The biggest problem with buying to rent is that the ROI is not very good---and that is especially true for a developer purchase.
Take RIV for example. If you buy 200 and stack all available discounts, you can get it down to around $205/pt (it's a little more than that, but we'll be generous). Suppose you hit paydirt and get $21 for them, minus the $9.50 in Dues nets 11.50. And that sounds great, except that it is less than a 6% return, and it is a lot of work. Of course, it's less work if you use a broker, but now you are getting a payout of maybe $17, and that $7.50 net is an ROI of about 3.65%. You can match that in one year in a money market fund, with no work and essentially no risk.
Well, for us, I think the main reason we might purchase a year earlier than needed would be so that the trips we take on our existing points during that time frame, we'd have member benefits like discounts and lounge access. We don't look at everything from a purely financial point of view. (If we did, we likely would NEVER purchase
DVC.)
For example, our current travel plans....
VGC - June 2026 - 6 nights - 1 bedroom
BRV - January 2027 - 7 nights - 1 bedroom
VGC - June 2027 - 6 nights - 1 bedroom
BRV - January 2028 - 7 nights - 1 bedroom
We have a lot of banked points currently that we will be using for those trips so we don't technically need anymore points west coast points until a June 2028 trip. Well, we'd want the points by July 2027 in order to book at 11 months.
If we choose to buy direct at that time, we wouldn't have any member benefits until after 3 over above trips were taken.
Of course, none of these trips are written in stone, by any means. There's always a chance we could take less trips. But not much of a chance of taking more trips as the cost of park tickets and other travel expenses are nuts.
To confuse the issue further. Are you certain you Never want to stay in the
Disneyland Hotel? Their duos might be okay when you are older and want to go as a couple, and talk of the New Park next to DLH in 10 years might make that a nice option. I'm not thrilled with the extra taxes and Resale restrictions, but tossing it out as a thought. VGC is just very limited in number of rooms... if only getting 30-50 points Direct might makes sense for the flexibility.
I think at the beginning of the thread, I was focusing more on getting more resale at VGC. Currently, I'm on the fence between more VGC resale or getting some direct VDH and alternating where we stay. (Really leaning toward VDH now.) But no, we would likely never be traveling as a couple as we will never be empty nesters. And honestly, I don't think I'd enjoy a duo even if we were.