Planning on buying... organizing your water fowl

[ThreeBeans]

Or in the vernacular, getting your ducks in a row

My husband and I want to buy in in the next few years, cash only, no financing. We want to buy enough to start to be able to take a 2 bedroom villa for a week in either May or September. So I'm imagining 350-400 points? I've been reading the WDWinfo site on DVC for a few months now.

What are your tips for 'planning to be' new members. Anything you wish you did that you didn't, or anything that you DID do that in retrospect wasn't necessary? For example, did you buy new and then wish you'd bought resale? Or vice versa?

For those who bought resale, did you find that enough details weren't made clear to you in the way they might have been if you were working directly with Disney?

How did you choose your home resort? Tour each DVC in the world? Stay at them all?

I'm curious about your experiences and if you have any recommendations you wish you had gotten

 

[ThreeBeans]

and i apologize, i think i put this in the wrong forum I'll flag it for moving...not sure how to delete

 

[Chuck S]

I've moved it to the Purchasing board.

 

[lovin'fl]

Or in the vernacular, getting your ducks in a row

My husband and I want to buy in in the next few years, cash only, no financing. We want to buy enough to start to be able to take a 2 bedroom villa for a week in either May or September. So I'm imagining 350-400 points? I've been reading the WDWinfo site on DVC for a few months now.

What are your tips for 'planning to be' new members. Anything you wish you did that you didn't, or anything that you DID do that in retrospect wasn't necessary? For example, did you buy new and then wish you'd bought resale? Or vice versa?

For those who bought resale, did you find that enough details weren't made clear to you in the way they might have been if you were working directly with Disney?

How did you choose your home resort? Tour each DVC in the world? Stay at them all?

I'm curious about your experiences and if you have any recommendations you wish you had gotten

Hi there! We bought 200 OKW via resale in 2006, 25 and 50 HH via resale in 2012, 100 AKV via resale in 2013 and just passed ROFR on 50 more HH (resale of course)...for 425 total. We are VERY glad we bought via resale as it saved us a ton of $$ (for example, we bought our AKV for $66pp and direct is more than double that).

We are also glad to have many smaller contracts (in case we need to sell 1 or 2 off someday, they are easier to sell...do kind of wish our original 200 OKW was broken up). I suggest getting multiple smaller contracts, with different home resorts, for 11 month booking advantage at more than 1 resort. We have had luck booking other resorts at 7 months out, but we have also had difficulty sometimes too...like when it's a busy/prime time for DVC (it took us a while to get BCV). Early May is Flower and Garden and late September is Food and Wine which are busy DVC times (especially at Epcot area resorts)....late May and early September are very nice times to go and you'd have decent chances to get other resorts at 7 months out.

Our OKW is June UY and everything else is Aug. This works out well now that we have so many points (we won't need to combine UY), but when we just had 200 June and 75 Aug...it was kind of tough when booking a resie using both (which we did for our trip this past January). You have to book 2 seperate resies and link them (and you need to go to desk to get new key cards on the link day...plus housekeeping thinks you are checking out that day). I suggest getting same UY if you can (unless they are larger contracts that you can use to book in entirety with banking and borrowing).

I also wish our OKW was BWV or some of both (we bought the cheapest WDW points at the time). We love BWV and would love to be able to book the- lesser point cost- standard view villas. They tend to book up before the 7 month window...especially during prime DVC times. My MIL and FIL love our OKW...they love staying in a 1BR there in the hospitality house section, so I am glad we can do that but I'd really really love to have BWV points (maybe next purchase). I am happy to have AKV since we can now conserve points by booking value or standard view villas there and we have a longer contract life (not that that's too important since we will be likely done doing WDW even before our OKW expires...but our kids/grandkids can use them). We added HH to do every other year and therefor save on not having to buy park passes and crazy expensive Disney dining (and airfare...we can drive to HH from MD- no problem). HH is tough to book at 7 months our for summer and holidays, so we needed to own there and it's a cheaper buy-in there (like OKW and SSR). I do suggest to buy where you want to stay...to some extent. Any of the DVC resorts are nice...we have our preferences, but are happy to be at any of them. And some folks can't book before the 7 month window so home resort wouldn't be as important to them. I have to agree with many folks who say that SSR is the best deal going...low buy-in, lower annual dues and longer contract life. But it's my least favorite resort and one that we can get almost any time, since it's such a large resort.

Happy hunting for your contract(s). If you go resale, which I think is the WAY to go (IMO), good luck with ROFR.

 

[RSWA2]

What are your tips for 'planning to be' new members. Anything you wish you did that you didn't, or anything that you DID do that in retrospect wasn't necessary? For example, did you buy new and then wish you'd bought resale? Or vice versa?

For those who bought resale, did you find that enough details weren't made clear to you in the way they might have been if you were working directly with Disney?

How did you choose your home resort? Tour each DVC in the world? Stay at them all?

I'm curious about your experiences and if you have any recommendations you wish you had gotten

If you haven't done so, I would take a DVC sales tour, just to see the rooms and know what they are like. It's just nice to see the rooms, but don't feel pressure to buy direct. As most DIS'ers will tell you here, that resale will save a ton of money for very little loss of usage. Also, as you have been doing, ask questions, browse the various DVC sites and read the threads here. I spent a ton of time doing that, to really feel that I understood it, then I took a 2nd DVC tour to finalize my decision in buying resale. DISboards and all your research should provide enough information to finalize a resale. I also created a spreadsheet for 45 years of travel with inflation, MF, hotel costs, etc, the whole thing. Not entirely necessary, but I'm a numbers guy.

I've stayed at the hotel side of the DVCs that I purchased into, but not the DVC side. Some will advise that you rent first. I think if you are comfortable with knowing that it's essentially a timeshare and not a true Disney Deluxe room, then you will be ok. Just go visit them the next time you are at WDW to make sure you like the location, themes, etc.

Small contracts are better than a big one, but be mindful of the closing costs per contract. I like small contracts at different resorts, this allows some diversity.

I think, the only thing I may regret in the future, is one of my contracts is a bit too small, I would have liked about 25% more in points on it. But it's always better to be a little too low (cause you can borrow), than be too high, cause renting isn't a guarantee.

 

[MsTessP]

We originally thought we needed around 300-320 points. I waited years for some kind of windfall so that we would have the cash to buy this amount of points resale (never on God's green earth would we consider financing).

I continued to read this board and learn.

Then, out of the blue, I realized that there were resale contracts for less amounts of points which I could easily purchase right then and there, and we could simply add on later. Not sure why that had never dawned on me before! That day I made an offer for 140 points, and 7 weeks later I was making our first reservation.

I think of all those trips we made while we were waiting for the $$ to buy our anticipated points, and I really regret not buying sooner.

Now we are looking to add on, but we have taken four vacations in less than two years as owners. I have also found that we can certainly get by on less than 300 points.

One thing that I had never fully realized before owning was the point difference between resorts. For example, your points will go much further if you stay at OKW rather than BLT. We have stayed at SSR, OKW, BWV and AKL-Kidani and loved each of them!

 

[JimMIA]

For example, did you buy new and then wish you'd bought resale? Or vice versa?

You will get two categories of answers to this question -- one from folks who bought before the resale restrictions and possibly a different answer from some of the folks who bought after the restrictions.

My personal opinion is the restrictions on resale points are not worth worrying about. In fact, I think most folks would be better off without those options like Disney Collection -- especially for the purpose of making a buy/don't buy decision. Looking only at what you get resale puts more focus to the one real benefit of owning DVC -- using your points at DVC resorts at WDW.

We bought first resale, and later direct because of a legitimately good promotion DVC had at the time (15% off the purchase price + an HONEST 100 free one-time points). We bought our second contract direct because there was only a small difference between direct and resale prices, and the promotion literally made the price a little lower direct.

That was then, and this is now. Now, some resale contracts may be 1/2 the price of direct...or even less. And...DVC hasn't offered a legitimately good promotion since we bought!

Today, I can't think of an honest rationale for buying direct, with the possible exception of a small add-on that you can't find in the resale marketplace. Even in that case, I would probably realize that I'd been living somehow without those 25-50 points and I could wait until they became available for half the price.

I wouldn't pay the direct prices, even for a new resort just getting ready to open.

For those who bought resale, did you find that enough details weren't made clear to you in the way they might have been if you were working directly with Disney?

Actually, we found the opposite.

I took the tour at WDW. Our guide didn't do or say anything unethical or malicious, but she simply wasn't that knowledgeable (and she'd been there a LONG time...still is, as far as I know). When we went back to her to purchase direct later, she kinda messed that up and it took some doing to repair her mistakes.

When we returned from WDW after the tour, I Googled DVC and ended up here on the DIS. I found the information here both unbiased and very often more accurate and reliable than what my guide told me. The people here of the DIS were very helpful to us in understanding the system and figuring out what features actually mattered and which were fluff.

 

[AJA]

When we bought we purchased what is turning out to be too many points. We just aren't going every.single.year (or twice a year eek) like we thought we would.

Now we are actually thinking about selling our points and buying a smaller contract. If I had it to do all over again I would buy a smaller contract to start out with. You can always borrow next years points if you need to. After a few trips if you still want/need more points you can buy another contract at the same resort and use year, or even choose a different resort, though borrowing/banking it's easy to make two contracts work with a little experience . That way you can sell one of the contracts in the future (think years from now) if you find you aren't going as much anymore as the kiddo's become teenagers and young adults. Smaller contracts sell so much easier than large ones.

 

[DannysMom]

You may want to start with a bit fewer points. (Unless you can afford both the purchase price, and the dues on such a large contract easily.). You can always buy more later, once you have a better feel for how DVC works, and you are certain that you want/need more points.

I bought resale BCV points last summer, 200 points. It was a loaded contract, so we got 2012 points that were banked. We took a week long spring break trip that used 401 points. We will still have 199 points come Feb 2014. If we run short, I may look into trying to arrange a point transfer from another owner.

Sent from my iPad using DISBoards App, please excuse any typos or autocorrects!