ROFR data bonanza

[dmunsil]

So like all normal, well-adjusted people, while I wait for closing on my DVC contract I spend a lot of time browsing on the Orange County Comptroller's records site.

I realized there's enough information there to get hard numbers on how many contracts Disney ROFRs versus waives. You can also see how many gratuitous transfers (either gifts or retitling) there are, and how many direct sales Disney makes. So I went through the month of May, 2013. The data isn't complete because there are about 100 deeds that are still in process, but it's good up to about 5/28 and I think it's interesting. So I've summarized all DVC activity I could find.

The basic principles are these:

- A deed that is between two parties, neither of which are Disney, and has a Document Deed Tax of 0.70 is a gratuitous transfer. $0.70 is the minimum filing fee for a $0-100 transaction.

- A deed that is between two parties, neither of which are Disney, and has a Document Deed Tax of greater than 0.70 is a third-party sale. The price paid in dollars is approximately (Tax/0.7)*100, rounded down. The number of points in the contract is sometimes, but not always, listed in the deed, but you have to actually scan the deed to see that so I didn't bother.

- A deed where the grantor (seller) is Disney Vacation Development is a first-party sale. The price paid in dollars is approximately (Tax/0.7)*100, rounded down. The number of points in the contract is listed in the deed, but you have to actually scan the deed to see that so I didn't bother.

Here's where things get interesting.

- A deed where the grantee is Disney Vacation Development, and the Document Deed Tax is a nominal amount, say less than $5, OR one of the grantors is listed as ORANGE COUNTY, is a foreclosure.

- A deed where the grantee is Disney Vacation Development and the Document Deed Tax is a significant amount (> $5) is usually an exercise of ROFR. But sometimes it's a foreclosure. The clear ROFR exercises are a "Warranty Deed" but there are some that are labeled "Warranty Deed in lieu of Foreclosure". These are foreclosures expressed a different way for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. But they don't count as ROFR as far as I can tell.

I calculate ROFR Rate as ROFR/(Non_Disney_Sales + ROFR), expressed as a percentage.


So here's the data for May 2013:

Bay Lake Tower
Non-Disney Sales: 31
Gratuitous transfers: 16
Foreclosures: 6
ROFR: 4
New sales: 53
ROFR rate: 11%

Villas at Wilderness Lodge
Non-Disney Sales: 15
Gratuitous transfers: 12
Foreclosures: 0
ROFR: 2
New sales: 9
ROFR rate: 12%

Boardwalk Villas
Non-Disney Sales: 24
Gratuitous transfers: 10
Foreclosures: 1
ROFR: 9
New sales: 23
ROFR rate: 27%

Beach Club Villas
Non-Disney Sales: 13
Gratuitous transfers: 17
Foreclosures: 1
ROFR: 3
New sales: 10
ROFR rate: 19%

Old Key West
Non-Disney Sales: 28
Gratuitous transfers: 51
Foreclosures: 0
ROFR: 7
New sales: 47
ROFR rate: 20%

Saratoga Springs
Non-Disney Sales: 102
Gratuitous transfers: 49
Foreclosures: 25
ROFR: 5
New sales: 107
ROFR rate: 5%

Animal Kingdom Villas
Non-Disney Sales: 46
Gratuitous transfers: 10
Foreclosures: 19
ROFR: 3
New sales: 694
ROFR rate: 6%

No deeds are yet recorded for Grand Floridian. The ones recorded yesterday were ones that were originally drawn up on 5/16, so I suspect we'll start seeing Grand Floridian deeds in a few days.

Addendum: I was curious to see if there was a clear price difference between ROFRed and Waived transactions. There's no way I'm collating manually all the data for SSR, for example, but I thought some of the smaller ones might be workable. So here's some data from Beach Club and Wilderness Lodge

Beach Club Villas Average Price/Pt
Sale: 73.85
ROFR: 72

Villas At Wilderness Lodge Average Price/Pt
Sale: 67.40
ROFR: 61.50

You can see that Disney's ROFRs are on the low side, but there's no clear dividing line.

 

[NoleFan]

Always great to see this type of info. Thanks for compiling & posting it.

 

[Countryrunner262]

Thanks for the information!

 

[DizBub]

This is fascinating! Please come back and update when you can. It will be interesting to see how many contracts they have sold for VGF.

Thanks!

 

[kedkin]

Thanks for posting all this info, great to see it compiled especially when you're going through the process of ROFR.

 

[ELMC]

Thanks for this information. It would be more helpful if we could put this data into context by comparing it to, say, similar data from the past 6 months.

 

[LisaS]

Very interesting data. Thanks for the report.

- A deed where the grantee is Disney Vacation Development and the Document Deed Tax is a significant amount (> $5) is usually an exercise of ROFR. But sometimes it appears to be some kind of foreclosure. The clear ROFR exercises are a "Warranty Deed" but there are some that are labeled "Warranty Deed in lieu of Foreclosure". I suspect these are situations where Disney exercises ROFR but the person has an outstanding balance on their mortgage. But it might be some other situation. There aren't that many of these, but I suspect they should be considered a ROFR situation. I'm assuming that they are when I calculate ROFR rate.

A "Warranty Deed in lieu of Foreclosure" happens when a member is behind on their mortgage payments and/or dues and is given the option to give the contract back to Disney to satisfy some or all of the debt. (I'm not exactly sure how it works but that's the general idea.) It saves Disney the time and expense of going through the foreclosure process. I'm not sure what the benefits are for the contract owner other than perhaps avoiding having a foreclosure on their credit report.

 

[iluvthsgam]

What are you using to search on the OC website for the gratuitous transfers? (Because you can't put Disney in the party name)

Is there some other field you are using to search? Thanks!

 

[bwang123]

if you are really bored, you could probably put in the same effort to configure a screen scraping program to pull the same info in a database. then, just press one button and it will grab everything almost immediately daily.

 

[dmunsil]

What are you using to search on the OC website for the gratuitous transfers? (Because you can't put Disney in the party name)

Is there some other field you are using to search? Thanks!

I use "-DISNEY" in the "Both names" search field, and set it to "Wildcard Search". Then I go to the "Advanced" tab and set the max doc tax to 1 and add "ANIMAL" for example to the LegalRemarks field. I uncheck the box to allow for document type and select type "Deed".

Here's a link that should do an animal kingdom gratuitous transfer search for April 2013:

Complicated Search URL

Go to the link, look over the search settings, then hit "Search". It should pull up 9 documents. Most of them are clearly adding or subtracting a name, and the rest it's not clear. Since there's no doc tax, either they're gratuitous or there's some other reason you don't have to pay the fee.

Oh and for what it's worth, to search for the various resorts I use these strings in LegalRemarks:

BLT: "BAY LAKE TOWER" (quotes are necessary)
VWL: WILDERNESS
BWV: BOARDWALK
BCV: "BEACH CLUB" (quotes are necessary)
OKW: "CLUB AT WALT" (quotes are necessary; middle of complete legal resort name "DISNEYS VACATION CLUB AT WALT DISNEY WORLD")
SSR: SARATOGA
AKV: ANIMAL

 

[dmunsil]

Very interesting data. Thanks for the report.

A "Warranty Deed in lieu of Foreclosure" happens when a member is behind on their mortgage payments and/or dues and is given the option to give the contract back to Disney to satisfy some or all of the debt. (I'm not exactly how it works but that's the general idea.) It saves Disney the time and expense of going through the foreclosure process. I'm not sure what the benefits are for the contract owner other than perhaps avoiding having a foreclosure on their credit report.

Yes, I finally figured that out after doing more digging on a handful of these. I need to adjust the numbers so they're counted as foreclosures and not ROFR.

 

[dmunsil]

if you are really bored, you could probably put in the same effort to configure a screen scraping program to pull the same info in a database. then, just press one button and it will grab everything almost immediately daily.

The problem is distinguishing the "real" ROFRs from the foreclosures that involve significant money transfers. As far as the database goes, they look the same. So far I can't find a way to tell what's a ROFR without actually reading the PDFs.

 

[dmunsil]

Here's the data for April 2013. This data is complete; there are no pending records.

Bay Lake Tower
Non-Disney Sales: 34
Gratuitous transfers: 15
Foreclosures: 15
ROFR: 10
New sales: 153
ROFR rate: 23%

Villas at Wilderness Lodge
Non-Disney Sales: 18
Gratuitous transfers: 9
Foreclosures: 0
ROFR: 4
New sales: 32
ROFR rate: 18%

Boardwalk Villas
Non-Disney Sales: 25
Gratuitous transfers: 21
Foreclosures: 1
ROFR: 16
New sales: 53
ROFR rate: 39%

Beach Club Villas
Non-Disney Sales: 15
Gratuitous transfers: 13
Foreclosures: 0
ROFR: 1
New sales: 17
ROFR rate: 6%

Old Key West
Non-Disney Sales: 30
Gratuitous transfers: 31
Foreclosures: 0
ROFR: 21
New sales: 36
ROFR rate: 41%

Saratoga Springs
Non-Disney Sales: 65
Gratuitous transfers: 30
Foreclosures: 20
ROFR: 19
New sales: 89
ROFR rate: 23%

Animal Kingdom Villas
Non-Disney Sales: 35
Gratuitous transfers: 9
Foreclosures: 23
ROFR: 2
New sales: 916
ROFR rate: 5%

Looks like April was a bad month for ROFR. 41% for Old Key West?

 

[bakerworld]

Doesn't surprise me the foreclosure rate for AKL is so high because in 08-09 the incentives were so appealing it was almost impossible to resist and then the economy flamed. Wonder if we'll ever see incentives like that again?

 

[Nabas]

Here's the data for April 2013.

Thanks for the April numbers!

 

[agie65]

Here's the data for April 2013. This data is complete; there are no pending records.

Bay Lake Tower
Non-Disney Sales: 34
Gratuitous transfers: 15
Foreclosures: 15
ROFR: 10
New sales: 153
ROFR rate: 23%

Villas at Wilderness Lodge
Non-Disney Sales: 18
Gratuitous transfers: 9
Foreclosures: 0
ROFR: 4
New sales: 32
ROFR rate: 18%

Boardwalk Villas
Non-Disney Sales: 25
Gratuitous transfers: 21
Foreclosures: 1
ROFR: 16
New sales: 53
ROFR rate: 39%

Beach Club Villas
Non-Disney Sales: 15
Gratuitous transfers: 13
Foreclosures: 0
ROFR: 1
New sales: 17
ROFR rate: 6%

Old Key West
Non-Disney Sales: 30
Gratuitous transfers: 31
Foreclosures: 0
ROFR: 21
New sales: 36
ROFR rate: 41%

Saratoga Springs
Non-Disney Sales: 65
Gratuitous transfers: 30
Foreclosures: 20
ROFR: 19
New sales: 89
ROFR rate: 23%

Animal Kingdom Villas
Non-Disney Sales: 35
Gratuitous transfers: 9
Foreclosures: 23
ROFR: 2
New sales: 916
ROFR rate: 5%

Looks like April was a bad month for ROFR. 41% for Old Key West?

Thanks for all the work you did to educate us. Looking at these data, for old resorts, if you look at new sales, exceeds ROFR in most of the resort indicating Disney is breaking these contracts.

As far as OKW goes, few things are going on with this resort, one all new sales are extended, so basically disney extending the life of its old product, second is Wait list.

Looking at foreclosure at SSR, BLT and AKL resale price of these should be much lower then most of the listings right now (not talking for future)

Can you provide detail of AKL ROFR contracts? Did not knew Disney exercised on AKL contracts.

Keep the good work going, lets see how everybody else can interpret theses data.

 

[JWG]

Doesn't surprise me the foreclosure rate for AKL is so high because in 08-09 the incentives were so appealing it was almost impossible to resist and then the economy flamed. Wonder if we'll ever see incentives like that again?

I think it depends on:
1) What does the economy do? Do people need incentive to loosen up the purse strings?

2) Do they build another sprawling resort? They've seen that the "niche" resorts attached to popular deluxe resorts sell easily (BWV, BCV, BLT, VGF, VGC). BWV was slower than the others, but it was only the 2nd WDW resort and DVC was still < 10 years old.

Even as word got out on AKV, it felt like it picked up in interest over SSR until Treehouses were involved.

I do think incentives will continue to be a big part of the program. They price so high now that it's more like paying retail is a significant premium and a good incentive is retail.

 

[msd1776]

What are gratuitous transfers?

 

[RobDoc]

What are gratuitous transfers? Is that transferring your ownership from one property to another? What are the costs, how do you get one?

An example of a gratuitous transfer would be where a parent transfers their ownership to an adult child as a gift.

 

[JWG]

What are gratuitous transfers? Is that transferring your ownership from one property to another? What are the costs, how do you get one?

The original owner is gifting their membership to someone. No money is exchanging hands.

Typically, this is estate planning and family transfers. When my parents updated their wills and estate a handful of years ago, they simply added my wife and I to their deeds/ownership. That was a gratuitous transfer.

Gratuitous transfers are not subject to ROFR - by that I mean Disney will waive its right to ROFR and usually within days not weeks.