Opinions

How I Made My Decision to Buy Disney Vacation Club (DVC) Resale
By Beth Bowers Christ - April 6, 2003

I have no idea what made me start thinking I might be interested. I guess I had always heard bad things about timeshares and had never bothered to find out that DVC worked differently. Once I became pitifully hooked on Disney Internet sites, however, I started reading about DVC and became interested. When I REALLY started catching the fever, this is how I came to my conclusion, which was a resale offer.

How Many Points

This was the easiest part of the whole decision.  It's just dear husband and I, we can travel pretty much whenever we would like, and we have no desire to go to WDW during the busy seasons, like Christmas, spring break, etc. 150 points would suit us just fine. To make sure, I used a couple of points calculators (my favorite is at the DIS boards and checked out what various vacations would take. We are not two-week people, and a studio would be just fine. I found that even if we wanted a one bedroom at the Villas at Wilderness Lodge (VWL), it was only 110 points during a September Sun-Fri.

When

Use year was a factor that seemed like no big deal to me. Again, since we could travel about any time we wanted every time we went, what did it matter? I didn‚t really understand how that could make a difference until I got down to comparing several resale offererings (see Which).

Where

This part kept me stunned for quite a while. Since it costs the same points to stay anywhere no matter where your home resort is, I really just couldn‚t see why that mattered, even with everyone on every board saying "Buy where you want to stay the most." I would look at the lower prices at Vero Beach (VB) and Hilton Head (HH) and wonder why not just buy there? No one had given me a persuasive argument, especially since we were never planning on traveling in the busy seasons. Yeah, yeah, there's that 4 month window, but again, we weren't wanting a villa at Christmas.

Finally, I started getting down to dollars. That's when I realized that the $4-6 difference I was seeing between HH and VWL was only $600-900 in the total price. Was it worth it to be able to almost guarantee that I could get a room at VWL using the 11 month window? After seeing the difference wasn‚t all that great, I decided it was. And yes, they had higher dues, but somewhere along the way (after finding pictures of most of the rooms) I had really fallen in love with VWL. It suits our personalities much more so than the busy Boardwalk area or the pastel Old Key West.

From Whom

Ok, so I wanted VWL as my first choice. I figured that meant I had to buy resale. However, I had heard about Magical Beginnings and thought I'd give Disney a call anyway.

I talked to Robin Daniels, who was incredibly nice and helpful. To my surprise, I found that Disney was selling VWL, as well as Beach Club Villas (BCV) and even some VB. The BCV and VB were October 2002 use year, and the VWL were currently March 2003, and would be April 2003 as of 4/1. Magical Beginnings would buy back my first year at $15/pt at BCV and VB, and $10/pt at VWL. This means that if I bought BCV or VB, I would have points again as of October, which would mean I would not have to borrow to use points for our already planned November vacation.  But if I bought VWL, I would not have points again until NEXT March or April, and would have to borrow for the November trip.

So, Magical Beginnings was all very well and good, but since we already had our trip planned this year, I didn't really WANT Disney to buy back my first year, because to use points for our trip, I'd immediately have to borrow. Based on our room charges for November, it was better to use our points the first year than have Disney buy them back. So, the Magical Beginnings wasn't a point in Disney's favor, and I could look at resale with that in mind.

Which

I checked out A TimeShare Broker, The Timeshare Store, and DVC by Resale.

A TimeShare Broker had the most choices for what I was seeking. There were four 150-pt listings for VWL, ranging from $69 to $74 a point.

One that first caught my eye was 38 banked points plus 150 from 2002 and 150 more in 2003, use year December. That's when use year finally started making sense to me. Robin at Disney had told me to make sure my use year was BEFORE the time period I normally wanted to travel, and now I understood why. I could buy this one and have my points for my November travel, then have those points in December for next year's travel.

HOWEVER, another listing was a February use year and had 150 points from 2002 and 150 2003 points, for the same price per point.  This meant that I had 150 points to use for my November vacation, plus 150 points for next year. BUT, since my use year was February, I was going to get 150 MORE points before our trip next year.

To me, this meant I had 150 points to rent out and help recoup the cost of the purchase in the first place. Since they were the same price per point, this deal had suddenly become $1200-1500 cheaper.

There was also a listing for 14 pts from 2002 and 150 points in June (use year), but since there were only 14 points from 2002, this put me in the same position as the first listing, even though this listing was only $69/pt. $5/pt difference versus being able to rent at $10/pt still meant I was coming out ahead with the more expensive listing.

Most of the other listings I saw on other sites were heavily borrowed. Even though the price per point was then less expensive (most listed at $69/pt), I just couldn't see taking on a borrowed situation right away. That seems like a very hard sell to me.

So, the offer was for $74/point, plus closing and costs. Closing and costs put me up to $81/point. Hardly a huge discount over Disney's price, but I was going to use my home equity loan at 4.99 percent versus the best I could get at Disney, which was 5.95 percent. BUT, were I able to rent out 145 of my points, that would bring me back down to $71/pt using my own little magical beginning. Then (and this only applies to our situation, since we already had our November reservations and had paid for most of it), I could also subtract the cost of our hotel, which was $1158. This brought our points down to about $64/point, making this resale a very good deal indeed. However, it was only such a great deal because of our exact situation. Someone else may have chosen to use the whole 300 points available, or needed more before next February, etc, etc. But for exactly our circumstances, we ended up with a great deal.