Home Resort and Use Year Considerations for Adding On DVC Points

Add-on-itis seems to hit all DVC owners at some point, and it’s very hard to resist buying another contract.  However, when you start considering an add-on contract, do you choose the same home resort and the same Use Year, a different home resort and different Use Year, or some variation of those two options?

Here are some things to consider when adding on more DVC points.

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Same Home Resort and Same Use Year

This is the simplest way to add on DVC points.  If you add on for the same resort and the same Use Year, it’s just like having a larger pool of points since they all fall under the same membership.  It’s also easy to manage contracts with the same Use Year since all your banking deadlines are the same. 

Same Home Resort and Different Use Years

When adding on at the same resort but different Use Years, you do have more points to use with the same home resort advantage, but the contracts are harder to use together since different Use Years means that you’ll have different memberships for each of your contracts.  While you can transfer points between two contracts to use them together, keep in mind that transferred points retain not only their home resort advantage but their original Use Year.  Also, transfers are limited to one transfer in or out per Use Year.

It can take a little more organization to track multiple Use Years, but there are some small advantages to having different memberships.  For example, with two memberships you could have a total of four waitlists at once since they’re limited to two per membership.  There are also some special events that limit your headcount to a certain number of guests per membership. 

It can also be advantageous to have different Use Years if you tend to travel at different times of the year.  With some careful planning, you could avoid traveling towards the end of a Use Year when the banking deadline has already passed. This is helpful in the event you need to cancel a trip.  

Different Home Resorts and Same Use Year

When you add on DVC points at different home resorts, you’ll have the 11-month booking window at another resort.  The downside is that despite both contracts being under the same membership, you can’t use the points together until 7-months out.  The upside is that contracts of the same Use Year are easy to manage and organize since they have the same deadlines.  

Different Home Resorts and Different Use Years

Sometimes you find that contract that you just can’t pass up on despite it being a different Use Year than your original contract.  In this case, it may be best to just use those points to book separate reservations.  This could mean doing more split stays or attempting to modify one of the reservations at the 7-month mark so that you can have a stay at a single resort.  You could also alternate which contract you use from trip to trip and simply bank or borrow when you need more points instead of transferring points to combine them at the 7-month mark.  

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For those of you who have added on more DVC points, what was your strategy for your new contract?  Did you choose the same Use Year and the same home resort, a different Use Year and a different home resort, or a hybrid of the two?