constitutes a commercial enterprise, and why those inputs are different from room type. Is it just number of bookings? Percentage of points rented? If I'm following this logic, then it's explicitly allowed for me to own 4000 points at a single resort, and I'm explicitly allowed to rent as many of them as I'd like as long as it isn't commercial, so why should I be reviewed more closely just because I can afford to own more points than the next guy?
The thresholds would be the rentals themselves and not the room types, times of year, etc,
I gave an example yesterday that if I own 500 points and rent 250 every year, DVC might not see that as a large enough pattern to say it’s for business purposes. It pretty much pays for my 500 points of dues.
However, if you have 4000 points and rent 2000 every year, then that might be looked at differently because the number of rentals you are doing is much higher and can reach a reasonable definition that you are doing it for a business because they want to use those other clarifiers.
For RIV owners, I think they can. I think the level of what a pattern is can be lowered because they can now combine them.
While I know you don’t agree, I really do think they changed the declarations because they have to be specific when limiting an owner’s right to rent and as was pointed out, being a condominium, its built in.
Going back to the examples, both are 50% but two different situations. It doesn’t matter whether you own VGF, BWV, or SSR…it’s your actions that make the difference.
DVD did include this in the contract. “To encourage personal use, you are capped at 4000 per resort or 8000 total”.
IMO, that alone gives the impression to the average owner that it takes a lot to shift to what can be considered using the membership for a business.
Not saying it’s fair game to rent all 8000 and be safe, but it is a lot of points and I can certainly see how someone might interpret that to mean that is the criteria.
Had it been capped at 2000 and 4000, then I’d say that would have been what an average DVC owner was likely to interpret as the line in the sand.
One of the reasons I have said before that I don’t like hard and fast numbers, like 20 reservations or 50%, etc because the number of points matters.
If I own 100 points and rent them every year for 3 or 4 years and I am never a guest and none of them are family or friends, then I think there is a high probability I have begun to use it a business.
But, if I have 900 points and one year rent all of them and then the next few years I rent a few hundred, but the rest I use, then I don’t see that as a pattern that means it’s a business…it’s an owner who has something else going on.
There are a lot of situations that I could suggest that match what I believe is a violation and what is not. It’s not cut and dry.
In terms of the RiV and beyond language, I think DVC could include that as additional info to an owner, but IMO, they don’t have the authority to make those the reasons or to be able to lower the level of what constitutes a pattern of rental activity below what would be reasonable it is a business.
And that is why I will be surprised if we see anything more than DVC going after the large point owners because that is what they talked about in the meeting…in that they recognized that those are the owners who are doing things like walking and renting high demand rooms because they know how to use things to their advantage.
But it’s being the large point owner renting a lot that is the issue and not the other things they are doing to make them into a more lucrative business
