Questionable Star Ratings on resale deals

[juliebee]

Checking out some resale contracts on http://dvcforless.com and have seen some questionable star ratings lately. Here is one example:

Contract 1: # of points= X. Same resort - same price per point- same use year. Stripped contract until 2026. --- has 5 star rating

Contract 2: # of points= X-5. Same resort - same price per point - same use year. Stripped contract until 2026. --- has 1 star rating

So 5 points less on the contract goes from a 5 star deal to a 1 star deal? So for hypothetical, one contract has 80 points and the other has 75 points. Should the stars differ that greatly??

I've seen other odd things with the stars and just wondering if you have too?? It makes it hard to compare. Not that I was buying that resort anyway.

 

[D-Trick]

That's partially why I prefer other aggregators that just give you the raw data so you can make your own judgement.

 

[juliebee]

I really like the DVCforless website. They have great info and I look at several times a day. But something seems off at times on those stars.

 

[davidhr]

I personally ignore the stars. All websites have their own way of rating things and I prefer to do it myself.

 

[airjay75]

I spend a fair amount of time on that site, and have not noticed anything quite like that. That said, I haven't been looking at contracts quite that small either, so maybe a quirk in the algorithm you've found? I do think some of the star ratings on some of the stripped contracts I've seen are a bit off. There a couple of contracts I've seen where there are not points available until 2027 and, while the price per point in and of itself is a fantastic deal, the fact that no points are available until 2027 make those very undesirable contracts from my perspective.

 

[juliebee]

certainly the star ratings are somewhat subjective but you *should* be able to compare listings to others at the same resort and within the same relative point range. But this (and other times) have been wildly off in my opinion.

 

[atthebeachclub]

certainly the star ratings are somewhat subjective but you *should* be able to compare listings to others at the same resort and within the same relative point range. But this (and other times) have been wildly off in my opinion.

A few months back I purchased one of four identical 50 point Bay Lake contracts, listed by the same seller, with same exact points and price. It seemed odd that they didn’t all get the same star rating. Three of the four identical contracts ranked as 2 star, and one ranked as 3 star.

Six days later, an 85 point contract at the same price per point from the same broker, with the same use year and full points also, listed six days later, ranked as a three star. I was scratching my head on this.

If this level of detail is verboten on sold contracts I will remove the details if notified; I know we can’t discuss active listings but I assumed sold from quite a while back might be ok.

 

[Sandisw]

This is simply a site who uses a metric to determine that based on their own factors.

Honestly, I am of the belief that the rating of a contract changes depending on what someone wants and needs.

What might be a good deal for me might not be for someone else…if I was in the market for resale, I’d be ignoring those stars.

 

[Mouseforward]

All use years are also not created equal, Oct is rare for one of my resorts so "stars" are also IMO relative to use year.

 

[VGCgroupie]

The stars used to be pretty accurate. I think it’s just been recently off, since the updates to include “stripped” etc. The stars really helped me with my first purchase a year ago.

 

[airjay75]

Does anyone know if the star system that website uses assumes that the buyer is paying the current year dues and closing costs? I think it does? I feel like it is one thing I struggle with on assessing deals both on that website as well as the ROFR thread. Everyone posts the "price per point" but whether you had to pay some or all of current year dues really changes the effective price per point you're paying.

 

[airjay75]

All use years are also not created equal, Oct is rare for one of my resorts so "stars" are also IMO relative to use year.

I think I know which resort you're talking about . I struggle with this a little bit too in assessing deals. One of the brokers at the site sponsor told me UY doesn't really affect what they recommend for list prices - it's really just number of points, and if you play around with their "Instant Sale" tool, that does appear to be accurate. On one hand, I feel like this should go both ways - less common UY should mean less interested buyers. But, not every potential buyer cares as much about UYs, and I suppose not all resorts have the same proportion of UYs, so if you're looking at a resort with a lower than average percentage of UYs compared to the average of all DVC resorts, it should make sense that the less common UY contracts at that resort can command a premium.

I'm sure I am over-thinking this. This is not a perfect market, and there is a fair amount of subjectivity that goes into getting what you want. If only I was certain of what I wanted . . .

 

[Ronaldo17]

I just ignore the stars, they don't make any sense.

 

[MyDogTink]

The “suggested offer price” can be a bit quirky too. I like the site for the aggregate list of contracts in my UY at the resort.

 

[pzw90]

I think it’s because they try to slice and dice them too much. They group contracts by resort, by size, and by use year to determine the stars. Then throw on a penalty for stripped. Not sure then if they correlate back to the trending resort price. I also think the stars are only comparing against active listings and not comparing against recent ones, so may skew a bit as the good priced ones will get scooped up and the remaining will skew the price up.
@rferrar1 - not sure how much detail you can share with how the sausage is made

 

[Chili327]

I really like the DVCforless website. They have great info and I look at several times a day. But something seems off at times on those stars.

I personally ignore the stars. All websites have their own way of rating things and I prefer to do it myself.

Also, it’s based on asking price, so it could change drastically if an offer would be accepted much lower than another.

This is simply a site who uses a metric to determine that based on their own factors.

Honestly, I am of the belief that the rating of a contract changes depending on what someone wants and needs.

What might be a good deal for me might not be for someone else…if I was in the market for resale, I’d be ignoring those stars.

Agreed, it all depends on what you’re looking for.

 

[disneydreamer1980]

I’ve noticed this too. The stars make no sense. Two identical contracts can have different star ratings. Once there were two identical listings but one was stripped and one was not and they had equal stars which didn’t make sense to me. I don’t pay any attention to them, or to the “hot deals” list which is frequently full of contracts that aren’t. But I do love the website and I’m always on it, I just don’t pay attention to those two things.

 

[disneylandtour]

I spend a fair amount of time on that site, and have not noticed anything quite like that. That said, I haven't been looking at contracts quite that small either, so maybe a quirk in the algorithm you've found? I do think some of the star ratings on some of the stripped contracts I've seen are a bit off. There a couple of contracts I've seen where there are not points available until 2027 and, while the price per point in and of itself is a fantastic deal, the fact that no points are available until 2027 make those very undesirable contracts from my perspective.

Pretty sure that was for GCV, an outlier in many ways. I saw that a few days ago. And also clearly there's a fairly big gap in internal pricing valuation at DVCFL between 75 and 80 points, which is likely compounded at the most expensive DVC resale resort. Add in: DVCFL doesn't value or devalue contracts enough IMO for loaded or stripped points.

DVCFL is very good for general parameters--particularly for weeding out bad deals. But for a product that costs five figures, buyers should really have an understanding of what they want and what they're buying. Stars are a little better when looking for, say, a $150 electric toothbrush.

 

[jason423]

Im not sure I have seen their star ratings jump that much and usually it would be the other direction, but I dont think anyone should really consider those star ratings at all. There is seemingly no weight given to stripped vs loaded and the point bands they use to compare contracts I believe throw things off. At best they are an ok ranking of listing prices in the market which is fine if you plan on paying asking price or are hopeful that a low listing means a seller willing to quickly deal.

If it were me I would peg the rankings to the recent resale reports that the two sites update every month rather than the market listing prices and paint a fairer picture of what would and would not make a good listing, but the aggregator itself is good and thats the main use.

 

[rferrar1]

Hi! Bob from dvcforless.com here. Can you share with me the specific listing(s)? If it is a resort with very few listings, e.g. Disneyland Hotel, the star ranking is less reliable. We are planning on overhauling the algorithm to account for cases like this and similar ones but just haven't gotten around to it yet. We're working on some other features first that we plan to release soon. I do think the stars are very useful in the vast majority of cases but I DO see the same issues you all see.

Listings are grouped by resort and "point bands", and we're looking back between 60-X days to establish market rate (varies depending on how many lists are available to compare agains). Point bands are ranges of points that help group small-med-large-XL contracts together. There are a few other parameters we look at as well.

There are pros and cons to our current approach. The cons are most obvious when looking at a resort with very few listings, or when two similar contracts are in different "point bands" despite being only a few points apart. A few months ago we worked out a new algorithm with the help from a data scientist that found us here on Disboards (thank you H). The new algorithm will eliminate these deficiencies, and change how we value stripped/banked points a bit. It is a big change so it will take some time to implement. Once we finish the current features we're working on. I think we'll end up targeting this.

By the way, one of the new features we're working on will allow us to notify you of new listings/listing-changes much much faster without us being a bad citizen to the brokers by hammering their site. We chose to prioritize this feature because of the feedback here on Disboards, so I do want you to know our roadmap follows the feedback we get from you all.