In the market for a Disney Vacation Club resale contract and curious to know how difficult it may be to find a particular Use Year? This is the perfect place to start.
Disney's Wilderness Lodge
Dating back to 2014, DVCNews.com has been tracking the Use Years on DVC contracts as they are recorded. It has been several years since the last update, and some administrative changes by DVC have made for a good opportunity to revisit the information.
What is a Use Year? Disney Vacation Club uses eight different calendar months to identify the start of a period in which owners can use their annual allotment of points. Those months are February, March, April, June, August, September, October, and December. A further explanation of Use Years can be found in the DVC for Beginners section.
Some members choose a Use Year that fits their travel patterns while others simply have one assigned at their first purchase through DVC. Regardless of the specific year, point management is significantly easier when an owner all of their points in a single Use Year rather than a variety of Years. Thus, a member who already owns February points would be wise to add additional contracts in that same February year.
Once a contract is issued, the Use Year can only be altered by DVC if they later reacquire the points by exercising their Right of First Refusal.
Since points are not spread evenly across the eight Use Years, it can be easier or harder to find resale points at a specific resort depending upon the year. For example, the numbers below illustrate that a substantial 38% ofBay Lake Tower at Disney's Contemporary Resort points are in the February Use Year while only 5% have been deeded in October. A buyer looking for October Bay Lake Tower points will have fewer contracts to choose from and the scarcity may drive up selling prices relative to other Use Years.
As previously noted, Disney Vacation Club recently granted itself authority to alter the Use Year when it reacquires points. Thus the numbers below are subject to change over time as that ROFR activity occurs. However any change will be very gradual. With less than 300,000 of Bay Lake Tower's 5.7 million points in the October Use Year, it would take a significant amount of ROFR activity before October point availability improves. In fact, it may even get worse.
First time buyers may wish to take these numbers into account before settling on a Use Year for their purchase.
For a list of Disney Vacation Club resales currently available, be sure to check out our sponsors at The Timeshare Store, Inc.®
Thanks to Wil Lovato for compiling this data.
