You can book DVC rooms also directly from Disney, but at their often inflated rates, but sometimes you can get very good offers on resorts like OKW and SSR.
To save money you can rent a reservation from another owner. They would book a vacation for you and you compensate them. You can go directly through an owner and a good place to find one is the rent board here on the DIS:
https://www.disboards.com/forums/dvc-rent-trade.29/
(you must be logged in to see it)
Or you could rent through a broker. You would still get a reservation they book using their points, but you pay the broker who will find the owner for you (and they would keep part of the money as compensation for their service).
There are a few disadvantages at renting DVC points:
- cancellation policies are often very strict, often being no cancellation allowed. The owner or the broker might try to help in case you need to cancel, but often you would loose all your money
- the owner would be in complete control of the reservation, they might cancel it and disappear with the money. I've seen a couple of reports here on the DIS of people loosing their reservation. Just a couple out of thousands of rentals made every year, so it's rare but it can happen. Trust is needed. A broker offers an extra layer of protection.
- you would rent a timeshare reservation, this means for example you won't get housekeeping every day. Depending on lenght of stay you would get full cleaning once a week only if you stay more than a week, otherwise just trash removed and towels changed on day 4. Also: check in is after 4pm, no upgrades possible, rooms may be not refreshed as often as hotel rooms and maintenance can be an issue
The only advantage is that you can save a lot of money. More if you go direct with an owner, while using a broker would cost a bit more, but I'd suggest it as the best way for a first time book.
David's vacation club rental is a sponsor of the boards and has a good point calculator that could give you a good idea of how much a reservation might cost:
https://www.dvcrequest.com/cost-calculator.asp
Also, be aware that you need to plan a lot in advance. To book for this Christmas, I would say you have almost zero chances of finding anything. Even booking 7 months is advance for a busy period like Christmas may be difficult, better to plan 8-11 months in advance when an owner can book using their home resort priority window. This is especially true for resorts like BWV, BCV, VGF, CCV, BRV, BLT, PVB.
For further information, this post has a lot of useful info:
https://www.disboards.com/threads/so-youve-decided-to-buy-dvc.3567366/#post-56896799