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[Q=alvamab] I understand the purpose of a maintenance fees but what I don't understand is why do they keep increasing each year when the values of Timeshares Resorts are going down? I have at Timeshare in HI and since we bought it in 1999, the MF has been increasing each time we visit but we don't see any significant improvement at the facility. As a matter of fact when we went back in 2007, the grounds, equipments and appliances looks the same as 8 years ago. I'm curious where my MF has been going? Is the resort or the developer or someone benefiting from the MFs that are charged to the Timeshare owners?[/Q] Maintenance fees have no relationship at all to the (market driven) value of a timeshare property at any given point in time. Personally, I always expect a [b]minimum[/b] of 3-5% increase per year in maintenance fees --- loosely akin to monetary inflation. Regardless of geography, costs always climb upward for electricity, insurance, replacement appliances and furniture, HVAC equipment and repair, pool pump repairs, grounds keeping, etc. Hawaii of course has inherently higher costs, since virtually everything (except for a few isolated agricultural products) must be shipped in from far away --- and fuel and transportation costs continually rise upward. Replacement of furniture and appliances at a timeshare property is generally planned on the basis of "useful lifespan", but [b]all[/b] of the money to pay for those items must obviously be right there on hand when those scheduled replacements occur. Independent (non-"chain") timeshares have owner-based (unpaid, volunteer) HOA's which, if competent and attentive, generally do a very good job of containing maintenance fee increases as best they can, while still making sure that on-hand funds are always adequate to both properly maintain the property [b]and[/b] have sufficient financial reserves on hand to address any unexpected emergencies. However, a "chain" timeshare management company may be comprised solely of developer representatives (...some would instead label them company stooges or lackeys), it's much harder to ascertain whether any money is being siphoned off to the underlying corporation. Some Diamond owners clearly believe (and often complain) that this is precisely the case with Diamond. I do not (and frankly never would) own within Diamond, so I do not claim to know whether that particular belief is accurate.