DVC T &C Personal Use - Only Thread to Discuss!

[Sandisw]

I have a fundamental question/speculation for the group. Actually. it's a speculation wrapped in a hypothetical question.

I fundamentally believe that 'spec rentals' are by far and away the largest contributor to the effect to 'normal' owners. If DVD could figure out a way to prevent spec rentals, wouldn't this solve the vast majority of problems? Is it even possible to do this?

There has been a great amount of speculation and intellectual one-upsmanship banter in this thread, and I've enjoyed reading most of it, but you gotta simplify this thing for my simple mind. Isn't spec renting the real problem here on a fundamental level?

My opinion here.

They can enhance the profit of those who are renting them and some of your big time commerical renters absolutely snag and offer.

But, it seems to me that there only a few in that category who play that game.

The rest who are renting thousands of points and hundreds of reservations a year simply rent on demand and not participate in the hunger games for those hard to get rooms.

 

[Cyberc1978]

It’s on the DVC Fan YouTube channel under “Podcasts”.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that anyone in that organization is doing anything underhanded or nefarious. I have no knowledge or empirical data to suggest that. Just an observation that there appears to be some very carefully chosen words (probably a prudent practice for anyone or any organization even tangentially involved in the greater DVC rental universe) in there.

thanks

under podcasts I'm only seeing 5 shows "connecting with Walt" they are all from 2015

 

[Judique]

thanks

under podcasts I'm only seeing 5 shows "connecting with Walt" they are all from 2015

page 2 of this thread post 21

 

[Sandisw]

And in the "oh, and one more thing." category...

Has the ownership of The Dis changed and I missed it? There was an inuendo a couple of pages back that the one of the major board sponsors now owns The Dis. Is that true? Last I knew, they were just that. A sponsor, and Pete and The Dis was still fully owned and controlled by Pete and his company, Dreams Unlimited Travel.

Pete is no longer affiliated with the DIS and hasn’t been for years.

Beyond that, I have not heard of any other ownership changes.

 

[DonMacGregor]

Here’s an interesting, easily digested, article on bots. Now, keep in mind that ticket scalping bots are much more sophisticated than a bot designed to simply beat humans to a log in at 8:00 am at 11 months. These bots are logging on as hundreds or thousands of separate accounts (sometimes hacking passwords in the process), finding tickets to multiple events, circumventing security features, and dropping tickets in carts faster than a human can even log in to their account. A DVC bot just needs to beat you to the log in. That’s kindergarten versus grad school on the complexity scale.

Meet the man who introduced concert ticket-buying bots

If you do a little research, you’ll find that basic scalping bots, still likely far more sophisticated than what would be needed to snag DVC rooms, can be purchased on the web for a little as $50. A decent computer science major could likely write a script in their dorm room over the weekend. I know @Brian Noble has some insight there.

 

[Judique]

My opinion here.

They can enhance the profit of those who are renting them and some of your big time commerical renters absolutely snag and offer.

But, it seems to me that there only a few in that category who play that game.

The rest who are renting thousands of points and hundreds of reservations a year simply rent on demand and not participate in the hunger games for those hard to get rooms.

As I've posted in earlier years, I rented on Disboards one year back about 15ish years ago. (I had a court date and a physical injury that prevented me from going to Disney).

I rented out maybe 4 or 5 reservations - short stays mostly of 1-4 nights during food and wine festival.

Those renters contacted me in subsequent years asking to rent points.

So I can almost assume that other people who rent out their points (or a portion of them) yearly develop a following of people who are almost automatic customers. Nobody but Disney need see those rentals. Easy money!

 

[Matty B13]

DVC can stop the "spec rentals" in their tracks especially from the commercial sites. All they have to do is "book" a confirmed reservation then cancel it on the owner then demand a refund from the commercial site. If the commercial site states they have a "no refund" policy but gives them a voucher for a "new" rental then book the "new rental" then cancel that reservation on the owner. Pretty much keep "rinsing and repeating". This would pretty much crush those commercial sites especially if DVC cancels the rooms on the owners under 30 days and forces the points into "holding".

That is just EVIL!!!!! in the best way.

Also, once they have the account information and owners names and addresses, they can just run through all the DVC contracts for their names and just start canceling reservations with the same owners.

 

[mkatsy]

Ok but this is anecdotal because the opposite can be true, as well. And probably is just as common. Canceling out your 3 contracts is someone buying 2-3. How many members in the ROFR thread have we seen by multiple smaller/medium contracts at the same resort? A lot. They want more points but the safety and initial price of smaller contracts, that’s why smaller contracts are popular not so they can explicitly book 2-3 nights at the cheapest rooms.

I just don’t believe the numbers of actual owners at BWV or CVV or AKV has changed so dramatically to have such a strong and noticeable effect. There’s simpler and more obvious answers.

But wait a minute … many older buyers, myself included, are coached to purchase multiple smaller contracts so that probate is easier when we die because you can’t split a contract and adult children aren’t going to want to share

 

[muppets3d]

Here’s an interesting, easily digested, article on bots. Now, keep in mind that ticket scalping bots are much more sophisticated than a bot designed to simply beat humans to a log in at 8:00 am at 11 months. These bots are logging on as hundreds or thousands of separate accounts (sometimes hacking passwords in the process), finding tickets to multiple events, circumventing security features, and dropping tickets in carts faster than a human can even log in to their account. A DVC bot just needs to beat you to the log in. That’s kindergarten versus grad school on the complexity scale.

Meet the man who introduced concert ticket-buying bots

If you do a little research, you’ll find that basic scalping bots, still likely far more sophisticated than what would be needed to snag DVC rooms, can be purchased on the web for a little as $50. A decent computer science major could likely write a script in their dorm room over the weekend. I know @Brian Noble has some insight there.

It could be as simple as recording your keystrokes and then playing that back. Speed it up enough and you can beat any human.

 

[DonMacGregor]

That is just EVIL!!!!! in the best way.

It's Hedley Lamarr level devious:

 

[Mouseforward]

.


Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the fact that many of those studios are currently available across various commercial rental companies and myriad FB groups? We aren’t allowed to share here, but if you spend 20 minutes investigating for yourself you can find several hundred BW studio rentals— because it’s not that hard to clear $30-40/pt on them (as demonstrated above). It’s been speculated that spec rentals (to max profit) could be booking the majority of all SV rooms at BW and counting just the rentals that haven’t been completed yet suggests it’s at least 10-20%.

Yes, because they’re being held by the for profit renters, along with a few lucky owners who are able to get in within seconds of 8AM on a day that some are stopping walks or completing bookings.

One bedroom imbalances don’t help, but if they made them much lower, they would be attractive to spec renters too. As someone who likes 1bd, I’m in favor of a rebalance, but it won’t totally cure the problem at BW.

Ok so this is the strongest argument, against renting in general. The disparity between the points vs the Disney rate at BW vs a resort like Poly is high enough that spec renters are grabbing a larger amount of BW making it much less available than another resort like Poly.

Of course that means the 11 month spec renters have to purchase a greater percentage of the available points at BW if they are booking all those rooms. So in essence to grab 50% of the studio rooms spec renters would have to own about 21% of the sold points. So that would mean that the ratio would still be mathematically "fair" as they purchased the points and they are members (but it is breaking the rules)

So let's remove them, and then those points get sold to the regular non renting members. We would then have people who , unlike a spec renter, may trade out of BW , or go on a points cruise or grab a 1 or 2 br. So any increase in availability would only happen in proportion to the amount of traded out or alternate room size use.

So that checks out but I don't think the effect will be as significant as many hope possible maybe a regular DVC user only trades out 20% of their points at BW. So if it was 21% owned by spec renters you're talking a few percent more rooms available each day at best.

I think it is much more likely that there is software being used by large corporate owners to successfully book rooms at a higher hit rate than the average members. This would check with this being a more predominate problem in the past ten years. If this is the case, and it was stopped we would see a significant increase in our success getting rooms.

 

[Judique]

But wait a minute … many older buyers, myself included, are coached to purchase multiple smaller contracts so that probate is easier when we die because you can’t split a contract and adult children aren’t going to want to share

It was easier to split up contracts when Disney paid the closing costs, bought back a year of points to reduce your buy in and found your first stay for you.

Now splitting up a 300 point buy in 2-3 ways gets a bit costly.

On another note, I'm thinking of going contract shopping. My family got bigger this year and I'd like to do the multigenerational thing a few more times. I won't need any extra points before 2027.

Making an assumption here - will a contract stripped of 2025 or 2026 points have the dues paid?

(Don't bother with the 'why don't you just rent' advice <g>.)

 

[kilik64]

Do you have a link to this? Because I had always suspected that they were in fact strip mining contracts, so I’d be curious to see what he had to say. They always seem to have a higher proportion of stripped contracts for sale versus the other major players.

I can say with 100% certainty that they and/or their employees own contracts that they sell. I don't think it would be a big leap to assume they also rent a lot of those points.

The contract I bought via the board sponsor was owned by an LLC that was ran by a woman who worked there (i think in accounting, been a few years so don't remember all the exact details) and her husband. They owned a lot of contracts.

It's all public record if people care to look into it.

 

[muppets3d]

I can say with 100% certainty that they and/or their employees own contracts that they sell. I don't think it would be a big leap to assume they also rent a lot of those points.

The contract I bought via the board sponsor was owned by an LLC that was ran by a woman who worked there (i think in accounting, been a few years so don't remember all the exact details) and her husband. They owned a lot of contracts.

It's all public record if people care to look into it.

Yeah it's pretty common that they buy up contracts, rent out reservations/strip points by transferring, and then sell the stripped contracts. Everyone in the company "owns" the max amount of points DVC allows, I'm sure. It's simply how the DVC commercial rental industry works, for now.

 

[davidhr]

This will always be the place that we can’t see eye to eye. If you are regularly renting half your points, in order to cover your dues….

You are in violation. And should be stopped.

I feel the same, but at the end of the day is a stretch to say “you’re in violation” because DVD has decided to not clarify when an owner is.

 

[Mouseforward]

I feel the same, but at the end of the day is a stretch to say “you’re in violation” because DVD has decided to not clarify when an owner is.

And guides sold countless contracts to people with the line " get the extra points , you can always rent them to help with the dues"

 

[Mouseforward]

Now splitting up a 300 point buy in 2-3 ways gets a bit costly.

DVC only charged $150 per extra split in 2022 when I got my RIV - they did not hit me for full closing cost on each contact

 

[Brian Noble]

 

[muppets3d]

And guides sold countless contracts to people with the line " get the extra points , you can always rent them to help with the dues"

Are they really? Resale brokers sure, but DVC guides shouldn't be discussing renting at all.

 

[mkatsy]

It was easier to split up contracts when Disney paid the closing costs, bought back a year of points to reduce your buy in and found your first stay for you.

Now splitting up a 300 point buy in 2-3 ways gets a bit costly.

On another note, I'm thinking of going contract shopping. My family got bigger this year and I'd like to do the multigenerational thing a few more times. I won't need any extra points before 2027.

Making an assumption here - will a contract stripped of 2025 or 2026 points have the dues paid?

(Don't bother with the 'why don't you just rent' advice <g>.)

I don’t know anything about stripped contracts and dues but … let me leave you with a mental image of what that extra $500 in closing costs can save you from, and then you can decide if it’s worth it. You die and Timmy and Suzie inherit your points and all is well for a few years. Until Timmy marries a psychopath. Timmy and his wife begin calling member services and canceling Susie’s reservations and hogging the points. Timmy comes to his senses and divorces the crazy but your contract (in some states) is considered a marital asset. Or worse … Timmy’s crazy wife gets sued and loses and your contract is an asset and Suzie loses her equity …… pay the $500 and save Suzie from Timmy’s future crazy …