Just Purchased!

[sndral]

Actually, my perspective on this is neither novel or creative. It would be folly to ignore it.

For instance, the largest cost of owning a new car is not the payments or the repairs, it is the depreciation. If you purchase a new car "for less" but it depreciates like a rock, in the end, the car will end up costing you far more then a more expensive car that depreciates much less.

... but to ignore the important role depreciation plays in a major purchase like this is actually true financial folly.

Given VGF is a small resort in a premiere property with the longest contract life, I like my odds when making a depreciation guess over the next 15-20 years over many other options. Will it be the best? I do not know (probably not). However, I like the odds that it will be better then many other options. Therefore, I believe my final true "cost" of owning these points will be lower then many others and I will have no issue using these points anywhere.

Someone will be the "last one holding the bag" on those resale contracts as they approach expiration. Will it happen in 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, who knows? When will the market decide there is not enough time left on the contract to make it worth much?

You do not want to be the last one holding the bag on the resale contract ...because your depreciation will be 100% (or close to it). Others, who have paid more for new resorts with more time, might have better financial results under that scenario even though they paid more for each point upfront. They are "first in line" with the bag and have the longest time to pass it on to someone else and still get some value back.

To me it seems financial folly (to quote above) to expect that a timeshare will have any residual value @ any point, or more to the point, that you will be able to exit and recover your initial financial outlay @ some point. For the last several years, @ most new resorts (AKL, SSR, BLT,) it seemed to me that those who bought @ direct prices took a bath if they had to sell in the first several years of ownership. There is no way to predict, going forward what future value any given DVC will hold.
Take VGF, for example - an attractive option @ the moment, but what happens once Poly DVC opens w/ perhaps an even later expiration date, which will probably coincide w/ when the first VGF's start hitting the resale market, my best guess is that resale on VGF may plunge as consumers want Poly over VGF (even tho' I personally prefer staying @ the GF.)
Several years ago I was seriously looking @ resales and focused on BCV - for some reason they always seemed to be priced $10/pt. higher than BWV, which is no longer the case - don't know why that changed (perhaps it was the introduction of food and wine somehow upping BWV's value in the eyes of consumers - or the 3 br option, or changing point requirements) but it has changed and BWV are now more on par price wise w/ BCV.
The last person holding the bag analogy caused me to start thinking - we have OKW as an example of what Disney has done in the past w/ approaching expiration dates - they acted on it very early and offered extensions to existing owners, thus removing the last person holding the bag issue for awhile. That was when they were also routinely exercising ROFR to support resale prices and before they switched to penalizing resale buyers to encourage direct sales (in my mind they switched from using a carrot to using a stick,) so whether they'll follow the OKW model w/ BWV, BCV, VWL remains to be seen.
Let's assume that for whatever corporate reason, Disney decides to not offer extensions on those contracts and suddenly their values plunge - I suspect that would have a negative effect on other properties w/ later extension dates (like VGF) as people realize that their 'investment' is likely to become $0 @ any moment. Let's face it, the only thing stopping DVC from becoming one of those please let me pay you to take over the maintenance fees timeshares is the conduct of Disney. Not saying this will happen, just saying it's better to call the cash outlay what it is, discretionary fun money that I want to spend in this way.