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Re: Diamond Resorts reduces owner benefits again! (by Beck):

mike1536 wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, aren't Diamond Club members charged a MF based on the number of points they own? BUT, don't they own a timeshare backed by a deeded week? If so, then MFs should be based on the TS they own, NOT the number of points they own. I would object to my MFs increasing just so some TS in another part of the country can get be updated. Let the owners of the timeshare to be upgraded pay the costs.

Usually HOA control the MFs for their own resort. In the case of DRI, it's a corporate entity controlling the MFs. Owners don't have much say.

If owners in the CLUB do not own a deeded week, then it basically becomes a "Vacation CLub" with an annual fee, not truly a MF. In that case, a membership in a "Vacation Club", as with any club membership, should be able terminated at any time.

Well, not exactly. Members of Club are just that - Members in Club. All Club members have a timeshare ownership thru DRI. But just because you have a DRI timeshare contract does not mean you are also in Club. Club members pay a fee to be in Club and that fee is only for Club operations. It has nothing to do with resort maintenance, which is specific to your contract ownership.

Specific to your question about who pays for what maintenance; - Everyone pays for the maintenance at their own resorts. If you are in Club you have access to all the resorts for reservations less than 10 months in advance. This is superior to but basically the same concept as using an exchange company. All members in II or RCI pay thier own maintenance but make their unit available to others in the hope they can use someone else's unit. The same is true with the internal Club availability at DRI for DRI Club members. - Since some ownership is specifically defined by points memberships and are not deeded, their fees are charge with a base fee and a fee per point for maintenance. - There are deeded UDI ownership, but it is rare. These units are not billed per point, the maintenance fees are billed based on the deeded units which comprise the UDI values they have. - Deeded owners, regardless of whether they are in club or not, are billed based on their unit type. In the past I noticed there was not a correllation between the point value of the deeded weekly unit and the maintenance. Better managed resorts or resorts where insufficient maintenance to properly maintain the resort would have lower maintenance "per point value". However, because DRI controls most of the resort HOA boards I noticed a large number of resorts for 2009 maintenance beginning to conform to the equivalent maintenance fee per point in a number of cases. Just be certain you do not buy a deeded unit with lower point value at these resorts! A 4BR week 3 and week 28 have the same annual maintenance fee if the unit is in Club, regardless of if these units are in Club or not (if in Club, the there is also a Club fee). You might buy a week 3 becasue it costs less, then bank the unit to use thru exchange. But if you convert these units back into Club, week 28 is worth 11,000 annual points whereas week 3 is 6,000 or 8,000. DRI has been moving the annual maintenance on these units such that the 11,000 point unit has a similar "fee for point value" to a Collecitons contract. But this means your equivalent "fee for point value" on that week 3 unit is a lot higher!

It is more confusing because some types of DRI ownership appear to be in Club but are actually an ownership/membership similar to how Club works but are not in Club.

TYPES OF OWNERSHIP / MEMBERSHIP

* All the contract types below can be put into Club, either by directly purchasing the contract from DRI or after buying on the resale market, contracting with DRI thru a new purchase agreement to bring the resale contact back into Club.

- Fixed week, fixed unit use, deeded. Most units owned at The Historic Powhatan Resort are fixed week, fixed unit. If you're in Club you might not know this because you receive annual points and are never subject to your deeded limit of a fixed week/unit. New owners who purchase at Powhatan these days are not buying fixed week/unit deeded contracts. They are instead buying a perpetual (never ending) membership in the DRI US Collections contract. It is not deeded and when the contract is sold to a resale buyer they are not limited to the single resort but the collection of 21 or so resorts.

- floating use, deeded Scottsdale Villa Mirage has a lot of deeded contracts with floating use. Story is the same as Powhatan. People buying there now are actually buying the US Collections contracts.

- UDI, deeded This is a less common deeded ownership, but I have seen UDI deeded at Cypress Point in Orlando and Greensprings in Williamsburg. UDI stands for undivided interest. This deeded ownership works like the "Collections" contracts (US Collections, CA Collections, HI Collections) where you always use points regardless of whether you are in The Club or not. But a resort deeded UDI limits the resale buyer to use the floating points at the one specific resort if you do not convert the resale contract back into Club.

- Collections contracts, not deeded I'm aware of three Collections contracts: US Collections, CA Collections, HI Collections. I believe that purchasing from DRI at any of the resorts in a Collections contract results in the new buyer owning the pertinent Collections contract and not a deeded contract. Also, the resorts in CA are now sold as the CA Collections contract but in previous years was sold as part of the US Collections contract. One thing I am not certain of is how DRI reconciled the US Collections ownership of CA resorts with CA Collections ownership. Maybe it doesn't matter. I believe DRI has chosen to mix all available Collections use and Club use (not mixed in a way allowing a resale buyer in the CA Collection to use HI Collection but mixed in a way that US Collection owners still have access to CA resorts even though now the CA resorts are sold in the CA Colleciton).

- Other contracts I think I covered the basics of DRI ownership but there are other variants such as fixed week with floating unit, floating week that can be split into a 3 and 4 night stay, Lock Off units which can be broken apart for additional stays, etc. There are also people who owned with other resort companies but were absorbed by Sunterra/DRI. I believe that all these aquired companies ownership has now been fully integrated into the DRI system, even if the owner/members still do not understand or realize they no longer own what they originally purchased.

CLUB vs NON-CLUB

- Everyone who buys direct from DRI is automatically in Club. In the past the buyer owned deeded contracts at a single resort but may not have realized they were deeded to a weeks ownership becasue they alwyas used their points thru Club. A lot of people who bought from DRI (Sunterrra) thought they were deeded in the US Collections (CSV1, and other names) to a home resort when in fact the paperwork they filled out had that resort's sales office name but they truely owned the perpetual membership in the US Collections.

- everyone who buys on the resale market is not in Club because Club benefits do not transfer to the resale purchaser. When you buy from another owner, you only have access to what the contract is. A 4BR LO Powhatan contract means you will use a 4BR or two 2BR units for a week in a specific unit and week number each year. A 2BR LO at Scottsdale Villa Mirage is just that. A 10,000 point US Collections contract gives you access to 21 or so resorts even if you don't convert back into Club.

- If you inherit a DRI Contract and it was in Club it is my understanding you will inherit the DRI Contract which remains in Club!

- even if you buy/receive a contract which is not in Club you can work a deal with DRI to get the contract back into Club. currently you must buy an additional contract from DRI for them to convert your resale contract back into Club. In the past DRI/Sunterra also allowed resale purchasers to pay $2,995 to convert back but currently it is my understanding this has been discontinued. The $2,995 fee is an option to certain owners who bought direct in the past before Club was available. This holds tru for Polo Towers owners who bought direct before DRI bought Sunterra and I believe it is true for other direct buyers of resorts which were later bought up by Sunterra.