Solutions suggesting more strict restrictions on the ability to rent have the legal issues I mentioned above, and anything created will most likely have adverse effects not just on rentals but members in general, e.g., lowering the 20-reservation presumption to 10 reservations would most likely adversely effect a large number of member’s who make ten or more reservations in a year’s period and never rent. The problem DVC has is the lack of information on whether reservations made by members are rentals and thus lacks the ability to track rentals by a member and determine whether a member is acting as a commercial enterprise. There may be no easy solution, but one possibility I thought of, but have not researched enough to determine if DVC could actually do it, is for DVC to simply adopt a rule requiring the member to provide a form that verifies whether a reservation is or is not a rental. That would give DVC information that it could collect on any given member and make evaluations as to whether there may be a violation of the pattern clause. A member could, of course, lie but discovery of the lie could itself have ramifications.
An alternative that would also provide the ability to track rental information per member is to adopt a rule requiring a member to provide a copy of the written rental agreement signed by the parties to the rental if there is a rental. Article XIII, sec. 13.2, of the declarations provides that all rentals require written agreements and have terms requiring the renter to use the Vacation Home only as allowed in the declarations. DVC could require a copy of the agreement be provided by the member to allow it to confirm the agreement meets the requirements in the declarations.
