DVC must stop rentals.....

[wnielsen1]

Guys and Gals. I know how DVC works. I have been booking DVC vacations for, literally 2+ decades. Things have changed. I believe it's the explosion of the rental market. Feel free to disagree with why things have changed. But don't tell me, "DVC isn't for me"

Cool. But it's not the explosion of the rental market. The rental market doesn't create extra points out of thin air.

 

[Brian Noble]

One more "how does this play out in other timeshares" thought:

Lots of timeshare owners have been talking about decreased availability for years now---and those complaints have only grown in the past year. I've seen these complaints in pretty much every ownership forum: Marriott, Wyndham, WorldMark, and DVC. There was a brief respite in the window between things reopening and people's recovering willingness to travel, but the complaints have come roaring back quickly.

In most of these conversations, attention turns to the renter bogeyman as the reason. But, I think it's easier explained by the fact that everyone, everywhere, is more interested in travel. Many of us got used to better availability during the long slog recovery from the Great Recession, and thought it was "normal"---but instead it was likely a period with higher-than-average breakage/spoilage of unused points/weeks. As I wrote above, I think most of us would be shocked to find out how many timeshare assets were going unused each year during that period.

 

[xdan0920]

Cool. But it's not the explosion of the rental market. The rental market doesn't create extra points out of thin air.

SMH.

I understand that. It does, IMO, shorten the booking window. People are renting their points more and more, which is creating tighter and tighter booking windows.

Right now, with the glut of points in the system, the rental industry is having an outsize effect.

 

[BeachClub2014]

Cool. But it's not the explosion of the rental market. The rental market doesn't create extra points out of thin air.

Agree. At the end of the day, there are only so many points available to use for so many rooms. There is availability somewhere, some time to accommodate the points. It may not be pretty, or what we may prefer for location or timing. But who occupies the space is irrelevant.

 

[wnielsen1]

SMH.

I understand that. It does, IMO, shorten the booking window. People are renting their points more and more, which is creating tighter and tighter booking windows.

Right now, with the glut of points in the system, the rental industry is having an outsize effect.

You shake your head, but your solution is to have other members eat their points so you can book at 6 months. Got it.

 

[kanerf]

I am 6 months out from my trip, and I can't get a full week in a studio anywhere. Disney has to stop the rental market, at least until the backlog of points clears. Members using their own points should have some availability at this point.

Do split stays like I always do. It is not as bad as some say.

 

[Sandisw]

SMH.

I understand that. It does, IMO, shorten the booking window. People are renting their points more and more, which is creating tighter and tighter booking windows.

Right now, with the glut of points in the system, the rental industry is having an outsize effect.

It may cause a tighter booking window, but in the end, the people who booked the room are other owners, not renters.

Frustrating, yes, but what is happening, as booking patterns has changed, is more and more DVC owners are realizing that booking trips during the home resort priority is required now vs. years ago when trips booked closer to check in were possible.

 

[Brian Noble]

The symptoms of a "toxic" rental market are a little bit different: the speculative booking of very high-value rooms and offering them as existing reservations for rent.

Here's an example.

Someone has a Lagoon View Resort Studio at GFV listed for the Sun-Thu of FL Spring Break week next March. It is listed for $33/pt. At that rate, it is discounted not quite 14% off of the 2022 room rate for a GFV LV studio/GF outer building LV. Figure an increase of about 3.5%-ish for that room, and still it is only a discount of 16-17% off of the rack rate of the room.

I am sure someone will end up renting it, but IMO that's not enough of a discount to take on the additional risk of a DVC rental vs. a fully refundable, cash-only booking.

 

[Marionnette]

Does it really make a difference whether an owner uses their points for themselves, a friend, a family member or a renter? The end result is the same. If anything, what we are seeing is more owners acting to ensure that their points don't go to waste than they did in previous years.

 

[Sandisw]

Here's an example.

Someone has a Lagoon View Resort Studio at GFV listed for the Sun-Thu of FL Spring Break week next March. It is listed for $33/pt. At that rate, it is discounted not quite 14% off of the 2022 room rate for a GFV LV studio/GF outer building LV. Figure an increase of about 3.5%-ish for that room, and still it is only a discount of 16-17% off of the rack rate of the room.

I am sure someone will end up renting it, but IMO that's not enough of a discount to take on the additional risk of a DVC rental vs. a fully refundable, cash-only booking.

Some of these examples are for sure not worth it. But, regardless of whether more owners are spec renting, its part of the program to be able to book rooms with your own points for others to use.

 

[Brian Noble]

Does it really make a difference whether an owner uses their points for themselves, a friend, a family member or a renter?

It can, but probably only at the margins.

If I am speculatively booking for a rental, (and I am not a volume business*), I am going to go after the highest value targets I can possibly find, and doing so as early as I possibly can. In DVC, the highest-value targets are studios. One easy-to-find rental outlet has 124 reservations for rent listed starting in 1/1/2023 or later. Of those 124 listings, exactly two are not studios: a 1BR Value at AKV (itself a hard target) and a 2BR at the Grand Californian (ditto).

I suppose it is possible that the membership at large is booking studios over larger villas at rate of 60:1 in the 11-7 month window, but I bet it's not very likely. If not, this is an instance where the rental market is skewing booking patterns even more highly in favor of studios than it would have been if owners were just booking for themselves or their friends and family. And that's because studios have much more room for profit than larger units.

But, regardless of whether more owners are spec renting, its part of the program to be able to book rooms with your own points for others to use

That's certainly true, and as I wrote early in the thread, I don't think there is anything DVC can do to put much of a dent in spec renting because most renters are probably small potatoes, and that's nothing more than a game of whack-a-mole.

However, there is a way to make some headway. Some years back Wyndham updated their definition of "commercial use" to include "use by an owner of public advertising or an online website to seek renters". A month or so ago they sent a cease-and-desist letter to at least one owner who listed one single unit for rent on a Facebook group page using their real name. That owner claims to have rented only that one unit, ever, in many years of ownership. So Wyndham appears to be willing to play whack-a-mole.

DVC has similar, and originally very nebulous, prohibitions against commercial use. In the late '00s they amended it to include a provision that any single Member with 20 or more reservations in a 12-month period would potentially be required to demonstrate they were "not commercial." There is nothing, in principle, preventing Disney from further defining what they might mean by commercial use.

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*: If I am a volume business, I do things a little differently, in that I don't want to tie up a lot of points for a long time, the way spec renting does. But, the 20-reservation-rule probably makes volume businesses hard, and the economics of it doesn't make much sense anyway because the DVC cost basis is so high.

 

[DduzDis]

I am a charter member. So I am quite sure I understand.

I don't think the system was designed to handle the current iteration of the rental market. The fixed week issue is a real problem. I don't know what the solution is, but something should be done.

I am looking at the 2nd week of Nov and there is nothing.

Renters are not the problem. Revenge travel and people taking trips they put off for 2 years is the problem right now. It's happening all over WDW. Apparently someone missed your memo about leaving you a week in Nov oooorrrr you should have booked in December if you knew this was the week you needed.

I don't know what math you are using, but renting doesn't impact availability anymore than owners using the system as it was designed and booking at their home resort at 11 months.

 

[xdan0920]

No, I don't want owners eating points. I also don't want rooms booked up 7 months out to hold for renting. I don't know what a solution could be. It is just incredibly frustrating as an owner.

 

[xdan0920]

You DVC renters are an angry group. Didn't mean to buzz the hornets nest.

 

[Brian Noble]

Some years back Wyndham updated their definition of "commercial use" to include "use by an owner of public advertising or an online website to seek renters".

It occurs to me that if DVC did something similar, then the Rent/Trade board as it currently stands disappears. It would have to be driven by renters rather than landlords. How much revenue do we think DIS generates from the various levels of "membership" among the landlords there?

 

[dez1978]

I am a charter member. So I am quite sure I understand.

I don't think the system was designed to handle the current iteration of the rental market. The fixed week issue is a real problem. I don't know what the solution is, but something should be done.

I am looking at the 2nd week of Nov and there is nothing.

How exactly is the rental market causing this problem? If you failed to book at the 7 or 11 month mark thats the problem. The points have to be used regardless of if the owner uses them or rents them. If people can't go due to travel restrictions, life, or whatever, they should just lose those points so late bookings are available for those who didn't plan ahead?

 

[Marionnette]

You DVC renters are an angry group. Didn't mean to buzz the hornets nest.

Hmm. I don't see anger and most of the replies on this thread are from members who only rent occasionally when they have a surplus of points. I rarely rent my points out but I'm grateful that I was able to do so when I had an excess number due to the COVID shutdown. I would hate to see that option removed.

 

[xdan0920]

Hmm. I don't see anger and most of the replies on this thread are from members who only rent occasionally when they have a surplus of points. I rarely rent my points out but I'm grateful that I was able to do so when I had an excess number due to the COVID shutdown. I would hate to see that option removed.

Condescension and anger are remarkable similar emotions when typed on ye olde typing box

 

[kboo]

OKW in 1991 (230 pts @51=11,730)
OKW in 2022 (150 pts @ 200= 30,000)

Minimum buy ins for the time.

I just used an online calculator:
$11,730 in 1991 would be $22,912 today. So, equivalent to $100 pp now.

 

[Brian Noble]

How exactly is the rental market causing this problem?

Causing is probably too strong a term, but it can be exacerbating it.

If I am booking for myself, I am limited to times when I, personally, might want to take a vacation. If I am booking a spec rental, I am instead looking for times when lots of other people might want to take a vacation. And, as I wrote above, I am incentivized to make this booking as soon as I possibly can---after all, I know when the popular dates are much more than a mere 11 months in advance. That might also be sooner than I would know when e.g. my vacation is, or when the kids' soccer schedules are firmed up, or whatever.

So, it is entirely possible that the existence of a well-known spec rental market is skewing the existing "organic" booking patterns for popular periods earlier in time.

That doesn't change the fact that it is the OP's responsibility to book their own vacation as early as they might have. And given that they travel regularly during Jersey Week, this booking would have been foreseeable for them. That will be a live-and-learn experience for the OP I suspect. But, that too is exacerbating the problem. If a shift to earlier bookings then moves the "organic" booking patterns, then it compounds itself.

So, I guess where I sit both sides of this discussion are correct: it is the OP's responsibility to book as early as they can, AND the existence of the spec rental market might be making that more important than it otherwise would be.