Does anyone know the best way to go about this? I have heard you can get really good deals.
I am looking for us. I also have a friend who may come with her 4 kids and want to find them the best deal.
thanks
It's a great idea & we are planning to do this for family members for my parent's 50th next year; DH & I are DVC members and so is DBro so we'll use our points.
Typically rental cost per point is $10 - 14 dollars. On the DVC boards you can link on
Points Charts link at upper right to calculate number of points you'd need to rent based on resort, travel dates & villa size. You definitely want to do your homework on this and find a member who you can establish trust with: read their posts on rentals, get references, get a contract & pay via PayPal if you can.
Be sure you fully understand the member's policy on cancellations because DVC's cancellation rules are much different than cash reservations and so many members will only allow a very limited refund policy or even a strict no refund policy. If you can rent from a member that would only be using their Current Use Year (UY) allotment of points to make your reservation you will probably stand a better chance of the member allowing you some sort of cancellation with refund because Current UY points are the only points the member could bank if they haven't reached the annual banking deadline - - but often a member will be using points that are from a borrowed allotment or previously banked allotment for the reservation and those points are unbankable, so that would leave the member with little time to re-use those points in event of cancellation & most dont want to deal with having a limited time frame & risk losing points if they can't re-use them before expiration.
btw, a member can make a reservation for you as early as 11 months before the check-in date you would like at their Home Resort which is the resort the points that they own are "attached" to. At 7 months or less to the check-in date you'd want a member can use their points to book a reservation at any DVC resort not just their Home Resort.
Best wishes on you planning
