Why Dont you do DVC??

[Smokeyspawn]

I just rent from an owner. The price to rent a week at Saratoga Springs is less than what we'd pay rack for a Value or discounted moderate.

 

[KellyNY]

To determine to buy or not to buy, I belive it is right to compare exact properties. First see what they offer and think if you need it, would you stay there without DVC. Then just price them both, take any week and see how much it is. Subtruct fee you would have to pay every year and then figure out when your initial payment will get even. Do not mix tickets, transportation, food in the equation, those would be same, no matter what. And definitely think if you want to go to Disney every single year and how long you might want to do it. Kids grow up, people get tired of Disney and there is always a chance by the time you will see savings(5-10 years), you may feel like you just had enough.

 

[roomthreeseventeen]

To determine to buy or not to buy, I belive it is right to compare exact properties. First see what they offer and think if you need it, would you stay there without DVC. Then just price them both, take any week and see how much it is. Subtruct fee you would have to pay every year and then figure out when your initial payment will get even. Do not mix tickets, transportation, food in the equation, those would be same, no matter what. And definitely think if you want to go to Disney every single year and how long you might want to do it. Kids grow up, people get tired of Disney and there is always a chance by the time you will see savings(5-10 years), you may feel like you just had enough.

... in which case you would have to try to re-sell, and lose most of your investment.

 

[CR Resort Fan 4 Life]

We never joined DVC because we don't have a big enough family to ever think about staying in 1 Bedroom or 2 Bedroom Villa, the point system for the resorts seems to complicated, we like having Housekeeping service everyday and from what I read on the DVC boards if we don't get our home resort either at 11 or 7 months out then what's the point if they sell out that fast.

 

[poohj80]

we spent 1200 last year at AKL CL for 6 nights w ddp for our christmas trip...we are a family of 5...(one of the kids stayed with my parents in there room so we had 4 people with ddp and AP discount of 40%..we never pay rack rate and never spent over 2000 on a family vacation and we stay deluxe...sometimes we do values and that saves us even more money..we have no airfare because we drive...we spend under 50.00 in fuel.DVC would cost us more then we would ever spend...

And we don't even spend $1000 on our week long vacations in a 1BR unit at BLT for our family.

not everyone needs airfare...we drive (4 hours) and we have fl res seasonal APs ....

Neither do we, but the previous poster included air fare, park passes, and food in her calculations to decide that DVC takes decades to break even. All I'm saying is compare apples to apples - room cost to room cost.

 

[SSR]

... in which case you would have to try to re-sell, and lose most of your investment.

"lose"?
"investment"?

DVC is certainly not an investment. Not sure what you mean by "losing" anything by selling later and getting some of your money back. Especially so if you sell after your "break even" point (usually after 8-12 trips, per the calculators out there).

 

[Corwin]

I'm not wrong.

My perspective is if you have to wait decades to see any savings, that's not savings.

I think you are wrong, because you don't have to wait decades to see savings. I crunched all the numbers for our purchase and predicted that, worst case, I will break even after just 10 years, assuming that we would always able to get a 25% room rate discount if we continued to pay cash, and if we would continue to travel during the cheapest season.

If the room discounts were to go away, we would break even in just 7 years, assuming we were to continue to travel in the cheapest season.

If we were to travel in the most expensive season (like between Christmas and New Year's), with no room discounts (because they never have discounts during that week), we would break even in just 5 years.

I've also kept a running total comparing my DVC payments to date, along with a comparison of the best cash rate available, and I am actually on track to break even in about 6 years. This is because we are staying at WDW during an expensive week (between Christmas and New Year's) this year, and because we've booked a 2-bedroom villa for next year (to accommodate extended family members), which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive.

If we end up getting sick of WDW after 10 years or so (after we break even), we can always sell our membership. If we end up using our membership consistently until it expires in 32 years, we come out over $60K ahead.

I don't see any downside.

There are only two of us. We've always used 40% off Deluxes. No dining plan. 4 or 5 day trips. We have no need to be there for two weeks at a time.

I ran a 25% discount for my spreadsheet as described above because I've never seen a discount greater than 25% at the resort I use for comparison (the WL) for the dates we've traveled.

However, if I run a comparison for the Beach Club resort with a 40% discount, because of the higher cash room rate, I'm still getting a break even for us at 6 years. (This assumes 8 day trips, which is what our points will buy us every year during our normal travel time.)

 

[Amy&Dan]

I see both sides of this coin. We used to be DVC members but sold off our contract after we found out dh would be laid off. Truth be told, we loved it but as time went on, it wasn't as much of perk/necessity/priority (just can't find the right word here lol) as we first thought.

First of all, when we bought, I really thought we'd be taking my mom with us on trips. We loved to travel with my mom and having accomodations that fit us all under one roof was a biggie. Then sad to say my mom passed away so that factor no longer applied.

Second of all, we bought too many points. So our dues were high and we found ourselves in essence travelling too much so we could use up all those points! I so wish I could have sold off about half my contract but it doesnt' work that way. We will possibly buy a smaller contract resale in a few years when we have fully recovered from our layoff and the economy in general. I could have rented points but honestly just didn't want that hassle. I might however rent points from someone else in the near future but then again, things like free dining and my worry about trusting the renter keeps me away from that!

Third, we love the moderates! When we bought DVC we had only stayed value at WDW. Stupid on our part. Right after we bought (before we could use our points) we stayed at POR and in the back of my mind I always knew we had made a mistake. The mods for us anyway, offer the perfect compromise of being affordable but still offering quite a bit in the way of a resort type experience.

In the end, we realized that we had a made a 50 year commitment based on some things that didn't last that 50 years! Namely dh's income, our family dynamics. One thing about it, it was easy enough to sell and now we know a lot more about what we are willing to spend up front on vacations.

DVC offers a way for some (not all) people to vacation. Its like anything else. Its not going to be for everyone. I do have to say, it was very flexible, we never had to make our reservations 11 months out, the resorts we stayed at (SSR, OKW, BWV and Villas at Grand Californian) were all lovely. I never thought I didn't get enough for my money, just that my money was needing to be spent in other areas. Other things like the housekeeping and dues were explained up front so no surprises there. I didn't miss daily housekeeping when I didn't have it, on the other hand I do enjoy now coming back to a clean room every afternoon and evening!

And if our scenario was that we stayed deluxe and went yearly, I would not at all feel DVC was the only thrifty way to go. Discounts exist, and if the resorts I truly wanted to stay at were not DVC resorts, then why buy into something that had me staying at other resorts? I also have to say that for me, DVC is about the one bedrooms and larger. The studios are very nice, but if I bought with the intent of using the studios each trip, well I woudn't buy with that intent! They are nice and all but to me DVC is about the space of a one bedroom or larger.

On the flip side, if I did go every year and stayed in deluxe level accomodations, I'd look very carefully into DVC. Especially now that BLT exists meaning that for every area of WDW, there is now a DVC resort to go with it. I know in years past a lot of people said they didn't want to buy because they like the monorail. So BLT solves that problem.

Not sure if any of that applies to this overal thread but its my experience. I'll also add that I see the same people expressing the same views on this issue in every thread. To me if you go deluxe but don't buy DVC your best argument is that you simply don't want to buy it! The math always seems to indicate that even with deep discounts on cash rooms, it can even out or not even out depending on how many people in your travel party, if you have fly or drive and a lot of other factors that make simple math too simple a way to make the final determination.

 

[Pakey]

I don't think it's a fair comparison to include transportation, park tickets, etc into the equation when determining if DVC is a good value.

However, people should consider the future value of their money. $16,000 today to buy the smallest contract DVC allows for an initial purchase, if invested with a conservative 5% return, would be $19,500 in 5 years. So you can't use $16,000 to determine the breakeven is 5 years.

Timeshares, whether at Disney or someplace else, are never a good financial investment IMO. It may be a good emotional investment, which is why people are so passionate about defending their decision to purchase.

 

[Corwin]

... in which case you would have to try to re-sell, and lose most of your investment.

DVC is not an investment. It's a plan to pre-pay for discounted vacations at WDW.

 

[roomthreeseventeen]

I don't think it's a fair comparison to include transportation, park tickets, etc into the equation when determining if DVC is a good value.

However, people should consider the future value of their money. $16,000 today to buy the smallest contract DVC allows for an initial purchase, if invested with a conservative 5% return, would be $19,500 in 5 years. So you can't use $16,000 to determine the breakeven is 5 years.

Timeshares, whether at Disney or someplace else, are never a good financial investment IMO. It may be a good emotional investment, which is why people are so passionate about defending their decision to purchase.

Exactly.

 

[KellyNY]

... in which case you would have to try to re-sell, and lose most of your investment.

Absolutely, and this is why I am glad I did not do it 10 years ago when we started to go.

 

[SSR]

Nope. Just plain wrong. Aggressively wrong, even.

I always try to book my DVC room and a similar deluxe room, even with discount rates, at cash rates so I can compare my DVC costs to the "going rate" at any given time.

It's not even close, and I haven't had to wait decades to realize savings. After six trips, I've already matched my initial buy-in price. After my next trip, each vacation will basically cost what my maintenance fees are -- which means I'll be paying as little as $70 a night for a Savannah View at AKL.

So, to summarize: You're wrong.

Agreed. Couldnt be wronger.

The calculators out there show break even between 8-12 years depending on the assumptions, properties, fees and anticipated lost opportunity costs from the initial capital used to buy the points.

 

[LaDonna]

This is EXACTLY what DH and I currently do......and we are trying to determine if we are better off continuing to rent or just buying in......

Rent hmmm.........

We just went to an open house this past trip and are still in the process of crunching numbers and trying to figure out if it works for us.....

We could buy in at 12,000 that was for 100 points a year

we would only pay in cash, so we'd have to save up but I didn't realize the buying a resale option


now renting, how does this work? What is the average you'd spend on a deluxe room renting points?


We are a family of 5 who tend to like to go to DIsney every other year sometimes every year, unless I get preggo we wait awhile longer And we normally stay Value, but cannot do that anymore since lil one is turning 3 soon. What was presented to us is for the price we pay for our Moderate everytime we come to Disney in the future we could buy in at BLT and break even in XX amount of years.......honestly I just have headache now after a few days of crunching numbers and I can't see anything clearly anymore

 

[Amy&Dan]

"lose"?
"investment"?

DVC is certainly not an investment. Not sure what you mean by "losing" anything by selling later and getting some of your money back. Especially so if you sell after your "break even" point (usually after 8-12 trips, per the calculators out there).

Exactly. In spite of the fact that our points were worth less per point than when we bought them (due to the economy more than anything) we didn't lose anything. I was at least smart enough not to ever look at DVC as an investment and I am not Einstein on that point becasue I have never seen anyone who is actually a member talk about DVC as investment! Still, I came out fine because we used our points to the full extent. So we got our money's worth, got out of the contract easily enough and while we only had our points for four years, we came out fine. No financial bloodbath, no selling off the kiddies toys at garage sales to compensate us for our lost investment. Had I wanted to wait it out for our points to come back up to our orginal sales price value, I could have rented and made out even better. I just didn't want the hassle.

 

[CR Resort Fan 4 Life]

I don't think it's a fair comparison to include transportation

When it comes to that I agree. Now with the exception of Saratoga Springs and Old Key West which are the only stand alone DVC Resorts, all the other DVC Resorts are connected with the various Deluxe Resorts and guests of both sides use the same transportation options.

 

[Corwin]

...$16,000 today to buy the smallest contract DVC allows for an initial purchase...

You can buy a resale contract, like we did, for considerably less than $16K.

 

[Emmer]

My wife and I looked into it. We were debating on whether to by into the DVC or purchase a travel trailer. In the end we opted for the trailer. We still plan on hitting WDW once or twice a year but now we will be using our trailer and staying in FW.

As posted above there is no wrong or right to DVC. It comes down to what you want to spend and what you expect to get out of your vacation. For us the thought of coming back to our own little home (the trailer) at the end of the day helped sway us into getting a trailer. The other perk for us is that we go camping all the time now.

 

[LaDonna]

However, people should consider the future value of their money. $16,000 today to buy the smallest contract DVC allows for an initial purchase, if invested with a conservative 5% return, would be $19,500 in 5 years. So you can't use $16,000 to determine the breakeven is 5 years.

yeah that was my husband thoughts too

 

[TinkBride]

now renting, how does this work? What is the average you'd spend on a deluxe room renting points?

We are spending approx. $1300.00 on a Lake view studio at BLT during the week of 11/27 - 12/4.

May 2008 - we spent $1500.00 on a Boardwalk View studio for a Saturday - Saturday reservation.

We always rent through the rent/trade board on the Dis under the DVC forums. Generally, you can expect to rent points anywhere from $10.00 - $12.00 per point. Go to a dvc calculator via google and factor in your dates and room type and multiply the points by $12.00 to determine what you could expect to rent for......

Right now it is just the 2 of us - the reason we are re-considering renting vs. buying is for the future when we have kids and will need a larger room than a studio......