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

I support Meltowne's comment that if we as owners want the trend to change we must step into actions and get involved in the HOA/Boards each year and drive some accountability and transparency into the system. Although I do object fully to excessive MF, reserve fees, etc. I also feel we should all be realistic about how our property will maintain or improve to a quality standard that will drive higher proproperty values, increased rental/trade levels, etc. It does take good maintance AND reinvestment in capital improvements to retain the quality each property achieved during initial construction/sales. Only with full ownership, high utilization, etc can the shared fees be reasonable. Sunterra was not perfect as their properties lost their Gold Crown status due to lack of care/maintenace/service/renewal. DRI may be trying to hard to restore the level of quality too fast or simply inefficient with the funds they are collecting, but if we want lower fees we need to make every dollar invested count toward filling the units and having 100% ownership that pays their fair share of the fees on-time. Everyone get involved now. Don't give DRI your proxy vote if you don't think they are being good stewards/mgrs. Select a few owner/reps to vote on behalf of the real owners on how best to spend the fees. Happy Vactioning, E Cordova Present_Arms PS: I'm own over 20 timeshares and even the best in the business, Marriott Vacation Club, charges around $1000/yr in Maint fees & Reserve fees for their 2bd/2ba units to keep the ALL at Interval top level (Premier Levels). Each of my Powhatan 2bd/2ba (half of the 4bd/4ba fee of $1160) is only about $600. Not really that bad when you compare apples to apples. Difference is Marriott is all top drawer and sold out at most sites and DRI still has a way to go. [Q=meltowne] The existing deeded week owners need to band together and wrest control of the HOA from DRI. The HOA sets the annual fees, and contracts with a management company. This must be done sooner, rather than later, as every week DRI buys back gives them a larger share of the membership of those HOAs, and thus a larger share of the vote. If they own enough, they can control the elections. I also don't know if those multiple phases in some of their resorts have multiple HOAs, or if each resort only has one. If they have multiple HOAs, it might be easier to gain control of some of the older ones, as DRI would be less likely to control as many votes. But if that is the case, you must also consider which HOA (or who, if not an HOA - possibly DRI) owns which resort amenities, and whether that owner can restrict usage by the others. If a clubhouse is owned by one of the HOAs, that HOA could restrict its usage by all other owners, or could charge the others for its use. If owned by DRI, they could use it as a bargaining chip to convince the HOAs to retain them as management.[/Q]