Thoughts:
1. I don't believe you are accounting for the fact that RVA is still in active sales directly from Disney. Your friends who purchased there should not expect their resale value to increase until RVA sells out and the main way to buy at that resort is resale. And then Disney will begin exercising ROFR.
2. I'm also puzzled by your "way dooowwwnnn" statement. A 150 pt RVA contract on the resale market currently goes for 155-160... that's not way down, that's within the expected $30-40 delta between direct and resale, given that a smiliar contract is in the high 190s direct, after incentives. And if the folks you mention purchased early on (pre-covid), then the resale price is actually not very far from the price back then, which was in the 170s. That's definitely not a plummet in value, especially given my first point.
3. To your last point, most people who buy DVC don't know there is a resale market to begin with. The pool of people buying contracts and choosing resale over RVA is quite small compared to those who wander around the parks, learn about DVC, and end up signing during their trip. There are more likely explanations for the rise in resale price, including the rise in direct price, the extra discretionary income from lack of travel during the height of the pandemic, stimulus money, etc... all of which likely geared up demand in the resale market.
4. Returning to your main argument that people initially didn't realize the impact of restrictions on resale value (which, keep in mind, we don't know what that impact is yet since the resort is not sold out), consider that RVA's sales were excellent during the first year of sales, ~115,000 points per month on average. Upon the resumption of sales after lock down, the numbers slumped comparatively and have averaged ~ 75,000 points per month since. (You can check out the numbers for every month through DVCnews.com).
The resale restrictions were well known since the opening of sales in April 2019, especially among folks in sites like these who know the resale market, and yet sales were so good they outshone VGF. The more reasonable explanation of what occurred in the spring of 2020 to bring down the average number of points sold per month is the pandemic. The drop is pretty marked by the start of lock down, I believe it's hard to argue otherwise given the timing. IMO it would be a silly argument, unless we are willing to negate the previous 3 points, and to accept that buyers were turned off by resale restrictions very suddenly between April and August of 2020, thus coinciding with the pandemic.
I have 33 days booked in Disney over the next 12 months and if I wanted to sell after my trips I should get what I paid for my contracts, all my dues, and enough left over for a free trip next year. My one friend is trying to sell their Riviera because of where life has gone, and they will lose about 30% of what they paid and gotten one trip out of it.
