Why do we give our points away???

[mcr5298]

I just did a cost analysis for someone looking to rent my points and discovered at $10/point we are giving them away.

An example, a 2Bdr at OKW for 5 nights in January is 88 points or $880.

That same room on Expedia is $2,100. If you get a %40 discount that same room is still $1600.

Why do we rent for half that?

Just curious as to who came up with this magic number of $10/point. I think it is time to change that to a more resonable value.

There are always two sides. As a person renting points, I want them as cheap as possible, as a renter I want a better value for my points.

Am I wrong?

Thanks,

Joe

 

[Richyams]

Yes, you are wrong.

You have to look at weekends. You are doing everyone a diservice to rent only weekday points.

I think that it is awful that some have made a business of renting points, especially when they only rent weekday points. This makes it harder for members to get the dates they want for themselves and it makes it more likely that DVC will have to even out the weekend-weekday differential.....personally, now that I live in Florida, I think evening out the week would be good.

Evening out the week will make it impossible for others to get full weeks because those of us who live in Florida will just take weekends making it impossible for members to get full week reservations.

In my opinion, I like the idea of being able to rent, I like that I can recoup my dues, since my breakeven was many years ago, $4 per point is all I would need...I think $10 is too high. It would suit me just fine if they could limit what people can rent points for to just dues.

 

[mcr5298]

I do agree about the weekends. I know some members take the entire week including weekends, but I am sure that many just rent the 5 days.

BTW, if I do need to rent points, the people that are renting the points choose their days and are requesting Sun - Thursday.

You said "You are doing everyone a diservice to rent only weekday points."

Are renters not rent points to others unless they take the weekends?

What happens to all the weekend days? Does anyone know? Do these rooms sit vacant or do more members rent weekends?

Thanks,

Joe

It is strange that some do make a business out of renting points as a business, but to each his own. It is nice to have a way off recouping at least expenses for dues on points you can't use.

 

[Richyams]

Yes, rooms do sit empty on weekends. We had figures a while ago for occupancy broken down by season and weekday vs weekend. Weekends do sit empty.

Many members do take just weekdays for themselves, it seems that the vast majority of renters only rent weekdays. This is evidenced by what we see on Ebay and the rent/trade board here.

 

[Andrea T]

These days I have more points then I can possibly use. I work in the travel industry (this career started after my DVC purchase), and have many travel opportunities for little or no cost. However, I am not ready to sell my DVC since I don't know what the future will bring and the purchase was made in cash when points were under $60. I offer my points to family and friends every year free of charge but believe it or not, there are years when I can not give them away. When that is the case I rent them for $5-$7 a point. Not looking to make money...just cover some expenses.

 

[Dean]

Rich, there you are going liberal on me again. I think $10 pp is a reasonable cost at this time. The price was starting to edge up before the economic events of the last year and a half or so. If you looked at this from an investment standpoint and assume you would have investsed the money, the dues, return of principal and consider whether you are paying loan interested, you get somewhere between $8-12 pp. It's been a while since I've done the calculations so don't ask me too many specifics. LOL. That assumes a return of around 8%, obviously not doeable right now but in the long run should be.

Joe is right that DVC and the market forces set the rules and we only try to go by them. Actually renting won't have any effect on the issue and is such a small amount of points that DVC would likely never notice any issues at all. What could affect the current rules is if there are a few vocal complainers. The same can be said for Pool Hopping. If DVC makes a change because members use it legally, so be it. In addition to evening out the points, they could also require longer stays or certain days. And yes they could do this, they could say only F-S, M-F within the rules. All the rules say is no requirement longer than 5 days, it doesn't address whether they could make it specific days which will not preclude that option.

Joe, you must remember that there's a certain amount of trust and risk that goes with this issue as well as no maid service. Of course there's no sales tax on points rentals either which many don't know. Of coures the market ultimately drives the price and as long as there are those willing to rent at this price, that's what it will be.

Rich, can I rent some points at $4 per point.

 

[mrsdon]

What does it matter who is in the room. if a member rents popints, then its like he is staying there. If I go on my poimts and stay, or rent my points and the renter stays.. WHO CARES!!!!
What is the difference if I give the points to my son. He is going spring break week and taking some friends. I just gave him the points. What if I had rented them to him??
I just dont ubnderstand people geting upset. Rent or use your own... Points are points....

 

[nuthut]

There are thousands of points being rented for more than $10 each off and away from these boards. My average is $12.50 but have gone as high as $23 a point. Others should stop complaining about the Sunday/Thursday point usage because DVC made the rules, not us.

 

[Desperado]

Great point about weekends days. We've rented points before to add a few days or increase our accomodations to include guests, I'm glad the option is available. As a renter, I think $10 is a great deal. I think the original poster had a point, it probably is too low. It's nice to know the option is there, should a vacation fall through, or you need some extra points for something like a cruise, etc. I dissagree with those doing it as a business, I think in the end that ends up hurting members, IMHO.

 

[golfnut1264]

Does it really bother somebody that someone may make a few dollars off thier investment. It is not possible to sell dvc points as a job. You can only offset some costs associated with it. alot of people have bought in at much higher rates than you and need to charge a fair market price. sellign points for $4-8 a point is a great deal for the buyer. It is like getting 75% off disney rate where no discounts are found ar hard to come by now a days.$12 a point is fair to everyone involved ,it is still a great savings for the buyer. if iknew i could buy points for 4 a point why buy into the dvc. If you sell your points at $12 a point it will take over 10 years to even break even. that is not really a career. i sell to offset the upfront cost so when i get to break even i will be able to use all of them and vacation more often.
to me i bought addl points to sell so i can enjoy them 10 years from now.. but i cant give them away either. it should be fair to both parties. trying to limit what people can sell them for is the most ridiculous thing i ever heard. this is america.

 

[ToyStory Fan]

My BIL and I have been discussing this since I bought last year and he bought this year. We have alot of family/friends that would go to WDW, but either not stay on property, or not buy DVC themselves. This gives us an opportunity to save them some money, but it doesn't mean we have to pass our entire savings on to them either. We bear all the risk, we laid out the cash and by letting them "rent" our points...we are giving up our ability to go without either buying more points, or continually borrowing from the next year. I'm thinking somewhere in the $15 range is still reasonable, and benefits both the DVC owner and the friend or family member with a good deal of savings.

 

[d-r]

Right now anybody can go to mousesavers.com and get a code for rooms at the wilderness lodge for a rate of $109 or $119 a night. With 12% tax, that is 133.28 a night. A studio at wlv in January is 12 points a night during the week, 22 on a weekend. At $10 per point, that week night would cost $120 per night, not a very substantial savings of $13.28 over the regular hotel room. Of course that studio has a minifridge and microwave and the regular hotel room doesn't, but the regular hotel room also has daily maid service, and a variety of room configerations, such as a king bed, or queen with bunk beds, rather than the queen with love seat that the studio has. Also, for the extra $13 bucks a night you get to deal directly with CRO instead of trusting some one over the internet.

That comparison really goes out of whack if you want a weekend night on dvc points (22 for a weekend in Jan.), or if you score a $109 rate - (heck, then you could just pay the 10 bucks for the lodge to put a mini-fride in your hotel room, couldn't you). That $119 rate is available to everyone, $109 for AP or Fl. resident. The 12 points a night is dvc for January, the lowest rate available.

If someone must have a two bedroom or whatever they would be better renting dvc points than booking it through CRO, especially on the weekdays. Also, if you are dead set on staying at old key west, then renting points would make sense - 8 points per week day night at OKW in January, 20 points per weekend. Through CRO, that old key west studio in January is $164. So at least during the week it would make sense for someone to book rent points. Also, boardwalk and beach club rooms cost more through cro than wildernes lodge rooms do, so they make a little more sense to rent than wilderness lodge does - but if ou are looking for that much of a bargain, why not just stay at wilderness lodge or AKL in the first place. You would save money to rent at beach club or bw than if you went through CRO, but you have to save money to make it worth the risk of renting to do so in the first place. Even at bw and bc, you can get a room for $169 or $179 - the weekend points for a studio in Jan. are 22/night for a studio - so why would anyone pay $220 a night to rent points? The weekend points are not worth it at ANY Of the dvc resorts at $10/point.

For a stay at a studio, especially on the weekend, I'm not sure how anyone can argue that $10 a point is a bargain, frankly.

DR

 

[Dean]

Originally posted by d-r
For a stay at a studio, especially on the weekend, I'm not sure how anyone can argue that $10 a point is a bargain, frankly.

DR

Actually to stay only or mostly weekends at a DVC resort is not a good deal for points or points rentals. If one is staying for a while, you just average it out in your mind and don't worry about it or move for the weekend to wherever fits your needs. Points rentals will never be a bargain for mostly weekends.

 

[golfnut1264]

as a whole to rent points for a week is still a good deal for someone at $12 a point..in august it would cost $2300 for a week at the bcv or bwv..that would cost 123 points for a week at $12 a point $1476..that is over a 35% savings..where else can you find that type of savings...if you take out the weekends and only stay 5 nights for 65 points at $12 a point would be $780..disney would charge $1600..that is a 50% savings..at $8 a point would be a 65% savings..i dont think we need to give a 65% savings..
by selling my points for $12 or sometimes even a little more i am letting someone stay at a deluxe resort for moderate resort prices..my cost per point over the next 40 years about $7 a point when you figure in interest and dues and $80 a point. I am willing to save somone between 35-50% for a nice vaction that they probably otherwise could not afford..but i am not willing to give them away..

 

[Dean]

I meant to say earlier and forgot. Taking the cheapest option available for a short period of time is not a fair comparison. It may be that at any one point in time one can find a better deal from CRO by using discounts available. That's true at almost any hotel. When I go to conventions I always check to see if there are better deals than the convention contract price, sometimes yes and other times no.

 

[jade1]

I beleive the weekends do sit empty like Rich said. We are guilty of that. But there are other areas of FL we like to visit, so it may as well be on the weekend. Evening the points would be bad if locals would fill up the weekends like Rich was saying. WDW needs to give an incentive to fill these rooms-or they will just continue to sit empty. FOTL at the parks on the weekends for staying on property using DVC points may be an option. That would bring in $200 a day from us in food and beverages and another $300 in passes that we now give to Universal. I'm just not sure what this would do to rental points or prices. Probably would go up because they would be more desirable and weekends would be used more also.

 

[imgoingtodisney]

at $10 per point that makes our 8night stay at Port Orleans/French Quarter $1860!! Thats more than $200 per night! I dont want to think about it being higher than that!
See why Im upset that the only place DVC could get us in when our 11/30 cruise was cancelled was PO/FQ?

 

[Dean]

Originally posted by imgoingtodisney
at $10 per point that makes our 8night stay at Port Orleans/French Quarter $1860!! Thats more than $200 per night! I dont want to think about it being higher than that!
See why Im upset that the only place DVC could get us in when our 11/30 cruise was cancelled was PO/FQ?

I'm not quite sure I understand. I know the cruise was cancelled and I assume you called DVC and accepted a DC exchange using those points which is never going to be a good value financially. DVC doesn't value them at $10 pp, they figure more like $5 per point. They still have to pay the contract price for the moderates and in this situation any supplement to you would have come out of our dues as I'm sure DCL wouldn't have covered it. My guess is that all of this came out of dues anyway and nothing from DCL other than the agreement for half price for next time.

 

[imgoingtodisney]

the 186 pts came out of what we had - 170 was banked and then 16pts from this year. (dcl didnt cover any of it.) I dont see how anything came out of dues.
yes we contacted dvc and had to go through an exchange because all the dvc resorts were fully booked. If I had planned a WDW vaca it would have been 11months ago, not just 22hrs

 

[RobDoc]

at $10 per point that makes our 8night stay at Port Orleans/French Quarter $1860!!

If you had rented out the same number of points at $10 per point- YOU would have had that much to pay for the stay you chose at PO/FQ. You could have used the rest for tickets and meals.

As Dean states, DVC actually values the points at $5 or less and has to pay the non-DVC resort the rate they agreed on in negotiation (probably NOT $1860).