Hello, My husband and I are current members and are about to pay off our AK contract. We were looking at the resales thru the TSS. Has anyone here purchased a resale? Good/bad about it.
The good thing about buying resale is that you should save thousands of dollars. The bad thing is that you then have the problem of what to do with all the money you saved.
Seriously, though, there are two downsides to purchasing resale.
One is that it takes more time -- plan on 6-10 weeks from offer to closed and having the points in your account ready to be used. (You'll see frequent "timeline" threads here which will give you much better, more timely resale timeline examples than my rough guess)
The other issue is that there is a bit of uncertainty because all resale transactions have to pass Disney review -- called "ROFR" for Right of First Refusal. That phrase means that Disney reviews each transaction and has the option of stepping in as the buyer at the agreed terms. So if Disney thinks you paid too little, or if they have someone waiting for a similar contract at a MUCH higher price than you paid, they can take it. You don't lose any money, but you have to start over.
That actually happens rarely and the ROFR thread on this board tracks many of those transactions and will give you an idea of what will pass through and what will be snatched up.
Also, I have heard that Disney is implementing that anyone who purchases resale, would be restricted to that resort only, and could not stay at lest say VWL because the home resort is BC. Is this true?
That is NOT currently true, and you may have heard that from one of two sources. The first would be from a
DVC timeshare salesperson who was lying. The other is that you may have
misunderstood a commonly-stated FACT.
It is important to understand the difference between what is
claimed (sales points, etc), what is
current practice, and what is
guaranteed.
The FACT is, there are only a couple of things GUARANTEED with DVC -- that
you will be able to use your points at your home resort, subject to availability, and that as long as non-home resort booking is permitted, you
will enjoy at least a one-month booking advantage over non-home resort owners. Current practice is that you can use DVC points at any resort -- your home resort at 11 months, and any other resort at 7 months (so a 4-month home resort booking advantage).
Realistically, I think there is little chance that Disney will ever discontinue use of points at non-home resorts. That is a fundamental pillar of Disney's model -- and of the models of just about every other timeshare.
There are some minor restrictions on the use of resale points, but they are exclusions of options that most don't think are decent alternatives in the first place. Some knowledgeable timeshare folks think Disney actually did the resale buyer a
favor, because the restrictions force the prospective buyer to focus on the REAL value of DVC -- using your points at DVC resorts.
