Maybe a controversial opinion.
I don't understand why people are against cracking down on renting. Even if the pendulum swung too far and they started assessing the fringe of commercial activity like owners who rent out points yearly or every other year.
The system is designed to provide a ton of flexibility for banking and borrowing points for the off year or two you cannot use the membership so that there is no real reason a rental would be necessary. And DVC is just about the only timeshare in the world that you can sell with good return if you don't/can't use your points.
Buying too many points so you can rent and offset cost of dues is commercial activity in my opinion. Having points that you don't use personally but are rented out to profit is commercial activity in my opinion.
I personally like the idea of making members certify that the points are being used by them or their immediate family and friends and that the points have not been rented to another party. I would even support a system where a member with an emergency who cannot use points for a few years could request a waiver to allow point rentals requiring approval from management.
Or if DVC is in the process of providing point 'buy backs' with Magical Beginnings for direct sales, why not offer that to Owners that come into hardship with membership for a year or two where Owners could 'rent' points back to DVC at $20/point. That really would give a member 4 or 5 years of flexibility with banking rules.
I just don't like the gamesmanship and commercialization of DVC membership.
Members have a right to rent and, under all the POS's before Riviera, the only restriction to that right was that members could not engage in a pattern of rental activity from which the association could reasonably conclude shows you are a commercial enterprise, a legal term that DVD's lawyers undoubtedly put into the POS, which means that one needs to be in the "business" of renting. Moreover, those POSs have another rule solely applicable to members that are corporations or other business entities, which states that such entities' use of the rooms and facilities at the resorts is limited to that business's officers, directors and employees (and thus rentals to persons other than officers, directors our employees are prohibited).
If DVC actually enforced those rules and went after members that are professional renters or set up a business to do rentals, that would be fine.
But that is not what DVD is doing. It has issued a new DVC Resort Agreement for the CFW resort, an agreement that can potentially apply to pre-Riviera members, which includes the following at §5.7:
"Except for Ownership Interests owned by DVD, rentals of Vacation Homes to the general public by any of The TWDC Companies including DVD and BVTC, reservation or use of Vacation Homes and facilities of a DVC Resort is limited solely to the personal use of Club Members, their guests, invitees, exchangers, and lessees and for recreational use by corporations or other similar business entities owning Ownership Interests while staying as a registered guest at the DVC Resort. Except for any of The TWDC Companies, purchase of an Ownership Interest and reservation or use of Vacation Homes and facilities of a DVC Resort for commercial purposes or for any purpose other than personal use is expressly prohibited. BVTC shall be the sole determiner, in its discretion, of any use or activity that does not constitute personal use or constitutes commercial use under this Agreement. Such commercial purpose could include a pattern of rental activity of reserved Vacation Homes or frequent occupancy by others of reserved Vacation Homes other than a Club Member or the Club Member's family; use of regular rental or resale advertising; creating, maintaining, or frequent use of a rental or resale website; repeated or frequent purchase and resale of Ownership Interests whether in the name of a Club Member or those related to such Club Member or through the use of entities, partnerships, or trusts; or the acquisition of a number of Ownership Interests in excess of the amount of the maximum permitted. ownership whether in the name of a Club Member or those related to such Club Member or through the use of entities, partnerships, or trusts."
The section thus does away with the "reasonableness" standard in pre-Riviera POS's for determining a violation and gives BVTC absolute power to determine any issue. And it says a "pattern of rental activity" of Vacation Homes can itself be a violation without defining "pattern" or that it has to amount to being a commercial enterprise like the pre-Riviera POS's. It says just "frequent" occupancy by persons other than the member or members family can be found improper and does not define "frequent." It says "frequent" (again undefined) use of a rental or resale website, "repeated or frequent" (undefined) purchase and resale of ownership interests by the member or those related to the member, etc. And with the absolute power to make determinations, BVTC can decide, if it feels like it, that even two or three events in a year means you are violating the rules, and the member has no right to challenge the decision made.
And to top it all off, that section is in the CFW DVC Resort Agreement despite that all the pre-Riviera DVC Resort Agreements declare that any future DVC Resort Agreement for a new resort "shall be substantially similar to this Agreement in all material respects." And not only do those prior DVC Agreements have no such rental restriction terms, BVTC, until now, never even had any power at all to determine rental issues.
There are other additions to the CFW DVC Resort Agreement that never existed before, including, for example, that BVTC can now annually reallocate points needed per night by moving points between room sizes, e.g., it can lower them year round for 2BRs while raising them year round for studios, a power that BVTC never had before and is contrary to prior POS's that limited such changes to shifting points among seasons for the same room sizes. And that is a term obviously added to apply to pre-CFW resort owners since CFW cabins are all the same size and require the same number of points per night. In essence, the major problem here is not enforcement of prior commercial purpose rules that have long existed. The major problem is that DVD has clearly now decided that, whenever it feels like it, it can just do away with any prior agreements it has made with members. Existing members should be objecting to that. It improperly created new rules before with the resale restrictions but, at least for those, it excluded their application to members who purchased before the rules were created. It has created no exclusion for existing owners to the new rules.
