Maintenance fees - paying owners take up the slack for nonpaying owners

In the discussions concerning 'walking away from a timeshare', there's one point, other than wrecking your credit, that has not been mentioned.

Another note concerning walking away from your timeshare is that you pass the loss of maintenance fees on to other owners in the form of yearly rising maintenance fees. This is not fair to those owners who have to make up that loss for nonpayers.

I once contacted a timeshare resort to ask why my maintenace fees had risen. She then explained that owners who do pay their maintenance fees have to make up for those that do not pay.

This is more than likely one of the main reasons for maintenace fee hikes each year.

Maintenance fees will generally rise due primarily to inflation. Any resort management that allows owners not to pay their fees is guilty of mismanagement and using such as an argument for fee increases is an admission that they are not doing their job.

hennyp wrote:

Maintenance fees will generally rise due primarily to inflation. Any resort management that allows owners not to pay their fees is guilty of mismanagement and using such as an argument for fee increases is an admission that they are not doing their job.

Management can't MAKE an owner pay maintenance fees if the owner doesn't care that their credit rating may be adversely affected. How can a resort's management MAKE anyone do anything, may I ask? The only thing management can do is hand the maintenance fee bill over to a collection agency.

Re: >> The only thing management can do is hand the maintenance fee bill over to a collection agency. << ======================================

No --- that's not accurate. An aggressive and attentive management company / POA can simply foreclose upon non-paying owners and just "take back" ownership of the week(s). I personally know of one resort where they do so promptly (and routinely) on any and all delinquent owner accounts.

However, while this foreclosure approach is certainly always available, it is admittedly only smart or effective to pursue this at a resort where the "recaptured" week can then actually be resold. For timeshare weeks which are essentially worthless in the current marketplace and unlikely to be resold at ANY price if taken back (and there are LOTS of such weeks around), the foreclosure approach would not be in the resorts' best interest and would actually only serve to assist the delinquent owner in shedding his/her financial responsibility (.....which is exactly what the delinquent owner wants anyhow).

In short summary, there most certainly are other options to deal with delinquent owners besides collection agencies, but the wisdom in exercising other such options depends upon the individual facility.

Foreclosure doesn't pay the bills .... maintenance fees pay the bills. When a week is foreclosed on then that's lost income for the resort and the probability of that week being sold again is miniscule (re: the millions of timeshare weeks for sale on the resale market).

If it was easy for HOAs/managements to sell foreclosed weeks then you wouldn't see millions of weeks for sale on the resale market. People could simple give their weeks back to the HOA after foreclosure to be sold again. In the real world of timeshare that just doesn't happen.

Any foreclosed week being resold by an HOA/management would have to be in a very popular resort, during a popular season, and even that would depend on supply and demand of the week taken back.

And, every week I've ever seen for sale by a resort's HOA/management can be bought on the resale market for much less. I've seen this several times when we were looking for a particular resort to buy.

That's how we bought most of our resales ... we first inquired as to what the HOA/management had for sale, then we researched on the internet. One reseller at a resort wanted 10K for a resale and we found the very same product for $1900 on the internet resale market and we bought it (two bedrooms, two balconies, gulf front).

Re: >> If it was easy for HOAs/managements to sell foreclosed weeks then you wouldn't see millions of weeks for sale on the resale market. People could simple give their weeks back to the HOA after foreclosure to be sold again. In the real world of timeshare that just doesn't happen.

Any foreclosed week being resold by an HOA/management would have to be in a very popular resort, during a popular season, and even that would depend on supply and demand of the week taken back.

And, every week I've ever seen for sale by a resort's HOA/management can be bought on the resale market for much less. I've seen this several times when we were looking for a particular resort to buy. << ======================================

Thank you for reinforcing / repeating several of my stated points, most notable of which is that foreclosure, as I very clearly stated, is only a wise option at resorts where a foreclosed week actually has a resale value. In my own recent experience (about two weeks ago) the HOA at one of the resorts at which I own (and a pretty mediocre resort, at that) has just auctioned off numerous weeks "taken back" by foreclosure from non-paying owners. Obviously, the minimum bid considered must be (and is) at least the amount of the current annual maintenance fee. Such weeks are sometimes purchased by exisiting owners, for use, exchange currency, rental, etc. --- and the prices are considerably less than ANY advertised weeks in the "resale market". In any case, foreclosure in such instances DOES indeed pay the bills -- and does so better than just keeping a deadbeat owner on the rolls, and without utilizing collection agencies.

Every resort, HOA competency and energy level, situation is unique and different. If you want to argue, look elsewhere. I have merely pointed out quite accurately that your blanket statement about a collection agency being the ONLY available course of action available to address delinquent maintenance fees is simply not factually correct.

Most resorts will go to the inth degree to collect maintenance fees before even considering foreclosure. I never said forelcosure was not a possibility, I said many resorts will send deliquent maintenance fee bills to a collection agency first. I didn't say that foreclosure might not follow.

You're nitpicking.

BTW? Bitter Timeshare Wars?