Disney Dad ADL
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2015
If you're not in a hurry, ultimately you should just decide how much you think a contract is worth and make an offer, independent of the asking price. You never know what the seller will accept. If you think a contract is worth $80 pp and someone is listing at $100 pp, I would offer $80 pp or a few bucks under. If they are listing at $85 pp, I would probably still offer $80 pp. If the listing price is unreasonably high, I don't really consider it "lowballing" to make a low offer. A couple other considerations:
How to decide what a contract is worth? The thing to remember is that the listing prices don't necessarily determine the market value of a contract. In the end, it's what contracts are SELLING for that's important. It's really useful to look at the various DVC sites and see the contracts that are "sold" or "sale pending" and note the prices. And keep in mind that the final negotiated price is often lower than what is actually listed there. Also, look at a DVC search engine like www.**********.com and sort the contracts by price per point. It doesn't include Fidelity unfortunately, but includes some of the other major DVC resales companies. You'll notice there's a certain price floor that most listings will congregate, and occasionally you'll see some contracts drift below that price. At some price point, you'll see contracts get purchased relatively quickly. You know they were purchased because they disappear from the list, or sometimes you have to click on the listing and go back to where they have the grid of listings. For some reason, they often don't note that a sale is pending anywhere on the actual listing, you have to go to the page where the have all the listings displayed.
For example, check www.**********.com, go to Grand Californian listings. There are 36 or so. You'll see that the "average" listing is probably $145 pp, but again that doesn't really matter. Unless you really need a specific contract, I wouldn't pay $145 pp. What matters is that there's a bunch of contracts at $139-$140 pp, but very few below that. I've been watching VGC long enough to know that once the prices get below that point, they start moving a bit faster. There's one currently on there that is $132 pp with all 2016 points. I suspect that one will be gone soon if it isn't already, so I wouldn't be trying to be throwing out low offers on that one because someone else will probably take it near asking.
For VGC, it's easier to keep track of the specific contracts because there are so few of them, but it's probably a lot more complicated with something like SSR. If you're really hardcore about it, you would probably have to track them on a spreadsheet or something, unless you have a really good memory.
A couple other things to keep in mind:
- smaller contracts will be more expensive pp than larger contracts
- larger contracts (> 300 points) tend to move slowly and tend to sell for less, so you can probably be more aggressive with your offers
- the older the listing, the more the seller will be willing to negotiate
- certain Use Years may go for more than others. For example, for VGC, by my observations June UY is the most common one and tends to be cheaper. Uncommon UY might be harder to get a good deal, so you may need to pay more if you really want a specific UY.
- "loaded" contracts tend to be good deals if you can use the points (or rent them out)
- closing costs and who pays annual dues are also negotiable. Paying for annual dues doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's worth $5-6 per point.
Good luck!
I had a deal that didn't go though ( not because of me) and they were very unresponsive and honestly, didn't seem to know what they were doing. A while back when I contacted Disney about selling my contracts, they said that they were "no longer endorsing Fidelity, or anyone else".
