This post contains sponsored content from DVC Resale Market.

We’ve talked about renting DVC points many times, and how it is a much better deal than booking the same rooms with Disney. But if you travel to Disney often enough, actually buying into DVC may be an even better value proposition. Generally speaking, and depending on the number of points you buy, if you travel to Disney at least once every two years, then you should at least consider buying Disney Vacation Club points.

The calculations required for figuring out whether buying or renting makes more sense for your individual situation are somewhat complicated, but that’s mostly because you need to predict how you’ll do Disney vacations for the next 20+ years. However, even if you have no idea even whether you’ll go to Disney at all in 2035, it’s still fairly straightforward to see if a DVC membership is a valuable investment for you.

Investment? How can anyone claim that timeshare ownership is an investment? What about all those ads on the radio about getting out of your timeshare contract? Well, this is the first common misconception about DVC. Yes, it’s a timeshare, but it’s a very different type of timeshare than all those big resorts along 192 that promise you free park tickets if you attend one of their high-pressure sales presentations.

If you look at what has happened with the pricing of DVC points over the last 10-20 years, you’ll see what I mean. For example, you could have bought points at Disney’s Beach Club Villas when they first went on sale in 2002 for $75 per point. Say you bought 100 points for $7,500. If you go to the DVC Resale Market website and click on the blue tab that says “Estimate DVC Resale Value,” you can use their handy-dandy patent-pending tool to estimate what the resale price would be today for that 100 point contract. Depending on whether you’ve used any of your points this year, the tool will tell you the price will be around $150 per point or $15,000 for the 100-point contract. That’s a 100% increase in price since 2002.

Now, maybe you could have invested $7,500 in 2002 and have way more than $15,000 today. But the beauty of DVC is that in the intervening 20 years, you were able to use your DVC membership to get fantastic accommodations at great Disney hotels during your frequent vacations to Walt Disney World or Disneyland at far less cost than just booking a regular hotel room at a moderate resort.

And this is why the concept of buying DVC becomes compelling. It’s an investment that appreciates in value and also provides fantastic benefits while you own it! If you see yourself traveling to a Walt Disney World, Disneyland, or Aulani at least every other year for the next 20 years, you’ll definitely save money over the cost of a standard hotel room by owning DVC. How much you’ll save depends on what type of accommodations you book because DVC will spoil you by offering fantastic 1-bedroom or 2-bedroom suites or even a Bungalow at some of the best properties at Walt Disney World. But even if you splurge, think about how great that vacation will be compared to staying in a dark and dinky room at the All-Stars.

Once you’ve convinced yourself that buying into DVC is the way to go, you’ve got another decision to make. Should you buy directly from Disney, or should you buy a resale contract? To learn about the differences, which include huge differences in price and some additional differences in benefits, check out this excellent guide put together by DVC Resale Market. While some benefits are only available to members who purchase directly from Disney, the most valuable such benefit was a $100-$125 discount on annual passes, which is no longer available to anyone.

After you’ve learned about how buying resale can save you thousands of dollars on a DVC membership, there’s only one big question left: Which DVC resort is your favorite?

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