DVCforless "what should I offer" bid suggestion tool nailed it

[NaptownMom]

BCV 210 pts contract was listed at 139. The bid suggestion tool recommended I bid $132, so I did, seller accepted, and now we are in ROFR. Neat trick as far as I'm concerned.

 

[disneylandtour]

I think this is fabulous. Welcome to Beach Club. But also, for others, I'd say that DVCFL suggest prices favors sellers. In fact, I have wondered if DVCFL might actually be working to normalize higher prices. For example there are multiple Beach Club contracts, over on www.fidelityrealestate.com, that have all of their points (in roughly the some overall point range) and have an asking price below your offer. I only point this out so that maybe people look at the DVCFL price suggestions with some healthy skepticism. I remain confused as to why both with the star rating system and with the suggested offer price DVCFL consistently favors what benefits sellers. I believe a number of people on this board have suggested that DVCFL reconsider some of their star and suggested pricing structures.

 

[disneylandtour]

Or to put this another way, take what DVCFL gives you as a suggested offer and then subtract another 8-10% and that would typically be a good starting place for an offer, a place where a seller can either accept or counter slightly.

 

[NaptownMom]

I think this is fabulous. Welcome to Beach Club. But also, for others, I'd say that DVCFL suggest prices favors sellers. In fact, I have wondered if DVCFL might actually be working to normalize higher prices. For example there are multiple Beach Club contracts, over on www.fidelityrealestate.com, that have all of their points (in roughly the some overall point range) and have an asking price below your offer. I only point this out so that maybe people look at the DVCFL price suggestions with some healthy skepticism. I remain confused as to why both with the star rating system and with the suggested offer price DVCFL consistently favors what benefits sellers. I believe a number of people on this board have suggested that DVCFL reconsider some of their star and suggested pricing structures.

For context this contract had almost a full extra year of points banked so not necessarily a comp to the contracts you're pointing to, but I agree their star system is a head scratcher.

 

[jcolvin5]

Or to put this another way, take what DVCFL gives you as a suggested offer and then subtract another 8-10% and that would typically be a good starting place for an offer, a place where a seller can either accept or counter slightly.

I do think the seller is important in this equation. We buyers overlook that sometimes. Put yourself in the seller's shoes. Low balling an offer may be offensive to some. We are all looking for the outlier that is just wanting to ditch the contract and doesn't care if they get raked across the coals, but that should never be the norm. The product NEEDS to keep its worth. If not, DVC and all of us who own it are in big trouble.

 

[matt_in_nh]

The best way to determine asking price is find the lowest price per point in the ROFR thread for that result and make adjustments for points on the contract.

 

[rferrar1]

I think this is fabulous. Welcome to Beach Club. But also, for others, I'd say that DVCFL suggest prices favors sellers. In fact, I have wondered if DVCFL might actually be working to normalize higher prices. For example there are multiple Beach Club contracts, over on www.fidelityrealestate.com, that have all of their points (in roughly the some overall point range) and have an asking price below your offer. I only point this out so that maybe people look at the DVCFL price suggestions with some healthy skepticism. I remain confused as to why both with the star rating system and with the suggested offer price DVCFL consistently favors what benefits sellers. I believe a number of people on this board have suggested that DVCFL reconsider some of their star and suggested pricing structures.

Rest assured, we don’t—and never will—introduce purposeful bias into our scoring systems. DVCForLess started as a hobby (and still is), created by fellow DVC shoppers frustrated with the buying experience. Our mission has always been to improve the process for shoppers, and I’d hate to lose the trust of this community when all we’ve ever wanted to do was help people.

The DealScore algorithm is already highly trustworthy, but we’re currently working with a professional data scientist to refine it further based on user feedback. While only a handful of posts have suggested changes, we take every comment seriously and aim to make the tool better and clearer with each iteration. If people saw the data from our vantage point, I believe they’d better understand how the scores are calculated and why they’re already very good. For context, most 5 star deals are off the market very quickly, sometimes hours, sometimes less. So shoppers see the leftover, maybe less exciting 5 star deals on our site and may think - "eh, I've seen better, the system must be wrong". Another example, on the a different thread, a Disboard member pointed to his/her recent Aulani purchase when respectfully critiquing our rating of a separate Aulani listing. With our data we can clearly see that yes, his/her listing was indeed phenomenal, in fact it is the best deal we see for an Aulani listing over the past 90 days out of hundreds that hit the market. So even though 5 star listings make up less than 2% of the overall market, with his deal being such an outlier, his/her unique vantage point lead to an unfair evaluation of a different listing.

The suggested bid tool was designed specifically to help buyers make informed decisions using our extensive data set. It’s not intended to favor sellers in any way. In fact, this feature was inspired by a suggestion from this very forum. If you have specific feedback about how it could be improved, I’d love to hear more so we can address it.

Transparency and user trust are core to what we’re building at DVCForLess. I genuinely appreciate your feedback and will continue to work hard to improve the platform for the benefit of everyone.

 

[rferrar1]

I do think the seller is important in this equation. We buyers overlook that sometimes. Put yourself in the seller's shoes. Low balling an offer may be offensive to some. We are all looking for the outlier that is just wanting to ditch the contract and doesn't care if they get raked across the coals, but that should never be the norm. The product NEEDS to keep its worth. If not, DVC and all of us who own it are in big trouble.

I agree!

First, I want to acknowledge that the folks on this forum are some of the most well-informed and savvy DVC deal hunters out there. The insights shared here are incredible, and it’s clear that a lot of effort goes into finding and securing the best deals. You all are like the Michael Jordans of the DVC world—operating at the very top of your game.

That said, it’s important to remember that the deals highlighted in the ROFR threads represent the exceptions, not the market as a whole. Most buyers and sellers aren’t as immersed in the nuances of pricing. What might look like a reasonable offer here could feel like a lowball to most sellers who are not as deeply involved or informed. When we first launched the suggested offer it was too aggressive, and we got feedback from buyers saying that they were effectively getting laughed out the door consistently. That lead to a different type of distrust in the tool, and we made tweaks to find a better balance.

When we designed our suggested bid tool, we wanted to balance these realities. We spent time speaking with brokers and even ran secret shopper exercises to understand what’s considered a reasonable range in the broader market. Turns out, that it's a sliding scale based on how overpriced or well priced a given listing is. The suggested range we provide reflects what’s realistic for most sellers before clearly delving into the category of "low ball". We also explain some of the logic for each listing in the bullet points below the offer chart. It's definitely not perfect, but I'm confident we can make it better with each iteration.

That doesn’t mean you can’t shoot your shot with a more aggressive offer! In fact, I hope we make it easy for you to gauge how aggressive your offer is by showing where it falls on the DealScore scale. As we make more improvements to the DealScore itself, that will also improve the suggested bid tool. Our goal is to empower buyers to make informed decisions, whether they’re looking for a quick, straightforward transaction or chasing that perfect, standout deal.

We can and will make tweaks here, but at least this shares some of the thinking. Thank you all for the continued feedback!

 

[dontae]

Rest assured, we don’t—and never will—introduce purposeful bias into our scoring systems. DVCForLess started as a hobby (and still is), created by fellow DVC shoppers frustrated with the buying experience. Our mission has always been to improve the process for BUYERS, and I’d hate to lose the trust of this community when all we’ve ever wanted to do was help people.

The DealScore algorithm is already highly trustworthy, but we’re currently working with a professional data scientist to refine it further based on user feedback. While only a handful of posts have suggested changes, we take every comment seriously and aim to make the tool better and clearer with each iteration. If people saw the data from our vantage point, I believe they’d better understand how the scores are calculated and why they’re already very good.

The suggested bid tool was designed specifically to help buyers make informed decisions using our extensive data set. It’s not intended to favor sellers in any way. In fact, this feature was inspired by a suggestion from this very forum. If you have specific feedback about how it could be improved, I’d love to hear more so we can address it.

Transparency and user trust are core to what we’re building at DVCForLess. I genuinely appreciate your feedback and will continue to work hard to improve the platform for the benefit of everyone.

Thanks for that excellent summary. I noted that the criticism pointed out that there were asking prices lower than the suggested offer price. Based on your response I'd suspect that there are many factors considered when calculating the suggested offer price. Because all contracts for sale have their unique characteristics it is hard to make a 1 to 1 comparison. Just because there is a contract asking price for a particular resort lower than the suggested offer price doesn't necessarily mean that the lower asking price for another contract should automatically be considered a fair offer price for the specific contract under consideration.

Thanks for all you are doing to make the buying process for resale contracts easier and better. While it's intended to help inform the buyer it can also be helpful for the seller in that it better prepares them with setting their asking price within a reasonable range of the current market.

 

[rferrar1]

Just because there is a contract asking price for a particular resort lower than the suggested offer price doesn't necessarily mean that the lower asking price for another contract should automatically be considered a fair offer price for the specific contract under consideration.

Exactly—the key characteristic is often the "point band." Smaller listings (under 75 points) often have significantly different market values compared to larger ones, like 200-point listings. DealScore compares listings within these "bands" because someone shopping for a 75-point listing is usually not interested in a 200-point listing, and vice versa. These bands were determined by analyzing the full dataset, looking at both user search behavior and natural price groupings across each resort’s price scale. While it’s not perfect, the logic becomes much clearer when you view the data from a bird’s-eye perspective.

 

[BestAunt]

I'm so glad I saw this thread right before making an offer. I felt "brave" as I was about to ask for $5 less than asking. DVC for less suggested asking $18 less and expect a counter in the middle. exactly what happened and I'm happy!
I also liked that it imports all the contracts in from other sites. gave me confidence that I wasn't missing a site that had a contract that met my needs better.

 

[Blerghityblergh]

Rest assured, we don’t—and never will—introduce purposeful bias into our scoring systems. DVCForLess started as a hobby (and still is), created by fellow DVC shoppers frustrated with the buying experience. Our mission has always been to improve the process for shoppers, and I’d hate to lose the trust of this community when all we’ve ever wanted to do was help people.

The DealScore algorithm is already highly trustworthy, but we’re currently working with a professional data scientist to refine it further based on user feedback. While only a handful of posts have suggested changes, we take every comment seriously and aim to make the tool better and clearer with each iteration. If people saw the data from our vantage point, I believe they’d better understand how the scores are calculated and why they’re already very good. For context, most 5 star deals are off the market very quickly, sometimes hours, sometimes less. So shoppers see the leftover, maybe less exciting 5 star deals on our site and may think - "eh, I've seen better, the system must be wrong". Another example, on the a different thread, a Disboard member pointed to his/her recent Aulani purchase when respectfully critiquing our rating of a separate Aulani listing. With our data we can clearly see that yes, his/her listing was indeed phenomenal, in fact it is the best deal we see for an Aulani listing over the past 90 days out of hundreds that hit the market. So even though 5 star listings make up less than 2% of the overall market, with his deal being such an outlier, his/her unique vantage point lead to an unfair evaluation of a different listing.

The suggested bid tool was designed specifically to help buyers make informed decisions using our extensive data set. It’s not intended to favor sellers in any way. In fact, this feature was inspired by a suggestion from this very forum. If you have specific feedback about how it could be improved, I’d love to hear more so we can address it.

Transparency and user trust are core to what we’re building at DVCForLess. I genuinely appreciate your feedback and will continue to work hard to improve the platform for the benefit of everyone.

Just wanted to say I so appreciate what you all do! The site is so helpful and I’m sure it takes a ton of time to maintain. Thank you!!

 

[jason423]

Rest assured, we don’t—and never will—introduce purposeful bias into our scoring systems. DVCForLess started as a hobby (and still is), created by fellow DVC shoppers frustrated with the buying experience. Our mission has always been to improve the process for shoppers, and I’d hate to lose the trust of this community when all we’ve ever wanted to do was help people.

The DealScore algorithm is already highly trustworthy, but we’re currently working with a professional data scientist to refine it further based on user feedback. While only a handful of posts have suggested changes, we take every comment seriously and aim to make the tool better and clearer with each iteration. If people saw the data from our vantage point, I believe they’d better understand how the scores are calculated and why they’re already very good. For context, most 5 star deals are off the market very quickly, sometimes hours, sometimes less. So shoppers see the leftover, maybe less exciting 5 star deals on our site and may think - "eh, I've seen better, the system must be wrong". Another example, on the a different thread, a Disboard member pointed to his/her recent Aulani purchase when respectfully critiquing our rating of a separate Aulani listing. With our data we can clearly see that yes, his/her listing was indeed phenomenal, in fact it is the best deal we see for an Aulani listing over the past 90 days out of hundreds that hit the market. So even though 5 star listings make up less than 2% of the overall market, with his deal being such an outlier, his/her unique vantage point lead to an unfair evaluation of a different listing.

The suggested bid tool was designed specifically to help buyers make informed decisions using our extensive data set. It’s not intended to favor sellers in any way. In fact, this feature was inspired by a suggestion from this very forum. If you have specific feedback about how it could be improved, I’d love to hear more so we can address it.

Transparency and user trust are core to what we’re building at DVCForLess. I genuinely appreciate your feedback and will continue to work hard to improve the platform for the benefit of everyone.

I use the site all the time and think it is great. While Im sure there is only so much you are willing to share on how you value things are they based on typical resale values or current listings? For example recent resales at SSR between 100 and 350 points average about $92 per point with a median around $90. Average I think would be considered 3 stars but I see most listings around that as 4 star values, though maybe with some negotiating some could get to the 4* number which really should be around $88ish with the super great deals being $85 or less. FWIW the recent bands for SSR on less than average deals would be $95 per point and then anything over $99 for the worst deals.

If you dont already I might also take into account listings that supposedly dont have negotiating wiggle room (red hot deals, low buy firm) and not take into account the possibility of bringing those lower. Keep up the good work.

 

[disneylandtour]

I use the site all the time and think it is great. While Im sure there is only so much you are willing to share on how you value things are they based on typical resale values or current listings? For example recent resales at SSR between 100 and 350 points average about $92 per point with a median around $90. Average I think would be considered 3 stars but I see most listings around that as 4 star values, though maybe with some negotiating some could get to the 4* number which really should be around $88ish with the super great deals being $85 or less. FWIW the recent bands for SSR on less than average deals would be $95 per point and then anything over $99 for the worst deals.

If you dont already I might also take into account listings that supposedly dont have negotiating wiggle room (red hot deals, low buy firm) and not take into account the possibility of bringing those lower. Keep up the good work.

So this is an example of exactly what I meant when I said that--whether intentional or not--the DFL site is normalizing higher prices--in a way to make modestly informed or somewhat informed buyers unaware of more accurate values. Part of that is in slightly inflated valuation for certain contracts. And part of that is the star system. If you have a 1 through 5 star system, to the new observer, it makes it appear that three stars is an average value. But if you never use the one star rating, you actually have a four star system, with a buffer star, which optically inflates values. In a true five star system, three is the mid-point. In a four-star, which starts at two stars, the mid-point is actually 3.5 stars--and since there are no half-star ratings, it means, in practice, a lot of four-star ratings are actually in the "average" range, while some are slightly better. As for the "trustworthiness" of a site, all methods of determining value have limitations and strengths and skews. That is, there's no entirely "trustworthy" determination of value because creating a value marker requires choice, which often includes some type of bias. Anyway, I think the site is valuable as an aggregator. I look at it most every day. I think it's very useful. But as people in many threads have pointed out, the contract valuation, often expressed by stars, is often off when compared, for example, to the ROFR thread here--in some cases significantly off so that less-informed purchasers may think they are getting a very good deal, when they aren't (again, likely unintentionally, normalizing higher prices) and the optics of the five star scale are misleading when the one-star rating is never used (but the five star is regularly used) especially when utterly ridiculous contracts, such as Vero Beach at $90pp, get two stars, which on this scale is one star below average. Again, DFL is a useful aggregator. But as people have pointed out again and again the star system and the valuation are flawed, which is why the valuation and star ratings are significantly less useful than they should be (i.e. trustworthy). But again, it's not our site. Also, again, I'm grateful that it's there, but the metrics beneath the site are (again, perhaps unintentionally) skewed toward sellers and brokers, not to buyers, even though buyers are the primarily audience. Or to put this in a nutshell, all it takes is a college student with an site project for a coding class to come along and produce a site with better metrics and the whole DVC world will shift quickly over to that site, likely within a week. And again, these observations are meant as helpful criticism because I value the aggregator elements of the site.

 

[Chili327]

Just wanted to post somewhere that it looks like 1-star ratings are live!!

 

[pzw90]

Just wanted to post somewhere that it looks like 1-star ratings are live!!

some convo over here: https://www.disboards.com/threads/d...out-of-treasure-hunting.3959138/post-66026074

Also looks like they added a new feature for those who have an account