Renting Points for Marriott DC Program

[4Reliefnow]

The Destination Club Point system is just getting started and I see a few people offering to rent extra points. they are asking what I think to be too high a price. I calculated my maintenance on Grande Vista and Canyon Villas and found the maintenance cost of those points to be around 35 cents. The For Rent ads are asking 55 cents.

Has anyone got any experience with renting DC points?
How easy is it to move points to and from accounts and what restrictions apply?

Will people be able to buy or sell points like weeks in the secondary market?

 

[dioxide45]

Asking prices are negotiable. The price will depend on a lot of factors. If the points are for a future use year or even two years out, they should in all likelihood fetch a higher price. If they are for the current use year, they should be cheaper. If they are only good for reservations in a 60 day window, then they will garner the lowest prices.

Some people have a real low MF to point ration (as low as $0.19pp), where some have real high MF to point ratio. Ours is about $0.43pp.

The final rental price you pay is what the person renting out is willing to take, it might be far lower than their initial asking price.

 

[slum808]

I'm not an owner, but I have used GregT's board to rent points. Since I don't have an account, the owner was nice enough to make the reservation for me. I thought it worked out great. As far as price goes, I've seen $.50-$.65/point. Is that too much, well the market sets the price and as far as I know most people have had success renting their points. You can't just base price on MF alone. There is also buy in cost to consider and for legacy owners everone's mf are different. There are many restrictions on which points can be transfered and what they can be used for, other owners can answer those better.

 

[FractionalTraveler]

Does it even make sense to be concerned in getting back your MF price/point if the renter is only interested in a few hundred points?

 

[slum808]

Point transfers of only a couple hundred points normally cost more per point. Although its relativly simple to transfer points, it does take some effort on the owners part. So they will ask a higher amount to make it worth their time. Of course you could always find someone who has some orphaned points and is just trying to give them away. Chances of that are slim since you can just bank your points. Points that have already been banked, cant be transfered.

 

[SMB1]

The Destination Club Point system is just getting started and I see a few people offering to rent extra points. they are asking what I think to be too high a price. I calculated my maintenance on Grande Vista and Canyon Villas and found the maintenance cost of those points to be around 35 cents. The For Rent ads are asking 55 cents.

Has anyone got any experience with renting DC points?
How easy is it to move points to and from accounts and what restrictions apply?

Will people be able to buy or sell points like weeks in the secondary market?

My maintenace fees for OceanWatch are just under 1000.00, but I rent it for 2500.00. I wouldn't think of renting it for 1000.00. Of course the rental fee for points is going to be more that what one pays in MF per point.

 

[Quilter]

My maintenace fees for OceanWatch are just under 1000.00, but I rent it for 2500.00. I wouldn't think of renting it for 1000.00. Of course the rental fee for points is going to be more that what one pays in MF per point.

This is the same way I look at renting DC points. If I choose to elect DC points for one of my weeks that is either a good renter or exchanger (or both) I want the same value by renting the points. I'm not planning to just give my DC points away, especially since they carry a greater flexibility to the renter being able to choose resort, view and room size. That's the whole "point" behind the DC points.

 

[FractionalTraveler]

Point transfers of only a couple hundred points normally cost more per point. Although its relativly simple to transfer points, it does take some effort on the owners part. So they will ask a higher amount to make it worth their time. Of course you could always find someone who has some orphaned points and is just trying to give them away. Chances of that are slim since you can just bank your points. Points that have already been banked, cant be transfered.

I guess I am looking at this a bit differently.

I do agree that point rentals for 2013 and 2014 are more valuable than 2012 points or penalty boxed (60 days) points. Thats easy for me to see the value of extra TIME for my vacation planning. I'll pay extra for that, no problem.

What I don't see value in is folks changing the price/point based upon the number of points I intend to rent. That makes no sense to me. This should be based upon fair market value not what the seller needs to make up for his MF.

I don't really see the effort required to transfer points. I have already done it a few times and it takes all of 2 minutes on the phone with MVCI.

I suspect at some point in the near future we will be able to transfer the points on the MVCI website without needing to call.

I'm sure there is a benefit to Marriott to be able to automatically track how many owners are acually taking advantage of this feature.

 

[siberiavol]

The process took considerably longer for me. I transferred almost 4000 points to one person. They got a better price than I would have given to 20 people wanting 200 points.

For most buyers and sellers at this stage of the program there is a learning curve. The buyer had questions as did I . I would expect to pay more for smaller amounts just like I expect to pay more at Walmart than I do at Sam's Club even though they are owned by the same company.

 

[GregT]

Asking prices are negotiable. The price will depend on a lot of factors. If the points are for a future use year or even two years out, they should in all likelihood fetch a higher price. If they are for the current use year, they should be cheaper. If they are only good for reservations in a 60 day window, then they will garner the lowest prices.

I definitely agree with this and it is consistent with our limited data set.

We've seen prices at $0.50 - $0.70 if there are 12-18 months of useful life for the point.

We've seen prices at $0.45 - $0.63 if there are 9-12 months of useful life

We've seen prices of $0.40 - $0.50 if there are 6-9 months of useful life

We've seen prices of $0.25 - $0.30 if there are less than 6 months of useful life

I've not seen a value for restricted points and would appreciate any experience with those.

It's an interesting range -- we'll see what develops further. There are still a small number of transactions so these ranges will undoubtedly evolve.

Best,

Greg

 

[slum808]

What I don't see value in is folks changing the price/point based upon the number of points I intend to rent. That makes no sense to me. This should be based upon fair market value not what the seller needs to make up for his MF.

I don't really see the effort required to transfer points. I have already done it a few times and it takes all of 2 minutes on the phone with MVCI.

I think renting points is just like any other business. You have fixed cost and variable cost. In this case my mf would be a variable cost based on number of points, and my fixed cost is the amount of time it takes to complete a rental. Sure the actual phone call can only take 2 mins, but I also have to place an ad, resond to e-mail inquires, fill out a rental agreement, call mvci, verify with e-bay that payment was received, trasfer money into my bank account. All of these may seem trivial but they add up if you're forced to make many small transactions.

So I would say I want $20 for my time in fixed cost (random number) plus my maintence fees and some portion of my buy in cost (why sell something at a loss). Now that is what I want, I'll place an ad and if someone is willing to pay that, then yes in deed it is "Market Price". It may not be the price you're willing to pay, but one person is only a small part of the Market.

Greg's data basically mirrors what I see on the DVC point rental market. The only difference there is that the market value of the points are much higher than the mf. I just rented out some points for $13/point, my mf are $4.50/pt. The difference here comes from the high buy in cost of DVC. I think the base of existing legacy owners are skewing the DC point rental market. I believe if it were based soley on Trust points, it would be a higher value. But for now at least a legacy point and Trust point seem to be getting you the same reservation, so why pay more for a trust point.