Maintenance Fees Went DOWN!

I own a 1 bdr at Celebrity Resorts Brigantine. Last year the m/f went down $10 and the new m/f has been reduced another $39 to $621.

Pat H said:

I own a 1 bdr at Celebrity Resorts Brigantine. Last year the m/f went down $10 and the new m/f has been reduced another $39 to $621.

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Any reason given for the decrease in MF's? Lower tax assesment could be one reason. As long as the resort doesn't suffer from the decrease in fees, I would appreciate that news from the TS's we own.

GREAT NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That wonderful news, I think you need to review your resort budget for the year 2011.

Pat H said:

I own a 1 bdr at Celebrity Resorts Brigantine. Last year the m/f went down $10 and the new m/f has been reduced another $39 to $621.

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Pat, do your property taxes show up as part of the M/F bill every year? I know ours in Lake Tahoe does and last year our fee was only up $5.00.It had nothing to do with M/F but tax went up $5.00.

PHIL

The resort is in NJ so the taxes did not go down. A few years ago the resort was taken over by Celebrity and there was a huge assessment. That was before I bought it. It doesn't say why the m/f went down other than "they made appropriate changes, improved the quality of resorts and vacations services, while generating savings." Have no clue what that means.

Lower can be great, but you need to know why!

pedro47 said:

That wonderful news, I think you need to review your resort budget for the year 2011.

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A lower annual fee is nice but could also be a poor thing long term. How is it possible with nearly every cost on the rise? Did they find some hours to cut for a savings? Did they strike a good deal on utility pricing? If so it may be
sustainable & a true savngs.

If they reduced reserves (or simply aren't properly funding them for the long term) or put off needed repairs or underestimated bad debt then it's a false savings that likely will cost more in the long run. Just an unknown reduction in fees while welcome need to be reviewed closely by owners.

As a corrolary to John's post, it is also possible you had several years of high fees to catch up to fully fund the reserve account, and now you will settle into a "normal" fee. You would need to look at a breakdown of the budget for the last few years to see any trends.

It is also possible that they got several things under control:

Maybe they negotiated a better contract for cleaning, or found a more cost-effective way of doing some of the things the HOA has to pay for.

Maybe they have more owners paying their fees - which would mean a higher amount collected, and corresponding higher budger, but lower fees for everyone.

Maybe with fewer forclosures, legal fees paid by the resort are lower.

Maybe your fees are being reduced by rents collected on units owned by the
HOA.

Many things could have changed to result in a lower fee. and hopefully lower fees means more happy owners, which will reduce the number of default, which could in turn mean continued lower fees. Get hold of the budget, and see what you can find out - or you might even contact someone on the board, and see if they know the answer.

I really don't care enough to look over the budget and compare it with previous years. I own a summer week that I rent out for more than the m/f. The resort has been totally refurbed over the last couple of years so it's in good shape right now. I just poste because I know it's unusual for m/f's to decrease.

Influenced by bankruptcy?

Pat H said:

I really don't care enough to look over the budget and compare it with previous years. I own a summer week that I rent out for more than the m/f. The resort has been totally refurbed over the last couple of years so it's in good shape right now. I just poste because I know it's unusual for m/f's to decrease.

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You are apparently not alone in having little interest in Celebrity Resorts budgets or monitoring thereof...

Celebrity Resorts is a company presently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy status and proceedings (...for some months now, actually --- and from which Celebrity Resorts may or may not successfully later emerge...). Could that fact possibly have anything to do with a (relatively insubstantial, five dollar) decrease in maintenance fees at one (maybe more) among about eight total Celebrity facilities? I don't profess to know the answer; I'm just thinking and wondering "aloud", since the bankruptcy status and filings of Celebrity Resorts are already established facts, as relevant public records already publicly disclose.

No Celebrity facilty I'm aware of is noteworthy for low maintenance fees.....to be charitable. For the few Celebrity facilities with which I am personally familiar, maintenance fees seem (to me, anyhow) to be higher than those at comparable timeshare facilities in their same immediate area. But that's not at all the point of my replying anyhow. I don't know who won the nasty Hanalei Bay, HI legal battle of owners there vs. Celebrity --- but from afar it doesn't appear to have been Celebrity.

Anyway....since most all (Orlando maybe excepted) Celebrity facilities were essentially "takeovers" of an assortment of unrelated but already existing facilities from various other companies, perhaps the finances for each individual Celebrity "acquistion" differed a lot; I do not for a moment claim to know. Throw the feuding and legally estranged father & son Neil & Jared Meyers (former and current corporate officers in Celebrity) their respective cronies, agendas, objectives and practices into this odiferous mix, and it's all a complicated (and malodorous) puzzle which I for one would not want to have to assemble.

MF went down-Celebrity Resorts

The information I have heard is that the company dropped its fees across the board, has reorganized and is repositioning itself with a bunch of former Hilton Grand Vacations players at the helm. They seem serious about a turn around and are putting their money where there mouths are.

"Heard" where, exactly?

jeremynaija said:

The information I have heard is that the company dropped its fees across the board, has reorganized and is repositioning itself with a bunch of former Hilton Grand Vacations players at the helm. They seem serious about a turn around and are putting their money where there mouths are.

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Where exactly is it that you may have "heard" this particular "information"? (I note with interest that your [second] TUG post is from Orlando, which is the corporate home of Celebrity).

Perhaps this is accurate, but absent any actual source for reference it lacks confirmation. Five and six dollar reductions in (already inflated) maintenance fees does not impress me in the least. Moreover, to the best of my knowledge, Jared Meyers is still CEO of Celebrity Resorts (...so where is the "repositioning"?).

I own a 2-bdrm at Celebrity Orlando, my MF went down $45.00. Very happy.

Happy is good, but...

Vanessa said:

I own a 2-bdrm at Celebrity Orlando, my MF went down $45.00. Very happy.

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I'm glad that you're very happy and I'm also glad that your MF went down, but aren't you at least a bit concerned that the entirety of Celebrity Resorts is currently in bankruptcy status and proceedings?

Likely way too little too late

theo said:

I'm glad that you're very happy and I'm also glad that your MF went down, but aren't you at least a bit concerned that the entirety of Celebrity Resorts is currently in bankruptcy status and proceedings?

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I sure would be. And is that $5 really enough of it relates to Management fees? Looking back at our battle with a similar bankrupt management in 2000/2001 the fees they were charging us at the time totaled nearly $1 million. Cutting $5 per week from that was nothing. The TRUE savings we were due, established after a competitive bid was done for the services from 5+ different management groups yielded us a total cost of slightly over $300K VS nearly $1 million! That was much more than a $5 per week savings. We aren't even at 1/3 of the 2001 proposed costs of management from that original developer group now in 2010. And we've seen the number decline not go up recently. Developer controlled management after the primary 5-7 year initial sell out period is almost always a bad deal for owners. If your Board hasn't looked at options by the 7-10 year mark they are NOT looking pout for your bottom line costs.

But when the "board" is just a thinly veiled "company club"...

timeos2 said:

If your Board hasn't looked at options by the 7-10 year mark they are NOT looking out for your bottom line costs.

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Celebrity boards (...at least those few [among the approximately eight total] I'm somewhat familiar with...) are basically stacked with and controlled by Celebrity representatives and / or other Celebrity lackeys.
There seems to be no avenue for any owner representation and annual meetings are short notice, inconveniently scheduled and located shams. "Elections" seem to be very quietly conducted --- internally.
To say that Celebrity is "not looking out for owners' bottom line costs" is certainly a very charitable and diplomatic understatement....

P.S. The recent Hanalei Bay, HI debacle seems to be a noteworthy exception, in which owners there apparently initiated formal legal proceedings to (successfully) just plain take control away from Celebrity.