First Time Resale Buyer

TabulaRasa

Earning My Ears
Joined
Feb 5, 2014
I am a DVC owner (AKV), and I'm looking to add on some points at BCV. I'm trying to navigate the process of buying through resale (purchased direct before), and have a pretty solid understanding about the important items including use year pros and cons, financing, ROFR, etc.

I am looking for some tips on how to make an appropriate offer on a contract. If I'm looking for a BCV contract between 175 - 200 points, what would be a (rough) average going rate? How do people calculate what would be a good price per point to offer?
 
I'm curious about this as well. One can survey the various resale websites and see what's available, but that can be misleading (cheap contracts will go quickly and be removed, overpriced contracts will hang around for a long time). There's the ROFR thread, but that can be a little difficult to read, and only reflects the sales/purchases people choose to report, which may or may not be statistically valid.

Sellers can at least ask for an asking price recommendation if they list with one of the major online listing websites, as one can ask a real estate agent to recommend a listing price, but there are some issues here as well.

Unfortunately it's a game between buyers and sellers, with sellers inflating their asking price to give them room to negotiate.
 
Last edited:
https://www.fidelityresales.com/disney-timeshares is a decent place to go to to get a sense for what the low end of the resale market might look like. A lot of those contracts will be grabbed as soon as the office opens. Few have the opportunity for negotiation there.

https://www.dvcresalemarket.com/listings/ can give you a sense for the higher end of the market. They also have a selling calculator which gives owners a recommendation for what to list at based on points on the contract. These numbers are seller friendly (“Look how much you can get selling with us!”), and should be looked at more as a starting place for sellers to negotiate from. Few buy there without some back and forth.

The ROFR thread, as Andycat mentions is another resource. There will always be outliers for passed offers (looks at @Mumof4mice and @Jerry5788), but looking at the taken contracts could give you some sense for Disney’s general buy back point, or at least how that buy back is trending.

Once you are more informed of market conditions, look at the point charts for where you want to stay and figure out the number of points you will need to do that. And build in a cushion for points you’ll need to occasionally upgrade to the next room category.

At this point you’ll have a price per point, and the points you’ll need. Devise a range on that total price calculation and go shopping.
 


I would suggest asking your broker what similar listings have sold for and passed ROFR. Broker is more than happy to share this information.
 
I am looking for some tips on how to make an appropriate offer on a contract. If I'm looking for a BCV contract between 175 - 200 points
Really evaluate the points status of the contracts you are interested in. This can weigh heavily between getting a good deal or a great deal. The ROFR thread for the past year should be a good reference of what you can start offering. Having a couple UY to pick from would be a good idea as this would help increase the number of contracts you can choose from. You can always offer what you feel is reasonable for the contract (lower than asking price) and the seller can either accept, counter or refuse the offer. I do agree that fidelity tends to have lower priced or more aggressively priced contracts, so looking at what they are at for price per point could be helpful too. You just never really know the situation of the seller -- they could be just putting the contract out there and are in no rush to sell or it could be the extreme that someone is in financial distress and their DVC is a quick way to get cash.
 


Just curious as to the basis for classifying Fidelity as low end and DVCRM as high end? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just wondering where or how that opinion was formed?

DVC Resale Market almost always has the highest prices out there, and have pushed the prices higher over the last three years that I have been watching DVC resales. Fidelity almost always has the lowest price advertised, usually about 6 months behind on their pricing compared to most brokers.
 
Just curious as to the basis for classifying Fidelity as low end and DVCRM as high end? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just wondering where or how that opinion was formed?
For a period of time, Fidelity was the broker DVCMC would send their members to when there was a distressed contract. Over time, Fidelity has made moving inventory a priority. At one point, I was looking to sell a contract and all my conversations I had with Bonnie have been around setting a "realistic" price the contract. Invariably, that "realistic" price was below what one would consider "market value." It's not uncommon for a Fidelity listing to go up at midnight and be gone within 5 minutes of the office opening in the morning. Some have accused them of intentionally leaving up contracts after they're no longer available. How Fidelity can make this work is they charge an $195 admin fee to the buyer (normally buyer pays nothing to the broker), this admin fee offsets the lower price (read: lower commission) a seller is asking by offloading that expense to the buyer.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, DVCRM has an online calculator that estimates the value of a seller's contract value. The projected values would make any seller swoon. I get the sense that DVCRM has adopted the market position of primarily bringing in as many contracts as they can. There is no question they move volume, but their prices seem much more seller-centric than buyer-centric. Again, looking at average market prices, DVCRM does tend to be north of average. Their contracts also tend to sit for longer.

That, at least, has been my observation. Making no judgements on the value or services of either Fidelity or DVCRM, only that their prices sit south and north (respectively) of average... consistently.
 
... discussion of Fidelity / DVCRM ...

So a seller might be well advised to ask each for a recommended listing price to establish a range? I assume the commissions are similar?

Getting back to the OP's question ...
For a buyer, do either (or does any) firm have a mechanism to put in a kind of open offer, e.g. "I want X points at Y resort for Z price - let me know if anything like that comes in?" It sounds like the answer at least for Fidelity would be no, if they are uploading listings overnight and not taking offers until office opening. I suppose this would functionally create something that is eBay-esque (I know, ewww ...).

With all the resorts and buyers and sellers, it just seems so inefficient in this day and age.
 
We just become dvc member as of Jan 2018 for CCV direct purchase with Aug UY 150pts. Unexpected family situation came along. Now we are planing on purchasing additional points probably bt 100-150 at maybe SSR or if anyone can recommend one. Family dynamics: DH, myself, DS/DD 4 yrs old and another boy on the way. Most of our travel for the next 15 years will probably be school breaks such as March-April, mid June, mid aug, thanksgiving and a week prior to Xmas. Ideally I think we should use 2 different UY but which month would be the best choice since we already have AUG UY. Should we go with Feb, March or April UY or even Dec? Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance.
 
We just become dvc member as of Jan 2018 for CCV direct purchase with Aug UY 150pts. Unexpected family situation came along. Now we are planing on purchasing additional points probably bt 100-150 at maybe SSR or if anyone can recommend one. Family dynamics: DH, myself, DS/DD 4 yrs old and another boy on the way. Most of our travel for the next 15 years will probably be school breaks such as March-April, mid June, mid aug, thanksgiving and a week prior to Xmas. Ideally I think we should use 2 different UY but which month would be the best choice since we already have AUG UY. Should we go with Feb, March or April UY or even Dec? Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance.

You might want to create a new post to get more responses, but here goes!

1. Congratulations (on both DVC and the new baby to be)! Am I reading your post that you have DS/DD twins? So if staying at CCV you are locked into 2-br or larger once the baby is out of a crib (3 years), right?

2. If so - 3 years from now, do you plan on using your CCV points for 2br at CCV?
2a. If so, do you have enough points, with banking and borrowing, to do that now? (this may relate to #3)

3. why do you think you'd use different UY? Because of the different times you'd likely go? Depending on when you plan to use your CCV points, if you'd want to use a different UY for other times of travel, Feb UY has you covered, but any of the other UY would do fine as well. BUT - if you plan on pooling your points to use at the 7mo mark (whether that's advisable given your current home resort), it would be much easier to stay with the same UY.

4. Home resort - why SSR? if it has to do with pooling points at 7mo, I'd suggest you also look at BLT or AKV given your family demographics. Those are the next most affordable home resorts, and the difference may be small if you can get a good contract. The plus would be that you have a more desirable home resort to book at 11 months as a backup/split stay, and both have 1br that sleep 5 with existing bedding (making your points go farther) AND both have a lower points cost category (value at AKV and standard at BLT that almost always require home resort booking at 11 mo) - all of those put together may in fact make your points go farther, and walking distance to MK is GREAT when you are in the stroller age. (note, I may be biased as we own at BLT).
 
An August use year for someone who travels in the summer is less than ideal. For your second contract, you should probably target February or March if you aren't going to buy at CCV, since that would be just prior to your mid-March trips. I assume you're considering this because you'll be "alternating" resorts. One year you'll go to CCV, which through banking will give you 300 points. The next year you'll go to your other resort, which (assuming you buy 150 there) will give you 300 points there. If you aren't alternating, and instead hoping to combine your points at 7 months, you should greatly simplify your life and buy more August use year.

With a newborn, you might want to target BLT as your next resort, if only to give yourself the advantage for the next few years of easy walking access to MK. The ability to have a 10 minute walk from the park to the room for afternoon naps is advantageous, as is getting home after the fireworks when they're in the pre-teen stage and tired at the end of the night.
 
You might want to create a new post to get more responses, but here goes!

1. Congratulations (on both DVC and the new baby to be)! Am I reading your post that you have DS/DD twins? So if staying at CCV you are locked into 2-br or larger once the baby is out of a crib (3 years), right?

- thank you. Yes twins and we will need the 2Br or larger once baby is out of crib.


2. If so - 3 years from now, do you plan on using your CCV points for 2br at
2a. If so, do you have enough points, with banking and borrowing, to do that now? (this may relate to #3)

- yes we would still like to use CCV. Might not be for every trip. But I believed w banking and borrowing it should be durable.

3. why do you think you'd use different UY? Because of the different times you'd likely go? Depending on when you plan to use your CCV points, if you'd want to use a different UY for other times of travel, Feb UY has you covered, but any of the other UY would do fine as well. BUT - if you plan on pooling your points to use at the 7mo mark (whether that's advisable given your current home resort), it would be much easier to stay with the same UY.

- different UY to cover mid spring-Maybe summer trips. As we jumped on the initial contract didn’t do enough research on the UY part and given that the twins are now in school they are against taking kids out of school for vacations.

4. Home resort - why SSR? if it has to do with pooling points at 7mo, I'd suggest you also look at BLT or AKV given your family demographics. Those are the next most affordable home resorts, and the difference may be small if you can get a good contract. The plus would be that you have a more desirable home resort to book at 11 months as a backup/split stay, and both have 1br that sleep 5 with existing bedding (making your points go farther) AND both have a lower points cost category (value at AKV and standard at BLT that almost always require home resort booking at 11 mo) - all of those put together may in fact make your points go farther, and walking distance to MK is GREAT when you are in the stroller age. (note, I may be biased as we own at BLT).

- We were thinking SSR because it doesn’t seem to feel too city and busy like and is a ferry ride to Disney Springs. But you are right about BLT as it is super closed to MK and am sure we will spend many more years there vs other parks. AKV just feel too far out from everything to me. But given the values we shall put it on our list too.

Thank you for your help.
 
An August use year for someone who travels in the summer is less than ideal. For your second contract, you should probably target February or March if you aren't going to buy at CCV, since that would be just prior to your mid-March trips. I assume you're considering this because you'll be "alternating" resorts. One year you'll go to CCV, which through banking will give you 300 points. The next year you'll go to your other resort, which (assuming you buy 150 there) will give you 300 points there. If you aren't alternating, and instead hoping to combine your points at 7 months, you should greatly simplify your life and buy more August use year.

With a newborn, you might want to target BLT as your next resort, if only to give yourself the advantage for the next few years of easy walking access to MK. The ability to have a 10 minute walk from the park to the room for afternoon naps is advantageous, as is getting home after the fireworks when they're in the pre-teen stage and tired at the end of the night.

Yes we would eventually bank and alternate resorts. Most likely we will get another resort w 150pt. Unless if we end up with extended family members going with us then we will need to borrow and combine pts.

Main reason for two UY is because of mid-spring to summer travels for the next 15 years at least. This way I think with Aug UY and February/March UY we can almost cover potentially most school holidays. Not that we will be going on all breaks but just want to have it cover.

BLT is sounding very good choice by now for the approximate distance to MK. Last thanksgiving we had so much trouble with the stroller n the twins on the shuttle at end of the day especially when 1 of the kid fall asleep on the ride home then it was dealing w carrying the kid plus the folded stroller.

Thank you for your help.
 
Main reason for two UY is because of mid-spring to summer travels for the next 15 years at least. This way I think with Aug UY and February/March UY we can almost cover potentially most school holidays. Not that we will be going on all breaks but just want to have it cover.

BLT is sounding very good choice by now for the approximate distance to MK. Last thanksgiving we had so much trouble with the stroller n the twins on the shuttle at end of the day especially when 1 of the kid fall asleep on the ride home then it was dealing w carrying the kid plus the folded stroller.

This is sort of our situation, but with 2 kids instead of 3. But, we are looking at taking an elderly grandparent along more often, which was not something we had planned for when we first bought in (so also needing points for a 2br at least half the time, in the near future). Ourolder kid is also in school and we are taking her out for 1.5 days next week. I expect this will happen less as she gets older, and especially once our 2yo is in school too. We have found that the weather in February and April is so much better than the times we used to go (summer break), without too much increase in crowds. We originally bought in reverse order from you: Feb UY at BLT to cover Feb or April school breaks and/or summer break, but then also added on a different home resort with August UY to cover fall/winter holidays.
 
This is sort of our situation, but with 2 kids instead of 3. But, we are looking at taking an elderly grandparent along more often, which was not something we had planned for when we first bought in (so also needing points for a 2br at least half the time, in the near future). Ourolder kid is also in school and we are taking her out for 1.5 days next week. I expect this will happen less as she gets older, and especially once our 2yo is in school too. We have found that the weather in February and April is so much better than the times we used to go (summer break), without too much increase in crowds. We originally bought in reverse order from you: Feb UY at BLT to cover Feb or April school breaks and/or summer break, but then also added on a different home resort with August UY to cover fall/winter holidays.

Thank you for input. BLT is what we will be look for in the near future for our 2nd contract w February/March UY now.
 
Thank you for input. BLT is what we will be look for in the near future for our 2nd contract w February/March UY now.
LOL We may be competing - we will probably be looking to add on in the next few months, Feb UY.
 
Last thanksgiving we had so much trouble with the stroller n the twins on the shuttle at end of the day especially when 1 of the kid fall asleep on the ride home then it was dealing w carrying the kid plus the folded stroller.


Heh, we have triplets (they are 10 now) and have been DVC owners since 2012. Those first few trips folding up a double stroller and a single and trying to jam everything on the parking lot trams were certainly fun.
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!









Top