Resort Cost Spreadsheet

[ColinBlair]

Here is a new spreadsheet that I have put together to help choose between buying at different DVC resorts at a purely financial level.

http://1drv.ms/1Xy79nC
EDIT: That turned out to be unreliable, here is a more stable link:
http://www.colinblair.com/dvcresortcomparisontool.html

The link is view only using Excel Online, but you can save the spreadsheet to make changes.

Notes:

1. The spreadsheet is designed for people who have already decided to buy into DVC, not a tool for people thinking about buying DVC. Therefore considerations such as inflation and opportunity costs are ignored. This is tool for comparing resorts, not an actual cost estimator.
2. The Resale per point values on the Resale tab are taken from the estimator tool from DVC Resale Value Estimator tool from DVC Resale Market. They are therefore not current and are most probably inflated.
3. The four sections of the file that should be user updated are the Poly Actual Retail, Current Year, and Dues values on the "Relative Retail" tab and the Resale Per Point column of the "Resale" tab which should be modified to reflect the actual contracts you are looking at.
4. The "1wk Value Season Standard Studio" column can optionally be modified as well if you want to calculate using different seasons or room types.
5. The relative resale prices are set based on the retail price of the Polynesian. I am not using the current retail prices that Disney is charging for the other resorts, but feel free to compare the relative retail price to the actual retail prices to see the premium Disney is getting from the other resorts.
6. I did not not include any non-WDW resorts.

The output: Relative Retail
Retail Per Point shows how much the point should cost based on the number of years remaining and the current cost of the Polynesian

Total Dues is the total cost dues for the length of the contract using current years cost and not adjusting for inflation. Again, we are only comparing resorts not getting the real costs.

Total Retail Price is (Retail Per Point + Total Dues) * (Years on contract * #of points needed for one week value season standard studio)

Total Retail Price Per Year is Total Retail Price / Years on contract

The output: Resale
Resale has the same output as Relative Retail just using Resale cost per point instead of the relative retail price number. The two Difference columns show what you are saving buying resale instead of retail.

So, by my calculations, AKV is $3,448 cheaper than retail Polynesian and BCV is $4,158 more expensive than retail Polynesian on a point to point basis using the inflated resale numbers that I am using.

I look forward to any comments, suggestions, criticisms, corrections, etc that anyone wants to lob my way.

 

[miTnosnhoJ]

This is a very interesting way to look at it. It seems to me that your column labeled "Total Points" should be labeled "Years Remaining". Thanks for posting.

 

[sndral]

I'm not quite understanding what the price per point on the non Poly resorts is calculated from.
What I like about your approach is that it looks at the cost to use an equivalent villa (studio standard view) at each resort - the fact that you need to buy more points at one resort v. another to get the same thing is often ignored when comparing cost to buy. W/ DVC charging more points for the same villa size w/ newer resorts I think it's something folks should factor into their decision making.

 

[ColinBlair]

I'm not quite understanding what the price per point on the non Poly resorts is calculated from.

Oh yeah, I had an explanation in my original reply using these numbers but forgot to include it here. The original idea was to look at a DVC contract as being a total number of points that you are purchasing. So, if you were to buy a new 100 point Polynesian contract @ $168 per point you could also say that you are buying 4,900 points @ $3.4286 per point. There are 49 years remaining on the Poly contract so 100 (the points you purchased) multiplied by 49 (the years on the contract) gives you 4,900. For every point you purchase you get 49 points, so if you divide $168 by 49 you get $3.4286.

Using that $3.4286 number, you can then calculate a relative retail value for every other resort based on the total number of points you are actually purchasing. That is why the spreadsheet has a column named Total Points and not a column named Total Years. For example, BLT has 44 years remaining and 44 * $3.4286 = $150.86. If you are paying more than $150.86 per point at the BLT then you are paying a premium per point over a point bought at the Poly. If you are paying less than $150.86 per point at the BLT then you are getting a discount from the price at the Poly. The rest of the spreadsheet is an attempt at giving each resort an adjustment based on the points you actually need at the 11 month window.

 

[GogoDVC]

Would you please add Aulani (with/without sudsidized due for the fun of it)? Interesting to see it. Thanks!

 

[ColinBlair]

Would you please add Aulani (with/without sudsidized due for the fun of it)? Interesting to see it. Thanks!

I am having problems uploading the original spreadsheet. Until the new version shows up under the original link, here is a second spreadsheet link showing all of the resorts:
http://1drv.ms/24fIN6F

EDIT: Link modified.

 

[ColinBlair]

Interesting, I am glad I added the split Aulani contract as it helps reveal something I had missed before. The two difference columns are only really useful if you want to compete with others on who saved the most money, for comparing the different resorts to each other the Total Resale Price per Year column is much more useful. Because the subsidized Aulani is sold at a premium, it shows as saving less money than the non-subsidized Aulani when compared to the relative retail. However, when you look at the Total Resale Prices per Year, you can see that the higher savings doesn't even come close to making up the difference. I had to drop the non-subsidized Aulani to $49 a point to get it to match values with the subsidized Aulani.

 

[ColinBlair]

It turned out that linking directly to Onedrive was unreliable as the link breaks easily and the original file is locked open somehow. I added a new link to the original post that will host the file from my own website instead. That will keep the url to the file stable in the future.

http://www.colinblair.com/dvcresortcomparisontool.html

The other nice thing about the new way I have it hosted is that the spreadsheet is now active in the browser. You can change the numbers in the spreadsheet yourself now and see what happens, it just won't save your changes after you leave the page.

EDIT: will becomes won't. Important difference.

 

[GogoDVC]

It turned out that linking directly to Onedrive was unreliable as the link breaks easily and the original file is locked open somehow. I added a new link to the original post that will host the file from my own website instead. That will keep the url to the file stable in the future.

http://www.colinblair.com/dvcresortcomparisontool.html

The other nice thing about the new way I have it hosted is that the spreadsheet is now active in the browser. You can change the numbers in the spreadsheet yourself now and see what happens, it just will save your changes after you leave the page.

Thanks for doing this!