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Re: Diamond Resorts enormously increases the cost of Maintenance/Reserves on their resorts.

[Q=mariea62] ...Their "genius" approach was to place the 24 resorts that they acquired from Sunterra bankruptcy into an irrevocable trust that could neither be resolved, so what they are selling are shares in this trust (similar to a share of stock in a publicly traded company) rather than a unit's week in their resort. The obvious problem with this is that there is normally a limited number of unit weeks that can be purchased from a developer's inventory, but with their ingenious scheme there is no limit to the number of shares in the whacky trust that they can sell...[/Q] I'm not happy with DRi raising the MF the way they have, nor a number of other actions of theirs. But it's important to make accurate statements. DRI did not buy anything from a Sunterra bankruptcy, and the "trust" which is now called US Collections did not have 24 resorts in it when DRI bought Sunterra. I don't know for certain if there is a limit to how many memberships DRI can sell in the US Collections if DRI does not add or expand resorts, but I believe that since the US Collections functions as a UDI type timeshare, there is a limit. However, it is irresponsible of you to claim "there is normally a limited number of unit weeks that can be purchased from a developer's inventory, but with their ingenious scheme there is no limit to the number of shares in the whacky trust that they can sell". I'm pretty certain the concept is the same. Regardless of whether the developer is selling deeded weeks, UDI, or a "Collections contract" using the principles of a UDI, the developer in all cases can continue selling units/contracts if they expand the resort(s). Powhatan for example has maybe a dozen phases, the most recent was completed early in 2009. I think this last phase was allocated to the US Collections points system, but prior phases were sold as weeks units. There's no difference - as long as the developer continues to build it will always have inventory to sell. Of course DRI has been buying units on the resale market and foreclosing on units, so that's another way they are able to continue selling inventory direct.