Third party commercial renters

[Chuck S]

I get it, you don't think there's a problem because you didn't have trouble the last time you tried.

I am telling you that I have been having trouble looking at times that are not popular times And you are essentially responding by telling me that no I'm not.

I'm not telling you haven't had trouble, I believe you have...BUT..I'm saying that it is not possible to establish that renting has any more impact on that than, say, walking reservations, rooms scheduled to go out of service for repairs and refurbishments, too many small contracts in the mix, people booking 2 bedroom lock-offs, or even just a very, very busy booking season and being a few seconds late hitting the enter key or a slower internet connection. And certainly it doesn't establish a definitive reason to negatively impact all DVC Owners at all resorts on how they choose to use their points, by changing the booking system.

 

[mistysue]

I'm not telling you haven't had trouble, I believe you have...BUT..I'm saying that it is not possible to establish that renting has any more impact on that than, say, walking reservations, rooms scheduled to go out of service for repairs and refurbishments, too many small contracts in the mix, people booking 2 bedroom lock-offs, or even just a very, very busy booking season and being a few seconds late hitting the enter key or a slower internet connection. And certainly it doesn't establish a definitive reason to negatively impact all DVC Owners at all resorts on how they choose to use their points, by changing the booking system.

So you're saying if if someone cannot 100% prove that one issue is the complete cause of all of their problems, nothing should be done at all? Your responses really do seem to add up to saying you don't think there's a problem so anything at all being done by anyone would be a massive inconvenience to you and all DVC owners.

Nobody wants to do something that massively inconveniences all DVC owners. Literally asking you the question of whether you are renting these points or your friend is using them is a bit of a stretch to call "negatively impacting everyone". The only people who would be negatively impacted were the people who are renting all/most of their points out.

 

[Chuck S]

No, I'm saying how many rule changes are you willing to make if a hard clamp down on what you define as commercial renting (which is different from how DVC defines it) doesn't have the immediate impact on availabilty that you believe it will?

How would they conclusively determine if someone was your friend, or if you were commercially renting them out? What hoops would be required for DVC Owners to go through to do that? A check-box on the reservation site would be pretty pointless, wouldn't it? Applying for a guest pass certificate through an online form? Again, how could they determine if they are really your friends/family while adding another layer to the reservation process or after the reservation is made? And really, just who someone's friends or familiy are or aren't isn't anyone else's business. If they cancelled your reservations because they determined a friend wasn't a friend, I wonder how much THAT would cost in litigation, passed on as legal fees to ALL DVC Members. Why would you trust DVC to make THAT determination, but don't trust that they are reviewing people with 20+ reservations a year?

And say a member advertises Points To Rent on site like 15 months out, and when the 11 month mark hits, makes the reservation for their renter. How is THAT different from changing a name on a pre-existing reservation booked at 11 months?

I trust that DVC has found that using the 20 reservations per year criteria is an efficient and less intrusive way of handling what you perceive to be a problem.

 

[BuzzLightyr]

Fixing the point chart would be key to solving these issues. The problem is there is too much demand for certain rooms at certain prices and too few at others. Boardwalk and Animal Kingdom studios at 9 points per night vs Bay Lake studios at 15 is the problem. The problem with the 20% move per year is it will take a while to get there. Right now most of the commercial renting is done at two resorts.

My hope at Boardwalk. Standard view studios get more expensive. Pool and garden 1 beds get cheaper. This makes the pool and garden 2 beds cheaper and step up from 2 bed standard to 2 bed pool and garden less expensive. Commercial renters find it less appealing to own boardwalk contracts and use bots to find and walk stand studios and then sell their held contracts and I can buy some cheaper points.

Solving some 1 bedroom layout issues to sleep 5 (ideally with two queen beds) would be really amazing too. I feel 1 beds generally are too expensive for what they are. You get a lot of space but not more sleeping areas than a studio, and in some cases less...

 

[mistysue]

No, I'm saying how many rule changes are you willing to make if a hard clamp down on what you define as commercial renting (which is different from how DVC defines it) doesn't have the immediate impact on availabilty that you believe it will?

How would they conclusively determine if someone was your friend, or if you were commercially renting them out? What hoops would be required for DVC Owners to go through to do that? A check-box on the reservation site would be pretty pointless, wouldn't it? Applying for a guest pass certificate through an online form? Again, how could they determine if they are really your friends/family while adding another layer to the reservation process or after the reservation is made? And really, just who someone's friends or familiy are or aren't isn't anyone else's business. If they cancelled your reservations because they determined a friend wasn't a friend, I wonder how much THAT would cost in litigation, passed on as legal fees to ALL DVC Members. Why would you trust DVC to make THAT determination, but don't trust that they are reviewing people with 20+ reservations a year?

And say a member advertises Points To Rent on site like 15 months out, and when the 11 month mark hits, makes the reservation for their renter. How is THAT different from changing a name on a pre-existing reservation booked at 11 months?

I trust that DVC has found that using the 20 reservations per year criteria is an efficient and less intrusive way of handling what you perceive to be a problem.

Did you ever go look at the site from the original post? I don't know how anyone could look at that and trust that DVC was actually looking into and enforcing a limit of 20. And it's all over the place, it's not only one rental site.

I'm certainly not talking about some draconian slippery slope of clamping down on DVC. Whether or not it's doing anything to your personal rental habits, there is absolutely a market out there that has enough profit for people to write bots just to book rooms to be sure they are getting the only ones to make more money from them. There are companies listing hundreds if not thousands of reservations. Maybe there are 1-3 nights at a time, but it's staring us in the face that someone is either getting an exemption from the policy or is going to extreme measures to fund loopholes to work around the policy. Do you honestly believe Disney implemented a limit of 20 so that companies would go buy 100 different memberships to rent 20 from each? And that this was how they meant for DVC "personal use" to be interpreted? Questioning if it's real is ignorant at best, the issue is how could it be dealt with reasonably because it should be.

 

[Chuck S]

Fixing the point chart would be key to solving these issues. The problem is there is too much demand for certain rooms at certain prices and too few at others. Boardwalk and Animal Kingdom studios at 9 points per night vs Bay Lake studios at 15 is the problem. The problem with the 20% move per year is it will take a while to get there. Right now most of the commercial renting is done at two resorts.

My hope at Boardwalk. Standard view studios get more expensive. Pool and garden 1 beds get cheaper. This makes the pool and garden 2 beds cheaper and step up from 2 bed standard to 2 bed pool and garden less expensive. Commercial renters find it less appealing to own boardwalk contracts and use bots to find and walk stand studios and then sell their held contracts and I can buy some cheaper points.

Solving some 1 bedroom layout issues to sleep 5 (ideally with two queen beds) would be really amazing too. I feel 1 beds generally are too expensive for what they are. You get a lot of space but not more sleeping areas than a studio, and in some cases less...

I don't think they can just remove the King from a 1 bed and plop 2 queens into the bedroom. That would substantially change the accomodations as they were presented at time of purchase, which is not legal. Most one bedrooms do sleep 5 already, 2 in the king, 2 on the pull out couch, and 1 on tthe pull out chair, but not all resorts have room for the pull out chair in one bedroom living room.

Did you ever go look at the site from the original post? I don't know how anyone could look at that and trust that DVC was actually looking into and enforcing a limit of 20. And it's all over the place, it's not only one rental site.

I'm certainly not talking about some draconian slippery slope of clamping down on DVC. Whether or not it's doing anything to your personal rental habits, there is absolutely a market out there that has enough profit for people to write bots just to book rooms to be sure they are getting the only ones to make more money from them. There are companies listing hundreds if not thousands of reservations. Maybe there are 1-3 nights at a time, but it's staring us in the face that someone is either getting an exemption from the policy or is going to extreme measures to fund loopholes to work around the policy. Do you honestly believe Disney implemented a limit of 20 so that companies would go buy 100 different memberships to rent 20 from each? And that this was how they meant for DVC "personal use" to be interpreted? Questioning if it's real is ignorant at best, the issue is how could it be dealt with reasonably because it should be.

SInce we don't know just who owns the contracts, how they are deeded, and how many owners are not affiliated with the site and are just renting their reservations there, no we can not determine at all whether it meets the criteria for commercial renting as defined by DVC, and do not forget it is DVCs definition that counts, not yours, mine, or anyone elses.

It still seems odd that you'd trust DVC to determine who members friends really are, but you don't trust that they are enforcing their restrictions.

 

[mistysue]

I don't think they can just remove the King from a 1 bed and plop 2 queens into the bedroom. That would substantially change the accomodations as they were presented at time of purchase, which is not legal. Most one bedrooms do sleep 5 already, 2 in the king, 2 on the pull out couch, and 1 on tthe pull out chair, but not all resorts have room for the pull out chair in one bedroom living room.

SInce we don't know just who owns the contracts, how they are deeded, and how many owners are not affiliated with the site and are just renting their reservations there, no we can not determine at all whether it meets the criteria for commercial renting as defined by DVC, and do not forget it is DVCs definition that counts, not yours, mine, or anyone elses.

Finally something to agree with you on - there's a lot more to upping the sleeping capacity than swapping out pieces, and in some rooms (The 1 bedrooms that sleep 4 for example) that extra bed doesn't fit.

I agree I personally can't determine/prove it. To me the point of all of this is not that I have some smoking gun of proof - as like so many arenas though, sometimes you can see a problem, see all the evidence, and know something is going on without having the final piece of proof. DVC saying they are monitoring doesn't mean we have to collectively pretend we can't tell people are getting away with something. The second someone opens their own website and lists hundreds of reservations, there is commercial activity happening here on someone's part. I would not be the least bit surprised if some of those making real money over this issue were on the inside currently or were previously so that they know just how much they can take advantage of the lax restrictions.

 

[Chuck S]

So, I did look at that site earlier a few weeks ago, and glanced at it again today. So many of the rentals offered are only a night or two. So that doesn't scream "walking" or even "bot" to me.

Here is a theory on what might be happening...

An owner calls the broker. The owner is using a broker because they do not want to deal directly with the renter. (Face it, in my business as a landlord, I have had mostly great renters, and a handful of not so great renters over the years, which is why I use a Property Manager) Of the 6 DVC Renters I've dealt with renting my points out last year, they were all great people...but there is always that chance ...

Anyway, the owner calls and says, "I have 40 points I'd like to rent."

Broker says, we don't handle basic point rentals, only existing reservations, and we suggest booking at AKV because it generally is a fast renter and uses fewer points than most other resorts, and book value/standard if you can, they rent the fastest.

So Owner books the AKV taking value or standard, what ever he can get. Calls Broker and lists the reservation.

That, in and of itself, does not meet the criteria for Commercial Renting as defined by DVC.

I don't LIKE the practice, in fact I personally don't really like offering existing reservations before the 30 day holding/check-in window at all, even though we allow it here on the DISBoards with a somewhat hefty cost and restrictions, and we don't allow full week rentals starting Friday, Saturday or Sunday, which prevents fixed week owners (which some of those being offered could also be) from renting here, but if THAT is what is happening, I don't see it as being something DVC could prevent, even if it wanted to do so. We all have the right to rent, and to engage a broker for that process, if we want to do so. DVC does not make a distinction between whether you are renting points or existing reservations.

 

[mistysue]

So, I did look at that site earlier a few weeks ago, and glanced at it again today. So many of the rentals offered are only a night or two. So that doesn't scream "walking" or even "bot" to me.

Here is a theory on what might be happening...

An owner calls the broker. The owner is using a broker because they do not want to deal directly with the renter. (Face it, in my business as a landlord, I have had mostly great renters, and a handful of not so great renters over the years, which is why I use a Property Manager) Of the 6 DVC Renters I've dealt with renting my points out last year, they were all great people...but there is always that chance ...

Anyway, the owner calls and says, "I have 40 points I'd like to rent."

Broker says, we don't handle basic point rentals, only existing reservations, and we suggest booking at AKV because it generally is a fast renter and uses fewer points than most other resorts, and book value/standard if you can, they rent the fastest.

So Owner books the AKV taking value or standard, what ever he can get. Calls Broker and lists the reservation.

That, in and of itself, does not meet the criteria for Commercial Renting as defined by DVC.

I don't LIKE the practice, in fact I personally don't really like offering existing reservations before the 30 day holding/check-in window at all, even though we allow it here on the DISBoards with a somewhat hefty cost and restrictions, and we don't allow full week rentals starting Friday, Saturday or Sunday, which prevents fixed week owners (which some of those being offered could also be) from renting here, but if THAT is what is happening, I don't see it as being something DVC could prevent, even if it wanted to do so. We all have the right to rent, and to engage a broker for that process, if we want to do so. DVC does not make a distinction between whether you are renting points or existing reservations.

Are you saying that you HONESTLY believe that this many owners are calling them 11+ months out, wanting to rent, and then getting their own personal bots to reserve the same specific rooms just to rent them without getting paid until nearly a year later when the reservation is used? You find that more believable than that the companies who are making a living off of renting DVC are renting their own contracts?

 

[Chuck S]

Are you saying that you HONESTLY believe that this many owners are calling them 11+ months out, wanting to rent, and then getting their own personal bots to reserve the same specific rooms just to rent them without getting paid until nearly a year later when the reservation is used? You find that more believable than that the companies who are making a living off of renting DVC are renting their own contracts?

Considering most of the available reservatons I saw were one or two days, while it may be unlikely, it is possible. And we have no justification to draw a conclusion either way. That would be for DVC to investigate to see if they are complying with the rules they've set, or not. We do occasionally have people on our own Rental board that rent an existing reservation 11 month out, How it that really any different that saying you will have points available June 1, 2025, and are contacted by people wanting to rent then in June 2024, and then booking it when the window opens in Juily 2024? It is still booking a reservation right at 11 months for a rental reservation.

If DVC feels that this violates the terms of ownership, the rental office for the company isn't far from Disney's Burbank HQ, and could easily serve them a cease an desist order.

 

[miTnosnhoJ]

I really don’t understand this thread at all. DVC was designed to work at 100% capacity. They sell about 97% of the points and Disney keeps 3% that they can use for their purposes.

If you say if members can’t use the points, they lose them, that takes away a huge piece of the value equation when people buy DVC. Renting at least lets them recoup their maintenance fees for the year.

True, if you disallowed renting, there would be a lot of slack in the system, and the people who COULD use their points would find easier picking later in the year.

So if you allow owners to recoup some of their maintenance fees through renting, only the most savvy owners could figure out how to do this themselves, so it is reasonable to allow them to use a broker. The broker fee will eat up some of their revenue, but without it they might lose it all.

Then you have other reasons for there to be rental points in the system. Disney exchanges points for cruises, ABD, hotels, and the like, and these are all rented out. Mostly through Disney, but some through Expedia and Travelocity.

Then you have other reasons for some years to be tougher than others. We just came out of the COVID times, and this caused massive banking - and Disney was quite lenient in allowing the banking. So I am surmising that there are a lot of owners who are still in a net banked position, which leads to more points chasing the available rooms for a given year.

If you say, yes but they are renting confirmed reservations. They should not be able to do that. But let’s say you have to cancel your trip at 5 months. At that point, it would be really difficult to rent your points out, because the desirable properties are gone. So you try renting your existing reservation. The market for people who want to go at that exact time is much smaller than the entire market, but if you can find somebody, you have a chance of recouping your maintence fees. And good luck finding the “needle in a haystack” that needs your exact week without the services of a broker.

I think the system is working as designed.

 

[Sandisw]

I get it, you don't think there's a problem because you didn't have trouble the last time you tried.

I am telling you that I have been having trouble looking at times that are not popular times And you are essentially responding by telling me that no I'm not.

Unfortunately, if you are waiting to book until 4 to 5 months out...and I realize life gets in the way and booking farther out is not possible...then you have to accept that your options are going to be slim, when all other owners have been booking rooms for 6 to 7 months already, whether owners end up renting what they snagged or not.

If DVC has said that an owner can own up to 8000 points, as a way to encourage personal use, does that not tell you that they probably do have a very high threshold for defining using "DVC as a commercial entity?" Even if DVC instituted a 50% cap on rentals, a person that owns 8000 DVC points would be allowed to book 4000 points worth of rooms in a year.....

Since DVC can not tell an owner which rooms they can book with their points, even for a rental...any attempt to make the rental market smaller, is not going to necessarily make rooms at the more popular resorts show up 4 to 5 months out...you are very likely going to still have a difficult time booking your rooms. Remember, DVC has lowered the minimum buy in to 100 points in 2023, and was allowing from time to time, people to buy in with as little as 50 to 75 points within the last 5 to 6 years. That created a lot more small point owners and that is part of why availability trends have, and are changing.

As I said, I don't rent, but if I ever have to, do you think I am using my SSR points to book rooms, or am I going to snag some hard to get rooms at RIV and VGF and offer those to rent?

Even the ideas that I shared that I think would be allowed under our contract, are not ones that everyone would want to see happen, even if they are not using their membership as a business... While I said I could live with them, if DVC took a survey and asked if I wanted to see those happen, my answer would be no.

I 100% agree that any owner who is frustrated with the state of things should contact DVC to let them know they would like to see them amend the rules around renting.

 

[tx911]

I really don’t understand this thread at all. DVC was designed to work at 100% capacity. They sell about 97% of the points and Disney keeps 3% that they can use for their purposes.

If you say if members can’t use the points, they lose them, that takes away a huge piece of the value equation when people buy DVC. Renting at least lets them recoup their maintenance fees for the year.

True, if you disallowed renting, there would be a lot of slack in the system, and the people who COULD use their points would find easier picking later in the year.

So if you allow owners to recoup some of their maintenance fees through renting, only the most savvy owners could figure out how to do this themselves, so it is reasonable to allow them to use a broker. The broker fee will eat up some of their revenue, but without it they might lose it all.

Then you have other reasons for there to be rental points in the system. Disney exchanges points for cruises, ABD, hotels, and the like, and these are all rented out. Mostly through Disney, but some through Expedia and Travelocity.

Then you have other reasons for some years to be tougher than others. We just came out of the COVID times, and this caused massive banking - and Disney was quite lenient in allowing the banking. So I am surmising that there are a lot of owners who are still in a net banked position, which leads to more points chasing the available rooms for a given year.

If you say, yes but they are renting confirmed reservations. They should not be able to do that. But let’s say you have to cancel your trip at 5 months. At that point, it would be really difficult to rent your points out, because the desirable properties are gone. So you try renting your existing reservation. The market for people who want to go at that exact time is much smaller than the entire market, but if you can find somebody, you have a chance of recouping your maintence fees. And good luck finding the “needle in a haystack” that needs your exact week without the services of a broker.

I think the system is working as designed.

DVC:
"Everything that has transpired, has done so according to my design"

 

[Sandisw]

Fixing the point chart would be key to solving these issues. The problem is there is too much demand for certain rooms at certain prices and too few at others. Boardwalk and Animal Kingdom studios at 9 points per night vs Bay Lake studios at 15 is the problem. The problem with the 20% move per year is it will take a while to get there. Right now most of the commercial renting is done at two resorts.

My hope at Boardwalk. Standard view studios get more expensive. Pool and garden 1 beds get cheaper. This makes the pool and garden 2 beds cheaper and step up from 2 bed standard to 2 bed pool and garden less expensive. Commercial renters find it less appealing to own boardwalk contracts and use bots to find and walk stand studios and then sell their held contracts and I can buy some cheaper points.

Solving some 1 bedroom layout issues to sleep 5 (ideally with two queen beds) would be really amazing too. I feel 1 beds generally are too expensive for what they are. You get a lot of space but not more sleeping areas than a studio, and in some cases less...

Per the maximum reallocation chart...meaning every day is the same....SV studios at BWV would be 15 points a night and PV studios would be 18 points a night... and 1 bedrooms are SV 30 points with PV being 36 points...there are more PV rooms than SV rooms so there really isn't a whole lot they can do to make point differences enough to change demand....

Popular rooms are popular rooms and even if they didn't interest renters, they are still going to be plenty of owners who are shut out of them...and I am just not convinced that too many owners who lose out really care if they lost out to an owner who ended up letting someone else stay in it, or to the owner themselves. The end result is they didn't get the room.

For the 1 bedrooms, I don't see them ever removing the king beds....and I hope they do not...

 

[lowlight]

If it becomes too stressful for you, then it is the time to sell or gift it to someone in your family that wants it.

If I have to jump through hoops just to bring a large group of friends and family, like I've been doing for years, forget it...we'll go on a Carnival Cruise out of Galveston instead, and I'd just sell my membership.

You had to have known that I couldn’t pass up the delicious irony of these two posts.

 

[lowlight]

I really don’t understand this thread at all. DVC was designed to work at 100% capacity. They sell about 97% of the points and Disney keeps 3% that they can use for their purposes.

If you say if members can’t use the points, they lose them, that takes away a huge piece of the value equation when people buy DVC. Renting at least lets them recoup their maintenance fees for the year.

True, if you disallowed renting, there would be a lot of slack in the system, and the people who COULD use their points would find easier picking later in the year.

So if you allow owners to recoup some of their maintenance fees through renting, only the most savvy owners could figure out how to do this themselves, so it is reasonable to allow them to use a broker. The broker fee will eat up some of their revenue, but without it they might lose it all.

Then you have other reasons for there to be rental points in the system. Disney exchanges points for cruises, ABD, hotels, and the like, and these are all rented out. Mostly through Disney, but some through Expedia and Travelocity.

Then you have other reasons for some years to be tougher than others. We just came out of the COVID times, and this caused massive banking - and Disney was quite lenient in allowing the banking. So I am surmising that there are a lot of owners who are still in a net banked position, which leads to more points chasing the available rooms for a given year.

If you say, yes but they are renting confirmed reservations. They should not be able to do that. But let’s say you have to cancel your trip at 5 months. At that point, it would be really difficult to rent your points out, because the desirable properties are gone. So you try renting your existing reservation. The market for people who want to go at that exact time is much smaller than the entire market, but if you can find somebody, you have a chance of recouping your maintence fees. And good luck finding the “needle in a haystack” that needs your exact week without the services of a broker.

I think the system is working as designed.

You have completely misunderstood the thread and/or have not read more than a few posts. I don’t blame you, it’s long and repetitive at times. Nobody here wants to ban renting. I’d take it as a Pyrrhic victory condition, but it isn’t my goal. We just want DVC to enforce the current rules or amp them up a bit.

 

[lowlight]

Anyway, the owner calls and says, "I have 40 points I'd like to rent."

When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

 

[Sandisw]

Did you ever go look at the site from the original post? I don't know how anyone could look at that and trust that DVC was actually looking into and enforcing a limit of 20. And it's all over the place, it's not only one rental site.

I'm certainly not talking about some draconian slippery slope of clamping down on DVC. Whether or not it's doing anything to your personal rental habits, there is absolutely a market out there that has enough profit for people to write bots just to book rooms to be sure they are getting the only ones to make more money from them. There are companies listing hundreds if not thousands of reservations. Maybe there are 1-3 nights at a time, but it's staring us in the face that someone is either getting an exemption from the policy or is going to extreme measures to fund loopholes to work around the policy. Do you honestly believe Disney implemented a limit of 20 so that companies would go buy 100 different memberships to rent 20 from each? And that this was how they meant for DVC "personal use" to be interpreted? Questioning if it's real is ignorant at best, the issue is how could it be dealt with reasonably because it should be.

DVC used the word "membership" in 2007 when setting the rules. Maybe there was a legal reason that rules have to be applied to individual memberships, regardless of whether an owner has multiple ones? I have no idea but it is something that just popped into my head.

I own three memberships and can't use them together, and am treated as though I am three different owners. The only way I can is if I transfer points from one to the next. I can't merge my reservations between my memberships either. So, when I book, I have to choose which membership I want to work within. Maybe its the same with enforcing rules in our contracts? Think about it, there must be a reason why owners who own multiple UYs must be given different memberships, right?

If, we assume, that all of those rentals are on memberships that have the same, or a combination of the same owners, but there are enough memberships holding them, then isn't it possible that DVC has to apply the rules to each on individually since legally, they are individual memberships?

Maybe that is why, assuming DVC is using the 20 reservation rule still, and they are monitoring, there is nothing they can do because they can't enforce rules against an owner, only the membership which holds the contracts?

Here is what I am thinking. I decide to use my Dec UY membership, which is owned by my DH and myself and I rent 15 reservations. I then use my Aug UY membership to make another 15 reservations, but this membership has my adult children as additional owners (on the contracts).

Each of those memberships, if we use the 20 reservation rule, on their own, would still be considered being used for personal use. Now, because DH and I are on both, you can say "we" have 30 rental reservations, as individuals, but my adult children, as owners, only have 15. So, can DVC really penalize them, when legally, what they own is not being used for commercial purposes?

I just have to wonder if there isn't something we don't know about what legally DVC can do to owners whose memberships, individually, are not being used for commercial purposes, but if you lumped them together under one membership, they would be.

And, maybe, just maybe, this is why the whole concept of owning lots of membersihps and staying below the limits is allowed to happen.

 

[lowlight]

I can buy 8000 points of resale at 2 different resorts for 150 a point for 1.2 million dollars. I can rent those points out for 25 a point in 19 separate 420 point 1 week VGF and BLT 2BR reservations, netting me 200k. In 6 years I will have paid off those points and be profiting 200k a year minus dues. I can do all of this and be legal in the eyes of DVC. I can do it again in the names of friends and family members and become a millionaire. Is this ok to most members? What about when I realize I can make even more than 200k per year by spec renting? What about when I realize I can use a script or walk reservations to block other members from those hard to get ones?

 

[BeachClub2014]

DVC used the word "membership" in 2007 when setting the rules. Maybe there was a legal reason that rules have to be applied to individual memberships, regardless of whether an owner has multiple ones? I have no idea but it is something that just popped into my head.

I own three memberships and can't use them together, and am treated as though I am three different owners. The only way I can is if I transfer points from one to the next. I can't merge my reservations between my memberships either. So, when I book, I have to choose which membership I want to work within. Maybe its the same with enforcing rules in our contracts? Think about it, there must be a reason why owners who own multiple UYs must be given different memberships, right?

If, we assume, that all of those rentals are on memberships that have the same, or a combination of the same owners, but there are enough memberships holding them, then isn't it possible that DVC has to apply the rules to each on individually since legally, they are individual memberships?

Maybe that is why, assuming DVC is using the 20 reservation rule still, and they are monitoring, there is nothing they can do because they can't enforce rules against an owner, only the membership which holds the contracts?

Here is what I am thinking. I decide to use my Dec UY membership, which is owned by my DH and myself and I rent 15 reservations. I then use my Aug UY membership to make another 15 reservations, but this membership has my adult children as additional owners (on the contracts).

Each of those memberships, if we use the 20 reservation rule, on their own, would still be considered being used for personal use. Now, because DH and I are on both, you can say "we" have 30 rental reservations, as individuals, but my adult children, as owners, only have 15. So, can DVC really penalize them, when legally, what they own is not being used for commercial purposes?

I just have to wonder if there isn't something we don't know about what legally DVC can do to owners whose memberships, individually, are not being used for commercial purposes, but if you lumped them together under one membership, they would be.

Or maybe it's just as simple as DVC isn't really doing much of anything about commercial renting on the rental broker sites in spite of all the "what if" scenarios and membership math that one can find in this thread.

Often the simple answer is the right answer.