New $500 Resale DVC Transfer Fee

[zavandor]

I don't think this is quite right. Almost no one thought it was reasonable

I might suffer from a bit of persecution complex, but I strongly remember all the headwind we had to fight on this board to try to convince people that we could fight the point charts. Some even said that increasing the lockoff premium could be advantageous because it would increase room availability. I remember also people saying: we don't have the data, only Disney does, we cannot say for sure that 1BR book much less than 2BR.
At the end (by Disney statement) only a couple dozen people complained to them, even if it was recommended to write/call.

Anyway, you're also conflating two separate events. The 2020 original charts had the lockoff premium increase and a reallocation between Poly bungalows and CCV cabins and other units. The point charts with the 7 seasons that caused an increase of points depending on when Easter fell, happened later. Not sure when, I think 2023 point charts.

ETA: to complete the history of DVC playing dirty, there was the time a DISboard user (Bing Showei) managed to force DVC to rollback the way they handle tax refunds on dues for sold contracts.

 

[tx911]

I honestly don’t think this fee would give me a moment’s hesitation if I was committed to buying into DVC and interested in resale. I guess for tiny contracts it may come into play.

I may be in the minority but this seems like a drop in the bucket, especially if it ends up split between buyer and seller. I’d be surprised if this has a very dramatic effect on resale prices. It stands to reason that there is some administrative work tied to changing contract ownership. One could argue whether it’s worth $500, but it’s been provided for free for a long time.

 

[eticketplease]

Tell me if this is a reality or a dream: I bought our contract with the ability to resale without knowledge of this fee disclosed so it means we get grandfathered in. It's a new fee for new buyers.

I would say it is a dream. I don't think not paying the fee will be grandfathered.

It's not spelled out who the fee is for but since the Contract Administration Fee would now be part of the fees of the sale so it can should be negotiable on if the buyer or seller picks up the tab on this new fee.

 

[Sandisw]

Tell me if this is a reality or a dream: I bought our contract with the ability to resale without knowledge of this fee disclosed so it means we get grandfathered in. It's a new fee for new buyers.

Unless it’s not disclosed when you actually contract to sell, then, no, it would be applicable.

However, we still do not know to who is responsible for paying this fee and when it is charged.

If it’s part of the closing costs on buyers? Will it be for sellers and encompass the estoppel fee we already pay?

Next week, if not before, we will have more answers.

All we know is that they will now charge an administrative fee to cover the process id change the owners, once a contract is sold.

Similar, I guess, to how the county charges a fee to record a new deed?

 

[Brian Noble]

Isn’t another way of looking at it that they increased the cost of studios and decreased the cost of 1 bedrooms?

No--the "lockoff premium" chart increased both. And that's why it was absolutely bonkers.

There is a good argument for raising studios and lowering 1BRs, but unfortunately doing so would probably require violating the Residential Unit is Constant provision in most resorts. If any RUs in any given resort have different ratios of studios and 1BRs, then you can't just reallocate between those room sizes without reallocating across RUs, because math.

There is also the problem that reallocating across unit sizes would violate the maximum reallocation values published in the governing documents, but that did not stop them when they reallocated across SSR, raising the 2BRs at the expense of Treehouses, so who knows?

I think the direction the wind is blowing is such that that DVC is no longer interested in reallocating across RUs, but I've been wrong before.

 

[VGCgroupie]

It could, but what happens if the buyer never logs in or pays the fee? Who "owns" the points?

Whoever is on the deed owns it, the county processes the deed not DVC. DVC can lock your points for other reasons and this would be the same. Once your dues come around you dont pay they foreclose. I assume one wouldnt pay dues if they didnt have access to points.

 

[Brian Noble]

I remember also people saying: we don't have the data, only Disney does, we cannot say for sure that 1BR book much less than 2BR.

I remember that too, but that argument was wrong on its face. It was obvious to anyone paying the least bit of attention to availability that 1BRs are the last room size to book system-wide. So I never gave them much of my attention.

In fact, that might explain a few entries on my ignore list.

I suspect I was on your "this guy is a jerk" list, because my attitude was almost certainly: "Of course you are right, and these charts are crap. But a lawsuit is pointless, because if Disney wants to crush you, they will." Happily, we never had to test that hypothesis.

 

[VGCgroupie]

Agreed - doesn’t hurt renting points but does help curb the “I can’t use my Christmas week grand villa reservation anymore but looking to rent it for $30 per point” nonsense.

This right here. Even gives them more of an incentive to rent vs flip.

By the way a court might not agree “notice” has even been given. Throwing it on the website in a buried fashion isn’t “notice”. Neither is a very observant owner who caught it and posted it here.

I vaguely remember back in the day people just had to post a blurb in the newspaper classifieds to notify people of something.. am I remembering wrong?

lol like I said in the dues chat just wait until we see the fleet of shiny new imagineered housekeeping carts in 2026! Those don’t pay for themselves!

Like the robot guy at Sams Club and Walmart?

 

[VGCgroupie]

“We tried to hide that fee in the Q & A and we would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those kids and their dog” kudos to whoever found the change, after two years here it still blows my mind at what DVC considers professional behavior.

My dogs name is Scoob, but I cant take the credit for this one. He is too busy sleeping on the job.

 

[RivShore]

From where I sit, it always was. The idea that it was "special" or "different" was nothing more than a pixie-dust fueld Reality Distortion Field.

In my admittedly limited time share knowledge, I always thought the robust resale market truly made it "different" than the average time share.

 

[Brian Noble]

Lots of timeshares have that. Most name-branded Hawaii locations for example. And as the system scales up cracks may appear because demand is not guaranteed to scale with supply.

 

[VGCgroupie]

In my admittedly limited time share knowledge, I always thought the robust resale market truly made it "different" than the average time share.

It is different due its value on the resale market not that it has the ability to be resold on the market. The value is brought by different policies than many other timeshares and the fact thats it's Disney.

 

[Patmcpsu]

In my admittedly limited time share knowledge, I always thought the robust resale market truly made it "different" than the average time share.

I don't think a $500 one-time fee will change a lot of people's minds. It is less than what deluxe resorts usually charge per night, or about 6 month's worth of dues on a 150 point contract. The resale market will still be robust, but yeah it will take a marginal hit.

 

[Tatebeck]

That's not the same, you prepay dues and what you pay is credited towards your actual dues.

This fee is not credited against anything.

Credit back after the fact doesn't matter. I was just showing you that just because they charge you for something before they fully transfer the contract to you, that does not make it a transfer fee.

There are other fees they already charge before transferring that do not get credited back, like the estoppel fee.

Your original statement of:
"If you don’t pay the fee thy won’t transfer the contract from seller to buyer.

Just because you call something a different name doesn’t change what it is."

is incorrect. They seemingly can charge fees for other reasons, and that does in fact make it different than a transfer fee.
Your interpretation would mean that they could never charge any new fees before processing a transfer, which is just silly. I am sure they could come up with a plethora of different fees to charge us that would not be considered a "transfer fee"

 

[VGCgroupie]

So here is my take after sitting on this for a day and seeing reactions here and on other platforms. I think jumping to lawsuits over something that has not much of an impact of your overall member experience can hurt us in the long run. How does DVC take us seriously on things that really do matter and impact us heavily if we freak out with every change they make that we dont like? I am saving my pitchfork for something more dire. There are already a few other things that I would go to mat for before this any day. Honestly my only real issue with this is I really think just popping it in the FAQ is a bit shady, but I can even live with that.

 

[Sandisw]

Credit back after the fact doesn't matter. I was just showing you that just because they charge you for something before they fully transfer the contract to you, that does not make it a transfer fee.

There are other fees they already charge before transferring that do not get credited back, like the estoppel fee.

Your original statement of:
"If you don’t pay the fee thy won’t transfer the contract from seller to buyer.

Just because you call something a different name doesn’t change what it is."

is incorrect. They seemingly can charge fees for other reasons, and that does in fact make it different than a transfer fee.
Your interpretation would mean that they could never charge any new fees before processing a transfer, which is just silly. I am sure they could come up with a plethora of different fees to charge us that would not be considered a "transfer fee"

And when I read that statute I see it as something involved for the seller to sell it to someone else…transferring their ownership.

DVC isn’t involved in that at all,,,all they do is set up the accounts for the new owner for the ownership they purchased.

Similar to how the closing happens and then the county records the deed?

Once the deed is recorded, the sale is finally and there is a new owner.

It sounds to me like they want to charge now for the administrative work to set up the new accounts, etc.

Which, for me, is different is that is what they say this fee is for!

 

[Brian Noble]

One thing that arguably does make DVC different is that it is right-to-use, and not perpetual. I don't think we yet fully appreciate how that changes things, and probably won't until we get well past 2042.

Amusingly, during the early days of DVC, RTU vs. Deeded was a common discussion in the timeshare corners of the world, with conventional wisdom arguing that Deeded was preferable. DVC's invention of RTU that is nevertheless deeded was brilliant.

 

[VGCgroupie]

Once again Disney can just calm so many people if they just gave out a WHY when they do things. Instead you get thousands riled up and mad when there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the change. (for example like closing the Pixar entrance at DCA)

 

[Brian Noble]

As an example of the (potential) impact of RTU: 2042 will suddenly remove a ton of owned inventory that otherwise would (eventually) make its way into the resale pipeline. This reduces the supply of resale. Not bad for owners, not great for those looking to buy.

 

[Lumpy1106]

View attachment 1028488
https://disneyvacationclub.disney.go.com/faq/reselling/information-required

Just sharing because I saw it on a DVC-related FB page and I don't recall reading this anywhere on these boards. Another fee to make resale less attractive over direct points. Will be interesting to see if brokers default to this being paid by the seller or the buyer. And, also interesting to see whether they continue the fast transfers we've seen this past month or revert to the slow transfer process, but now with a $500 fee.

Buyer should pay this. Why? Becuase if your contract gets ROFR'ed you would be paying Disney $500 to buy your contract. Negotiate elsewhere, but assign this to the buyer.