How does someone know it's a good decision for them, to purchase DVC?

[sethschroeder]

I think the majority of the board thinks that it is not cheap enough given that it’s a contract to only one resort.

VGC is $300+ and essentially a contract to a single resort.

RIV is selling for like a $30+ discount over what it would likely be if not for the direct benefits. $30 essentially means you get 2 years of points not even being used ($15/point is value of wasted point IMO).

It really depends on your specific needs. If your goal is to essentially always stay around Epcot and you are good with RIV every year then you are good to go possibly as long as you are flexible or can plan out 7-11 months ahead.

 

[sethschroeder]

As the resort reaches sell out there are more owners & thus more contracts likely to be sold increasing supply.

I am not sure this is fully accurate. When a resort "sells out" it is removed from the DVC direct deals so now you have individuals not comparing a $120 resale to $200 direct purchase but instead a $120 resale to $250/$275 price point. The math changes.

I could be misremembering but I feel like CCV and VGF both have followed this path in recent times. When in active sales the resale price decreases then increases once pulled from active inventory that is getting discounts. Obviously discounting that first year of resale though which is artificially raised but RIV is way past that now.

Hard to tell though because resale restrictions also change the math slightly.

Also Epcot area is a wasteland after 2042 which at this point wouldn't even last a family until their kids graduate high school if they are a brand new family.

Finally I dont see a world where RIV is not more expensive than AKV/SSR/OKW. Longer contract, Skyliner in Epcot area, and MFs have now come in line where its less than OKW/AKV.

 

[Brian Noble]

I cannot say I never want to stay anywhere again. We just feel it meets much of our criteria in what we need and want in a resort. But no, I do not want to always stay here.

But this is not the first question to ask. The first question is: "Am I a good candidate for DVC?" And, in my opinion, a good candidate will answer "yes" to my first three questions.

It's not even the second question. The second question is: "Should I consider only resale, or might I also consider a direct purchase?" And, in my opinion, unless you can answer "yes" to my fourth and fifth question, it is wise to consider only resale.

Once you have the answers to those questions, then and only then do you want to consider which resort and (if applicable) resale or direct.

 

[AstroBlasters]

VGC is $300+ and essentially a contract to a single resort.

RIV is selling for like a $30+ discount over what it would likely be if not for the direct benefits. $30 essentially means you get 2 years of points not even being used ($15/point is value of wasted point IMO).

It really depends on your specific needs. If your goal is to essentially always stay around Epcot and you are good with RIV every year then you are good to go possibly as long as you are flexible or can plan out 7-11 months ahead.

It is silly to compare VGC and RIV, as VGC has a total of 71 rooms…. and VGC resale is no where close to $300pp…. I think they were going for $225ish before Disney started ROFRing…. and…. I know owners who have SHOCK…. used their VGC points at other locations because once you own the points the upfront cost is gone….

RIV is very nice, but I would never restrict myself to stay at just one WDW resort…. and the majority of the DVC ownership seems to agree. Similar to VDH. Direct and resale are just fundamentally different products….

 

[Childs1stTime2Disney]

I own 1000 points at 4 resorts and I started small w/ 100 resale points. After all of the back n forth and comments here my personal advice is still buy a small resale contract first. DVC is not a simple program, buy small, learn it, and then decide if you love it enough to spend a lot of money on it. Don't buy RIV in fear of increases or it selling out, that is for sure the worst reason to buy something so expensive.

Pardon my ignorance. But I calculated and a typical stay of ours seems to be around 280 points. So I'm not sure I understand how starting small helps me? What might I do for my first stay if I need close to 300 points if I started small?

 

[AstroBlasters]

Pardon my ignorance. But I calculated and a typical stay of ours seems to be around 280 points. So I'm not sure I understand how starting small helps me? What might I do for my first stay if I need close to 300 points if I started small?

Get 100 points and use three years worth of points as a bank/borrowing strategy to get to the 280. Make sure you actually want to go every year before buying and paying dues on the full 300 points.

I’m not saying to do that, just an example of “starting small”.

If going direct, I would not buy less than 150 points in your situation. Might as well get the incentives and member discounts.

 

[VGCgroupie]

Pardon my ignorance. But I calculated and a typical stay of ours seems to be around 280 points. So I'm not sure I understand how starting small helps me? What might I do for my first stay if I need close to 300 points if I started small?

You can find and buy a resale contract that has double the points in the first year if you feel you will need more initially. Also you wont be staying at RIV if that is what you calculated, you will need much less to stay at almost all of the other FL properties. I should've clarified I would by resale but not RIV resale.

 

[AstroBlasters]

You can find and buy a resale contract that has double the points in the first year if you feel you will need more initially. Also you wont be staying at RIV if that is what you calculated, you will need much less to stay at almost all of the other FL properties. I should've clarified I would by resale but not RIV resale.

If someone loves Riveria…. it would be tough to never be able to stay there…. I think direct is probably the way to go for them. It’s a much more simple product to understand…. IMO, they just need to understand it’s a huge depreciation hit if they need to sell within the first 7ish years of owning.

 

[sethschroeder]

I know owners who have SHOCK…. used their VGC points at other locations because once you own the points the upfront cost is gone….

The RIV resale buyer could do that every few years as well by renting out their points (or banking/borrowing) then rent/transfer from others.

The resale restriction is about a $30-$40 knock on the price it seems as its settled in between the bottom resort and the middle resort tiers. I think this is the piece often missed when people are looking at this.

The point of the original comment it seems is if you view as Riviera as one of the best resorts on property, want to stay in Epcot area always, and need a longer contract the deal is you are being forced to stay where you want anyways but given a significant upfront discount on your contract for doing so.

The whole point of my comment was simply that plenty of people only ever stay at the same resort for years and years and years. We personally have only stayed around MK once and AK once and that was more than enough to make us realize we only want to stay around Epcot if we go to WDW as an example.

Not everyone should buy RIV resale though you need to understand the limitation and be okay with it and what the cost savings is for that trade off.

 

[VGCgroupie]

The RIV resale buyer could do that every few years as well by renting out their points (or banking/borrowing) then rent/transfer from others.

The resale restriction is about a $30-$40 knock on the price it seems as its settled in between the bottom resort and the middle resort tiers. I think this is the piece often missed when people are looking at this.

The point of the original comment it seems is if you view as Riviera as one of the best resorts on property, want to stay in Epcot area always, and need a longer contract the deal is you are being forced to stay where you want anyways but given a significant upfront discount on your contract for doing so.

The whole point of my comment was simply that plenty of people only ever stay at the same resort for years and years and years. We personally have only stayed around MK once and AK once and that was more than enough to make us realize we only want to stay around Epcot if we go to WDW as an example.

Not everyone should buy RIV resale though you need to understand the limitation and be okay with it and what the cost savings is for that trade off.

I think owning only RIV resale (or VDH) is a gamble since it's a new product and nobody knows what will happen and how things will unfold once it has sold out and contracts start selling more on the resale market. RIV is the test animal for restrictions only time will tell if owning resale there is a good choice.

As for OP it seems that they are wanting to buy RIV direct and aren't going to be persuaded otherwise.

 

[VGCgroupie]

If someone loves Riveria…. it would be tough to never be able to stay there…. I think direct is probably the way to go for them. It’s a much more simple product to understand…. IMO, they just need to understand it’s a huge depreciation hit if they need to sell within the first 7ish years of owning.

I think spending 10K and finding out you do not like DVC is a much easier pill to swallow than spending over 30K and not loving it. Especially when you can sell your 10K contract and not lose much money and on the 30K contract you'd lose alot. There is a lot to love about DVC but there is also things to not love.

 

[AstroBlasters]

I think spending 10K and finding out you do not like DVC is a much easier pill to swallow than spending over 30K and not loving it. Especially when you can sell your 10K contract and not lose much money and on the 30K contract you'd lose alot. There is a lot to love about DVC but there is also things to not love.

But the OP already stated that they “love” Riveria and also want to try other resorts. To me, that’s a text book example of someone who should own Riveria direct.

Mmmmm…. I can taste the gelato now!

 

[rM3panno]

My take on future Riviera availability & resale price is that it is too new & too different to follow the patterns we know from other DVC resorts.
Regarding resale price, any new resort costs more on the resale market because there are few contracts for sale, so resale supply is low which tends to increase price. As the resort reaches sell out there are more owners & thus more contracts likely to be sold increasing supply. We don’t know whether the number of resale contracts for a fully sold out Riviera will meet demand or even exceed it. My personal guess is that the price will drift down as supply increases, but the overall economy will impact DVC resale pricing & that’s a huge unknown ATM.
We know even less about future availability. So far there’ve been relatively few Riviera resale owners so their impact hasn’t been felt yet. Presumably as time goes on the number of resale Riviera owners will increase & because they can only book one resort one assumes they’ll do so at 11 months thus making it increasingly tougher to get those point saving resort views & other popular categories especially during high demand times. Maybe this will only effect 7 month bookings, since resale Riv owners aren’t going anywhere else at 7 months, or maybe it’ll make 11 month bookings look like the hunger games since resale Riv owners must stay there & thus decide to use the tricks used for hard to get bookings like walking & speculatively booking (squatting) their reservations to make sure they don’t lose out we just don’t know at this point.

No one ever considers the fact that once Riviera sells out DVC may start to exercise ROFR on Riviera resale contracts effectively establishing a floor which I suspect will be higher than current resale value. Right now it’s the Wild West on Riviera resale. The 200 point contract I just added came out to $112.50/point. I would fully expect Disney to exercise their rights on that when not actively selling Riviera points.

 

[Brian Noble]

The point of the original comment it seems is if you view as Riviera as one of the best resorts on property, want to stay in Epcot area always, and need a longer contract the deal is you are being forced to stay where you want anyways but given a significant upfront discount on your contract for doing so.

Which, if you think about it, is more or less the value proposition of timeshares in general.