Points?

[caspersmom83]

Do you have to use all your points every year or can you carry them over to the next year to save for a bigger trip? Also is there a limit on how high the maintenance fees can go. That part makes me nervous because if they go up every year it can start getting pretty high. Thanks trying to decide between DVC and a vacation home.

 

[tjkraz]

Points can be banked one year into the future. If you don't use them in that second year, they are lost.

You can also borrow points one year into the future. So, you can actually have access to three years' worth of points at one time: Banked, Current and Borrowed. There are different rules and restrictions that apply to these transactions, but generally speaking you only run into problems if when you don't plan ahead or are forced to change travel plans on very late notice.

Maintenance fees are capped at 15% increase per year. However, note that the annual maintenance fees are tied to the operating costs of the resort by law. Our fees pay the actual operating costs of the resort and the costs of the DVC program itself (all of the infrastructure that allows us to make reservations). So, it's not as if DVC/Disney could arbritrarily decide to raise costs by 10% just because they feel like it.

In the long term, annual increases will run in the 2-4% range. There was a period of time back in the late 90s where some resorts actually saw decreases. But, more recently dues have been on the rise due to factors like increased health insurance costs for staff, higher property taxes and a reduction in interest income (due to low interest rates.)

 

[dianeschlicht]

Points can be banked into the next year or borrowed from the next year. You can feasibly have access to 3 years worth of points at one time by banking from one year and borrowing from the next year.

Someone will have the current dues to tell you exact numbers, but in the 9 years we have owned, we have seen the dues actually go down a couple of times instead of increasing. I believe this time they increased about 5%. This will change with the day to day maintenance costs, insurance, and increase in property taxes. Last year, at the annual meeting, they told us that property taxes had increased greatly for timeshares in Florida, but that they were going to catch up with the dues slowly. I take that to mean we will see an increase again next year.

 

[dianeschlicht]

OOPS! Looks like we doubled, tjkraz! Sorry!