2019 Restrictions Not Worth Considering When Buying Resale

ziravan

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If the rumored change happens that Riviera resale owners will be restricted to only booking at Riviera, then within 10 years, only Riviera owners will ever be able to book there. (DVC did not officially announce that although there are reports of CM saying that.)

If that restriction comes to pass, all current owners will all defacto have the current restrictions apply to our contracts; Riviera direct owners will not. That being the case, the new restrictions are not worth your consideration when buying resale.

Let me explain:

Let’s imagine 6 million points are sold at 100 points per contract: 60,000 Riviera owners at sellout. If the average owner holds for 10 years before selling, then it’s not unreasonable to estimate that there will be 30,000 Riviera resale buyers (half of all owners) by year 10, or roughly in 2030.

30,000 resale buyers must book before the 7 month window or they’ll have no guarantee of the ability to book at all. 7 months is no longer a “window”, it’s a deadline.

If it’s a defacto deadline for resale buyers, it will also become a deadline for all Riviera owners wanting to book at their home - or risk not having access to any decent dates/lengths of stay. Anything leftover at 7 months is just a minor cleanup operation with resale buyers scrambling to pick up whatever pieces are left.

The practical effect is that none of us will have a realistic shot at using outside points at Riviera. But 30,000 owners at Riviera will have the right to book our resorts at 7 months.

If you think the pressure to book before the 7 month window is a problem now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

But that works both ways, right? If someone from Riviera can book out, then we can book in? Not in an overwhelmingly unbalanced system. Say 40% of Riviera owners book outside their resort in a given year; that’s not 40% of the total, that’s 20% of the total (40% of the remaining direct owners).

So Riviera is 80% booked at the 7 month window with 12,000 owners looking elsewhere to book, with a choice of 14 resorts. And 14 resorts having a choice of the leftovers that creates.

There are about 3 million current DVC owners, if my memory serves.

Let’s say Riviera has 300 rooms and at the 7 month window, 80% of them are booked: 60 rooms available - (and if the same 40% of other resort owners are looking at 7 months elsewhere as we credited to Riviera) that would means 1,200,000 potential DVC owners looking to book those 60 rooms. Even if we assume that half of all currently grandfathered owners will be resale owners in 10 years as well - that’s still 600,000 owners seeking those 60 rooms: Odds of booking a Riviera room? 0.0001or 1/100th of 1 percent chance of success.

Practically non-existent and that’s without considering that even those dates that were available would be heavily skewed to non-popular DVC weeks. And this will just get worse as time goes on.

Conversely, 12,000 Riviera owners will have their pick across 15 resorts at 7 months.

As each new resort comes online, the problem repeats: practically non-existent to book into the resort with a not small number of their owners picking over the entire 15, 16, 17 etc resort inventory.

If this is the policy as implemented, then DVC has already gamed out that all current owners will be essentially iced out of booking into Riviera anyway. Since that will be the practical effect of the new policy at Riviera, why not make it a selling point now and make that an express restriction for resale buyers?

I’m not sure these restriction will mean much. Sure, new resale buyers can’t book into Riviera, but they’ll be in good company; none of us will either.

What’s it worth to have a 1/100th of 1 percent chance of booking a Riviera room in 10 years? That’s what you have to ask yourself when considering if the 2019 restrictions matter to you.
 
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You’re assuming DVC doesn’t ROFR the Riviera contracts because few will want them & they’ll be dirt cheap.
 
You’re assuming DVC doesn’t ROFR the Riviera contracts because few will want them & they’ll be dirt cheap.
Yes, I’m assuming that won’t be the case.

First, buy where you want to stay will be much more than a suggestion at Riviera.

Second, in 10 years, DVC will have sold out Riviera, Reflections, and be finishing selling out the EPCOT front door resort with the 4th new resort in DVC2 getting ready to come online. They won’t be wanting to sell Riviera points anymore than they want to sell VGF and Poly now. Most likely, they’ll jack the price up to get buyers to consider the next new thing then, just like they do now.
 
A variable that will greatly affect the trade-out pressure is what types of units, and at what point costs, are going to be offered at Riviera. If their studios are all going for 35 points, or they offer 90% 1BRs, then yes, direct owners will want to trade out as quickly as possible and others will not want to trade in. Or if there is some points beast like a 12 BR Grand Villa that goes for 10k points a night, which few will actually use, but which is used to sell extra points at the resort (a similar problem as the bungalows and cabins, though those do get booked, at least most of the time.)
As long as everything is priced fairly, though, it shouldn't affect things as greatly as you are claiming. Whether it is a ton or a few trading in and out, as long as the trade is more or less equal, it will just make the most popular resorts a little harder to get into, but less so than if the new resale restrictions were not put into place.
 


The main problem is that the chief feature of the 7 month window is being defeated for resale buyers if they’re being restricted to their home resorts.

The 7 month window still matters but not as a “window” to a new booking opportunity, but as a deadline.

If those resale owners are locked in, they are also locking everybody else out. It becomes an unleveled playing field, with Riviera direct owners having free run of the entire system, but Riviera resale owners preventing everbody else from having an equal shot at Riviera.

It would seem that DVC intends this. In each new resort, the only real way to get in is to own there; but direct owners can get out.

I think that will keep resales up to at least the intrinsic value of the resort. Buy where you want to stay, indeed.
 
The main problem is that the chief feature of the 7 month window is being defeated for resale buyers if they’re being restricted to their home resorts.

The 7 month window still matters but not as a “window” to a new booking opportunity, but as a deadline.

If those resale owners are locked in, they are also locking everybody else out. It becomes an unleveled playing field, with Riviera direct owners having free run of the entire system, but Riviera resale owners preventing everbody else from having an equal shot at Riviera.

It would seem that DVC intends this. In each new resort, the only real way to get in is to own there; but direct owners can get out.

I think that will keep resales up to at least the intrinsic value of the resort. Buy where you want to stay, indeed.

Florida-Based Aulani buyers have a much bigger impact on the overall system. If I am looking to stay on WDW property, I first book my home resort, then switch out when I find something else that I like. Maybe I am just a big planner, but I always try to book my home resort before 7 months anyway, just out of caution.

For every one Riviera buyer that trades out to a new resort at 7 months, that opens up one spot at that resort for somebody else to trade in. As long as the exchange of studio to studio, 1BR to 1BR, etc, is about equal, it should not affect the system at the other 14 resorts. The more resale owners that own at Riviera, the less rooms there will be for owners of other resorts, but also less people trading out. The more direct owners trading out, the more rooms there will be to trade into. That's why I mentioned a points monster room. If you have direct owners owning part of that, and then trading out, then yes, it will strain the whole system because nobody wants to spend their points on something like that.
 
Florida-Based Aulani buyers have a much bigger impact on the overall system. If I am looking to stay on WDW property, I first book my home resort, then switch out when I find something else that I like. Maybe I am just a big planner, but I always try to book my home resort before 7 months anyway, just out of caution.

For every one Riviera buyer that trades out to a new resort at 7 months, that opens up one spot at that resort for somebody else to trade in. As long as the exchange of studio to studio, 1BR to 1BR, etc, is about equal, it should not affect the system at the other 14 resorts. The more resale owners that own at Riviera, the less rooms there will be for owners of other resorts, but also less people trading out. The more direct owners trading out, the more rooms there will be to trade into. That's why I mentioned a points monster room. If you have direct owners owning part of that, and then trading out, then yes, it will strain the whole system because nobody wants to spend their points on something like that.
Right, but for every room that opens at the 7 month window, Riviera resale owners will be stalking those rooms like crazy.

If you’re a BLT owner, booking at Riviera if you can get it would be a neat option. If you’re a Riviera resale owner whose points are expiring in 7 months, booking is a necessity, either for personal use or to get rental value out of the points.

That means they’ll jam both the waitlist and the stalking. And with every passing year, the percentage of owners who can book out will decrease.

With every passing year, the resort becomes ever more landlocked. That said, the behavior of the resale buyers will affect the behavior of the direct buyers. Everybody will book early and most people will hold their options.

The nature of landlocking resale owners is to make owning there a requirement to stay there. Only if you own direct, you get the best of both worlds.
 
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Right, but for every room that opens at the 7 month window, Riviera resale owners will be stalking those rooms like crazy.

If you’re a BLT owner, booking at Riviera if you can get it would be a neat option. If you’re a Riviera resale owner whose points are expiring in 7 months, booking is a necessity.

That means they’ll jam both the waitlist and the stalking. And with every passing year, the percentage of owners who can book out will decrease.

With every passing year, the resort becomes ever more landlocked.

Yes, I agree that it will probably be a "one and done" resort for me. This is just as much because of the rules change as it is that the resort looks "just ok" to me, and I bet the room point costs will be high, though. We will have to see once it opens.

The bigger impact will be in 10 years, once enough Magical 14 resale buyers cannot buy into Riviera, and then a bunch if Riviera direct owners trade out at 7 months. There may be some resale owners of other resorts finding that they have nowhere to stay during popular times. We will have to see as time goes on, though, as this will take a few years to work itself out. First Riviera needs to sell out, mostly direct, then there needs to be enough resale at the other resorts to lock out a large enough portion of points.
 
Really my point is that it’s going to be so difficult to book there at 7 months that it might not be such a “perk” to have that option anyway.

Just like the 2011 restrictions were mostly poor uses of points anyway, I’m thinking these new restrictions don’t amount to much.

I think DVC is planning on the chief selling point of Riviera to be that it’s the ONLY way to realistically stay there.
 
Certainly, just like every new resort where there are more rooms than owners, opportunities will exist to stay there in the beginning.

And that’s a benefit, too.

Long term though, as each resort moves past sellout, they’ll increasingly be landlocked as time goes on.

But, they’ll be other new resorts where that benefit will be useful. There’s always a resort for sale.

If you want to try Riviera, I’d do so while it’s still selling.
 
I agree that in the short term (the next 15 years), these restrictions are not too significant. If you want to stay at Riviera frequently, buy there. If you want to just check it out but are locked out, rent points to stay there. The more resorts DVC builds, and the more they tinker with point charts, the more important it is to buy where you would be happy to stay, as they will continue to strain the system as a whole.

After 2042 is when the resale restrictions will get interesting, but a lot can change before then.
 
First, I appreciate the effort it took to break that down. I was never a math wiz or a puzzle expert so I wont try to out think the resources Disney has access to. I do know this....
- I expect Riviera to be amazing, awesome, stunning, elaborate, charming, ect (I think Disney knows this, that's why we are faced with this issue)
- The contracts I own and the places I can stay make my family happy
- I can book those places @ 11 months (VGF, PLY, BWV) without any issue (besides walkers) Riviera ppl cant bump me out
- If I cant get into Riviera, and really want to, I guess I will have to buy direct
- So for the cost of the purchase Direct, I never have to worry about any of those issues (just the issue that I cant resell it for much)
- I kind of like idea because it takes away the customer that buys cheap and then tries to stay at the better resorts (currently SSR army, who never stay there)
- Riviera wont "have their pick" across 15 resorts because they will be just like every1 else at 7 months
- Looks like Disney is protecting their consumer because they wont let a 1998 purchase of SSR or OKW @ $40 a point tie up a brand new $250 a pt resort

When I bought my resale, Riviera was'nt an option. So, going forward I will just factor it out. If I want to include it in the family (like a newborn child) then I will have to make adjustments, give it a bedroom, upgrade some appliances, spend some money (kind of like funding the newborn's college acct). Nothing in life is ever free.
 
There is also an assumption here that resale Riviera purchasers will not be offered the “chance” to upgrade to “real member” status for a fee...
 
There is also an assumption here that resale Riviera purchasers will not be offered the “chance” to upgrade to “real member” status for a fee...
All the more reason not to worry about buying resale.

If DVC allows members to “qualify” resale points later, that makes buying resale today (after the 1/19/19 restrictions) an even better deal.
 
First, I appreciate the effort it took to break that down. I was never a math wiz or a puzzle expert so I wont try to out think the resources Disney has access to. I do know this....
- I expect Riviera to be amazing, awesome, stunning, elaborate, charming, ect (I think Disney knows this, that's why we are faced with this issue)
- The contracts I own and the places I can stay make my family happy
- I can book those places @ 11 months (VGF, PLY, BWV) without any issue (besides walkers) Riviera ppl cant bump me out
- If I cant get into Riviera, and really want to, I guess I will have to buy direct
- So for the cost of the purchase Direct, I never have to worry about any of those issues (just the issue that I cant resell it for much)
- I kind of like idea because it takes away the customer that buys cheap and then tries to stay at the better resorts (currently SSR army, who never stay there)
- Riviera wont "have their pick" across 15 resorts because they will be just like every1 else at 7 months
- Looks like Disney is protecting their consumer because they wont let a 1998 purchase of SSR or OKW @ $40 a point tie up a brand new $250 a pt resort

When I bought my resale, Riviera was'nt an option. So, going forward I will just factor it out. If I want to include it in the family (like a newborn child) then I will have to make adjustments, give it a bedroom, upgrade some appliances, spend some money (kind of like funding the newborn's college acct). Nothing in life is ever free.

SSR opened in 2004 @ $95 pp. Maybe a better reference would be the recession pricing of SSR resales. Not sure if they got all the way down to $40 pp but I get your drift.
 
I think the only issue here is that the premise is based upon a single report that supposedly originated from a CM chat. I still haven't seen anything official from Disney that states Riviera resale will only be able to book at Riviera. Still worth going through the what if exercise though.
 
I think the only issue here is that the premise is based upon a single report that supposedly originated from a CM chat. I still haven't seen anything official from Disney that states Riviera resale will only be able to book at Riviera. Still worth going through the what if exercise though.

I called my guide to check if it was true and he said that yes, it was. It's possible he was lying, but I don't know why he would want to do that.

Also, Nick Cotton posted it on his blog, and as far as I've been able to see, he has a pretty perfect track record of reporting the truth.
 
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