DVC Strategy: Multiple home resorts vs One home with many points

[DougEMG]

What's your ideal scenario?... Multiple DVC home resorts with smaller contracts OR One DVC home resort with many points?

Multiple contracts at each of the resorts you really want to stay at.

 

[Alice in Okie-land]

3 resorts (with 1 being at VGC) - we love split stays, we love both WDW and DL and I only wish that I didn't have a Sept UY as resale contracts are harder to find!

Sept UY contracts are harder to find?
I’m preparing to buy for the first time, and considering Aug or Sep UY. Can anyone point me to info regarding resale availability (or pricing trends) by Use Year? Thanks

 

[Marionnette]

We are like @DougEMG. We have 5 small BWV contracts. The largest is 150 points but the majority are between 30 - 100. And then we have 4 small VGF contracts, the largest of which is 125 points, 2 AKV contracts and a single Poly contract. We tend to alternate between VGF and BWV each year and then use the AKV and Poly points for short stays or SAPs.

 

[Hopfather28]

For my wife and I we are in ROFR with a second add-on contract at PVB. Personally for us we had considered adding on at SSR but with the rising cost of SSR and the shorter contract the price per point per year was less at PVB. Now, I am actually glad I paid more for PVB because if I have a large group going and want to book multiple rooms I can do so all at PVB. Even if we want to ultimately stay in a 2 bedroom in AKV no one in our group will be upset staying at the Poly if there isn't availability in our 2 bedroom wish lists.

Why is this a benefit you might ask? Let's say I have a need for 300pts to book the two rooms I want as safety at the Poly but I have a 200 point poly and a 100 point SSR. I have to either borrow my 50% Poly from next year or hope that I get the room I want at AKV at 7 months. Let's say I borrow the 100 points from next UY. At 7 mos the 2 bedroom at AKV is available and that is a 255point room. Now I have 200 current UY points and 100 next UY points that I am playing with. Now I need to use the 100 I borrowed and use 155 of the current UY (either poly or SSR). So then I bank the remaining into next year which means that in the next year I will have 100 pts SSR expiring in 1 year, 100 pts SSR that are bankable, 45 pts PVB expiring in 1 year, 100 pts PVB that are bankable. So now if I want to book PVB at 11 months I don't even have enough for 1 studio standard view for 7 nights in my travel time. Restart the borrowing cycle. Rinse, Wash, Repeat. That said, this is just my justification for paying $20 more per point for PVB add-on rather than SSR.

 

[bakerworld]

Since the DVC has become harder to book (SSR/AK/BLT easiest), more homes gives a better chance at 11 month booking window. Obviously we didn't know this, or DVC was really different in '08, so we started with 160 at AK (Home advantage needed to acquire the value villas) and 100 at BLT but we found that during the Fall at 7 month window to book other DVC venues, we were locked out of anything except SSR so we added BCV.

I do wish we would've went with a different UY for the BCV. We only use those points for the Fall and the Fall is well past our December UY banking deadline so if we need to cancel we'll basically lose those points. Last Fall we ended up booking the Dolphin because we were afraid we'd be in a cancellation situation, which we were so not using our DVC was a good decision.

 

[perchy]

I’m a multiple contract kind of gal. I simply can’t commit to a single home within the bubble for 20+ years. I need variety. In fact, my commitment is to the variety.

I think it’s fun and exciting to plan, so booking at 11 or so months and changing it up at 7 months if I want to just adds color to my DVC experience.

 

[Lorana]

What's your ideal scenario?... Multiple DVC home resorts with smaller contracts OR One DVC home resort with many points?

Both, lol!

We have a lot of points at CCV, followed by AKV and BRV, though most of these are in smaller (less than 150) point contracts. We then have smaller contracts at RIV, HHI, PVB, SSR, VGC to allow us more 11-month windows and SAP.

 

[Lorana]

Sept UY contracts are harder to find?
I’m preparing to buy for the first time, and considering Aug or Sep UY. Can anyone point me to info regarding resale availability (or pricing trends) by Use Year? Thanks

Here is the distribution of points by UY (this was updated in 2021):
https://dvcnews.com/dvc-program/own...ty-of-disney-vacation-club-points-by-use-year

SEP, OCT, and APR are the least popular UYs overall, with each having about 9% of the total # of available DVC points, with SEP being at the very bottom. DEC is the most popular, at 20%, followed by FEB at 17% and JUN & AUG tied at 13%. Thus, if deciding between Aug and Sep, I'd recommend AUG UY.

However, it might differ based on the RESORT you are interested in. The linked article breaks down by each resort as well. However, between AUG & SEP UYs, there's no resort where SEP is more popular than AUG. This suggests that it will be much easier to find (and sell) resale contracts with an AUG UY than it is for a SEP UY. (I saw this as someone with SEP UY and an OCT UY for my VGC contract, lol).

This does imply I should go with DEC if I do decide to add on points in a UY to allow me to cover May-Aug, but that'd still leave a one-month gap, as I'd need to bank my points by July 31. But that might be fine, since I feel like I'd know long before 7/31 if I'm taking that August trip. Hmmmm.... decisions, decisions. I only haven't done it yet because I like being able to pool points, and I cannot decide which resort it is that I'd want out there on its lonesome, lol.

 

[HappyDisneyWife]

Exactly like @DougEMG & @Lorana said- both!!

We have ~200 at multiple home resorts, and really love having 11-month booking where we’d like to stay! For our “normal” travel, the 200 pt contracts are nearly perfect… but when we try to book grand villas for a week, I do wish we had more points all at one resort! Our tiny add-on at Poly really only gets us 2 nights a year, which is something I wouldn’t want to do at multiple resorts for sure!!