Several small contrats, good or bad idea?

[Briar Rose@]

Can someone please tell me what the pros and cons would be with owning several smaller contracts instead of one larger one? My husband and I would rather pay for our contracts outright, which would mean buying several small 25, 50, 75pt contracts along the way when we saved up the money for one. To us that would mean buying a contract based on points/price more so than based on the resort or use year. We are in our early 30s, currently have a 3 yr old & an infant and expect to have more children in the future. I have plenty of vacation time at my job and he is freelance and both our schedules are very flexible, so we can really travel at any time of the year (though we have sworn to never go back in the summer). I have to say I am more spur of the moment, and actually don’t like the idea of planning a vacation 11 months out (though, I do understand the perk of getting what you want early). We have interest at staying at all of the resorts in proximity to WDW, but mainly, and most likely, Animal Kingdom and Key West, and I hear there is pretty good availability at those. So please let me know if it could work out just fine to juggle several small contracts with different use years and resorts, or do you see a huge headache in store for us? Or can you recommend something that might work better for us, like maybe making sure all contracts have the same use year? Thanks!

 

[Mtnman44]

Multiple smaller contracts are definately the way to go. I would not want to own a single contract over 150 to 160 points. There is no reason to. The one key point is that they should all be the same use year, under a master membership number. This way, they can all be used for the same reservation. Whether they are at the same resort or multiple resorts, is up to you and your travel wants/needs. I would NOT want to mess with multiple use years, different banking deadlines, and separate memberships.

The only downside is that you may have to pay slightly more in closing costs and the trouble of going thru the purchase process more than once, or if buying all at once from Disney, signing multiple sets of paperwork.

The main benefits are value and flexibility. Smaller contracts are more valuable. There are more potential buyers, higher demand, so the prices seem to be a bit higher and they sell quicker. You can sell of any unneeded or unwanted contracts without having to get rid of all of your DVC points.

 

[suzanny]

I had three contracts at one point, but am now down to 2, HHI and OKW. I paid cash every time and would never consider borrowing to pay for a vacation.

I bought the first time at HHI for 150 points, then realized I wanted more and bought 50 more. Both were October use year. When I realized I wanted something at WDW at the 11 month window, I went with the cheapest points on resale, OKW, and got another 100 points (also October use year).

Since then we realized we don't need quite that may points so we sold the 50. Smaller contracts are also useful because you aren't stuck with too many and you can always buy more. I like the flexibility. I would also only consider the same use year, just too confusing otherwise.

Booking at the 11 month window can be tricky if the contracts are different resorts. I've never had a problem, just have to be careful with planning and use the right points each time. I am glad I have the two different locations, so I can book at 11 months either for Orlando or HHI.

 

[bobbiwoz]

Unless someone here can tell me what to do otherwise, our 18 or so contracts are listed on my member page in numerical order, not grouped according to home resort. It is a bit hard to "see" just how many points we have in BCV, VWL, etc, the homes that we have multiple small contracts in.

I deal with it, and tell which contract the MS person should look at either at the 7 or 11 month point. I do wish they could be grouped according to home resort. It would just make keeping track a bit easier.

We do have a 200 pt. contract, and a 150 pointer.

Bobbi

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

I don't have a problem with small contracts per se although after having a few under 50 points I personally wouldn't do anything less and really consider 100 pts to be the smallest I would prefer to own unless I were just needing to up my totals a bit due to reallocations or need for a different unit size. Costs in both buying and selling just add to much.

However I think it would be a very time consuming thing to have multiple small contracts in various resorts and various UY's and could cause many difficulties. I'd never comfortably recommend small contracts in more than 2 UY's tops and only if that were in the same or maybe 2 home resorts.

I completely agree with paying cash and from the sounds of it in buying resale but would recommend saving until you could buy contracts in a slightly larger size or at least waiting until the small contracts come up in your same UY and resort.

 

[cvjw]

We have 4 contracts at 4 different resorts, all with the same use year. I would not want to deal with 2 different use years, it is hard enough for me to keep track of the 4 with the same use year.

I have trouble when making a reservation - the CMs at Member Services always use the wrong points - even after I have told them which points to use. They always apologize and tell me that it is the computer's fault - but then they have to manually fix it, which is hit or miss.

I personally wouldn't want a whole bunch of small contracts - seems like a nightmare to keep track of the points, and to make sure that the points are used correctly for reservations (especially at the 7 month mark).

 

[SusieBea]

Can someone please tell me what the pros and cons would be with owning several smaller contracts instead of one larger one? My husband and I would rather pay for our contracts outright, which would mean buying several small 25, 50, 75pt contracts along the way when we saved up the money for one. To us that would mean buying a contract based on points/price more so than based on the resort or use year. We are in our early 30s, currently have a 3 yr old & an infant and expect to have more children in the future. I have plenty of vacation time at my job and he is freelance and both our schedules are very flexible, so we can really travel at any time of the year (though we have sworn to never go back in the summer). I have to say I am more spur of the moment, and actually don’t like the idea of planning a vacation 11 months out (though, I do understand the perk of getting what you want early). We have interest at staying at all of the resorts in proximity to WDW, but mainly, and most likely, Animal Kingdom and Key West, and I hear there is pretty good availability at those. So please let me know if it could work out just fine to juggle several small contracts with different use years and resorts, or do you see a huge headache in store for us? Or can you recommend something that might work better for us, like maybe making sure all contracts have the same use year? Thanks!

We have 5 contracts that are not all small (190, 35, 100, 60 and 250) and are in two different use years but at the same resort, OKW. I would suggest you have whatever number of contracts you decide upon all in the same use year. I would also recommend you keep them at the same resort. Smaller contracts are easier to sell, if you should choose to do that at some point. We recently evened out our number of points so that they could be evenly distributed between our two adult daughters at some point. After dealing with the two different use years, and although it is doable, I wish I would have kept all contracts in the same use year. If they are in the same UY, you're basically just pulling all the points from one big pool and don't have to worry about which contract with which UY you need to be working with.

 

[zawisza]

Sorry to piggyback a question within this question but my concern about multiple small contract with the same use year is how difficult is it to only sell one of the contracts. Could someone explain selling only one small contract out of let's say 3 all listed under the same use year?

 

[chalee94]

Could someone explain selling only one small contract out of let's say 3 all listed under the same use year?

what are you asking? if i have a 160 pt contract and add-on a 40 pt contract and a 50 pt contract, i can sell any of the contracts separately. if i want to sell the 40 pt contract, i can list it with TTS and have it sold within a day most likely...if i wanted to sell the 160 pt contract, it would likely take longer and i'd have to offer it at a lower price per pt. but the 160 pt contract, the 40 pt contract and the 50 pt contract could all be sold or willed separately even if they operate seamlessly as a single contract when booking a reservation.

 

[Briar Rose@]

Thanks for the advice. Looks like I will definitely be looking for contracts with at least the same user year. You guys are great.

 

[Disney Princess]

If you are buying smaller contracts (50 points or less) I suggest getting them at the same resort as well. I may be in the minority here, but there is a reason. I hope it makes sense below.

If you want to say "anywhere" at WDW, you can hypothetically get a reservation using a combination of points from different resorts at 7 months. However, if you decide that you want to go during a busy time (i.e. Christmas) and decide to make that reservation earlier, you can't combine points until 7 months out. Pretend you have 25 points at OKW, 30 points at at AKV, and 30 points at BWV. You can only make a reservation at OKW for as many days as you can get for 25 points depending on your room size. Then you'd have to book using your 30 points at AKV and your 30 at BWV. You'd have to do a lot of moving. Then, you take your chances at changing the reservation to be at the same resort at 7 months.

Obviously you can bank and borrow. However, if you've already used some points at a certain resort and you didn't plan ahead, you wouldn't be able to secure the reservation you want until 7 months out. I think it gets confusing.

Another reason I would keep the points at the same resort is that by chance IF they ever changed the booking windows (and they can), you'd hate to have a hodge-podge of points that aren't enough to book the reservations you want. I'd rather have my points at the same resort "in case" something ever changed.

Having said all of that - we own points at two resorts. We have a BWV contract and a VGC contract. The reason is that we want the 11-month window at both resorts. We use VGC points at VGC, and we use BWV points at BWV. If you want to have and use the 11-month booking window at different resorts, then by all means buy contracts at separate resorts. However, if your goal is to use the points "anywhere" I would buy them all at the same resort (at WDW) in case the rules change or in case you decide to book early.

Sorry this was long-winded. I hope it helped.

 

[Mtnman44]

There is one strategy you can use with several small contracts at different resorts if you want to fully use your 11 month window advantage.

Lets say you have three, 50 point contacts. One each at resorts A, B, and C.

If you set up your banking and borrowing right, you can rotate which resort you want to book 11 months at. If you bank, and borrow, you can have 150 points available for resort A this year, 150 points for B, next year, and so on. Each year, you would only have points for one of the resorts, but you'd have 150 points available to use at 11 months for that resort.

 

[nunzia]

We have 4 small contracts all at VGC and all same use year so it works seamlessly..the purpose of this is so thet if we decide to have less points we can sell a contract or two and still be in the system, where if we had one large contract it would be all or nothing. Also, it will make things easier to divvy up for our kids.