The March 2016 edition of Consumer Reports magazine has an article called “Is a TimeShare Vacation a Good Value?”
The article uses a Disney Vacation Club purchase as the example. Their example compares just staying as a hotel guest versus buying DVC direct from Disney base price (no incentives). The example also assumes the buyer finances the DVC purchase using a 7-year loan at 8% interest. Some information is missing, such as the assumptions around the room rate and such.
In this example, staying as a hotel guest would be less expensive the first 7 years. In year 8, the site urns in favor of DVC, but its not until year 13 that you break even and start saving money.
The article also covers buying resale (but ails to show the same financial comparison as buying retail). It also mentions renting from an owner.
This is part of their The Timeshare Comes of Age article.
What do you think of the article? Either add a comment here on the blog or join the discussion in our DVC discussion form.
Thanks to DVC Paul for the heads up!
Good brief article, their findings are sound. Curious if tax was included in their room costs. My own calculations show a slightly quicker ROI of 10 years.