Florida law does not mandate that timeshare rooms be held aside for non-owners. The 2% ownership that DVC retains is intended to be used for room maintenance purposes. Owning 2% of each resort's points allows DVC to take each villa out of service 4-5 days per year for routine deep cleaning, painting, carpet replacement or any necessary physical repairs.
Generally speaking, when you see villas available to the general public it's a byproduct of the exchange program which allows members to use points for Disney Cruise Line and many other non-DVC destinations.
Let's say a DVC member wishes to take a 3-night Disney cruise. The cost is either $1500 cash or 200 DVC points. The member chooses to use his/her points.
DVC collects 200 VWL points and coordinates the DCL booking. Problem is those 200 DVC points are of absolutely no value to Disney Cruise Line. DCL has set-aside a cabin and they want their $1500.
Essentially what happens is that DVC pays the $1500 to DCL. So DVC is out $1500 but they have the 200 VWL points. DVC has to turn those 200 points into at least $1500 cash in order to cover the cost of the exchange. The mechanism through which they do this is making villas available to cash guests. DVC will set-aside 200 worth of villa rooms and turn them over to Central Reservations.
This is really the only way for the exchange programs to work. As I said, DVC points are of no value to resorts in the Disney Collection, Concierge Collection or Adventurer Collection. Those programs only work because DVC is able to turn the points committed to such programs into cash rooms which are rented to the public.
In the greater sense, when you see a DVC villa available through CRO there may not be a member staying in the room but a member is using the room. The room only made it into the cash inventory as a result of a member deciding to trade out.
Many discussions focus on the poor value of trading out of DVC but it's still an incredibly popular option--particularly using points for things like DCL, Disneyland Hotel, and international Disney resorts (Paris, Tokyo, etc.) This is how most of the villa rooms get into the cash inventory.
Aside from that, two other possibilities are:
1. Resorts that are not fully sold-out. Disney still owns a percentage of Bay Lake Tower, Animal Kingdom Villas and Aulani. The percentage of rooms available to members is equal to the percentage sold. If AKV is 75% sold out, DVC members can book 75% of the rooms using points. The other 25% is Disney's to do with as they please (cash reservations, free upgrades from Value resorts, etc.)
2. Any villa rooms not reserved 60 days prior to arrival are given to CRO as "breakage" inventory. The idea is that if members aren't going to use the room, might as well try to make some money off of it. The proceeds from these transactions come back to members in the form of a dues credit. This most frequently happens at the larger resorts like SSR, OKW and AKV. It's pretty rare for other resorts to have unbooked points villas 60 days out.
