I would add this as a longtime (18 year) owner.
Your stay patterns will change over time.
When we joined, our DD was 4 and we went all of the time. We would take friends, go often (we can drive to WDW in 8/9 hours), and always had APs. Fast forward 18 years later and DD is now out of college and now it is usually just DW and I (and perhaps the dog
).
We don't really subscribe to "buy where you want to stay", mainly because we like most all of the
DVC properties, and are happy to stay at any of them. We own at 4 (SSR/BLT/VGF/PBV), however, since the pandemic, we've stayed exactly 1-night at PVB and exactly 1-night at VGF, and both of those, we actually booked inside of the 7-month window. For instance, we've now been to Aulani 6 times (probably would not have done that without DVC). Our last 4 stays have been a GV at SSR when DD turned 21, and 3 visits to CFW, where we can bring our dog with us and ride all over with the golf carts. Our next stay is early next year for 4 nights at HHI. Just saying that you never know what you may like/not like until you experience all of the resorts. We love 'em all (though Aulani is more equal than others
)
So, I think that you need to assess your particular needs/wants and match them to what your long-term plan may be.
@Brian Noble 's idea of a slow-roll is good advice. "Buy where you want to stay" is great advice IF you really have a property that you have to stay at a majority of the time. If you really don't care, then I say look at the financial side and go with the most economical option. Note that you need to consider not only the purchase price, but the dues, which are actually the bulk of the cost over the life of the contract, and those will be hard to estimate 10 years down the road, because what is "cheapest" now may or may not be the cheapest then.
Also, consider that DVC can make changes that can affect what you own. We purchased VGF1 when it went on sale because we enjoy the Deluxe Studios in the VGF1 building. However, we usually booked around 8-9 months ahead of time as that was our timetable (once we found out schedules, things like that). Well, when DVC added the hotel rooms at BPK into the association years later, the upshot now is that if you want a Deluxe Studio, you pretty much have to be on it at 11 months. You may say, well, you can just grab Resort Studios, which would be fine if we liked the Resort Studios, but for the 2 of us, the Deluxe setup works much better. We thought we'd stay more at Poly, but since we like all of the resorts, we'd rather stay longer/more nights, so we end up staying at places where our points go farther.
Again, your situation may be very different than ours, but it's good practice to identify what that may be so that you can fit your strategy to it.
