Greensprings Plantation Maintenance Fee Increase

[BoredinVT]

I received my Greensprings Plantation M/F bill in the mail yesterday. The M/F for 2008 shows a 16.2% increase over '07. With the Maintenance fees at this, as well as most other resorts out pacing the overall rate of inflation, how long before more people say "enough is enough"?? Oh, and higher M/F's aren't the only problem facing owners. How about those 'Special Assessments'? It's reaching the point where I could look around in TUG, Redweek, TST and other sites for a decent rental week, and leave all these fees behind. I've been saying for a few years now that rapidly increasing M/F's along with Special Assessments will be the death of timesharing as we know it..Any thoughts??

[dougp26364]

Part of the problem is owners asking for or demanding more and more services from their resort. Everything a resort does comes out of the pockets of the owners. MF's at 3 of my 7 resorts are up 10% or more. One was upfront about it and said that owners wanted free towel exchanges, additional security guards to keep non-guests out of our pools et.... Those items along with the normal increases in operating expenses caused the increase to be as high as it is.

With Greensprings you just became members of Diamond Resorts International and Stephen Cloobeck has taken a much more serious and active position in his company. Polo Tower had been DRI only resort for many years and, over the last 3 or 4 years had not increased MF's. Of course the resort did not keep pace with the rest of the timesharing community and TUG reviews to some extent reflect that.

Now the Mr. Cloobeck is back in charge quality and maintaining the quality has become more important. He's already announced improvements in soft goods and they have started to roll those out. I suspect more improvements are coming in the next couple of years along with more increases in MF's. Poplo Towers is currently going through and expensive renovatioin to bring it back up to industry standards for I.I. 5 star accomadations. I'd have rather seen smaller increases all along to keep MF's where they needed to be to maintain the resort.

With Greensprings, it's my belief that the previous management, Sunterra, didn't do enough to maintain and elevate the property to be among the elite in the industry. Mr. Cloobeck is going to raise the bar and bring properties previously managed by Sunterra higher up in the pack. That's going to take more money. This year MF's at Polo Towers went up double digits. In large part I believe because the HOA/BOD elected not to do much in the previous years to keep Polo Towers pushing ahead rather than just staying as they were. Once properties are brought up to Mr. Cloobecks standards I suspect you'll see MF's leveling off.

If it makes you feel any better, Marriott's Manor Club in Williamsburg took a BIG increase in MF's with a large jump in what they're putting into the reserve fund. I believe the reserve fund alone for Manor Club is up over $200.

Will increasing MF's be the end of timesharing in the future? I sort of doubt it. When we first purchased back in '98 I could easily find hotel rooms for less than $100. Now, most Motel 6 rooms I've seen along the highways are up around $49 and a decent hotel room in the midwest runs around $100. In high demand tourist area's during prime family vacation season you're likely to find the rates for just a hotel room are even higher.

Yes you may find owners that can't use their timeshare renting them out to cover the cost of their MF's. You may be able to find rentals available through one of RCI's outlets for about the same price as the MF for those resorts or maybe a bit lower but, in the long run I wouldn't count on this always being available. Things have a way of evening out and I don't see the developers shooting the goose that lays the golden eggs just yet.

[bobcat]

Originally Posted by dougp26364

Part of the problem is owners asking for or demanding more and more services from their resort. Everything a resort does comes out of the pockets of the owners. MF's at 3 of my 7 resorts are up 10% or more. One was upfront about it and said that owners wanted free towel exchanges, additional security guards to keep non-guests out of our pools et.... Those items along with the normal increases in operating expenses caused the increase to be as high as it is.

With Greensprings you just became members of Diamond Resorts International and Stephen Cloobeck has taken a much more serious and active position in his company. Polo Tower had been DRI only resort for many years and, over the last 3 or 4 years had not increased MF's. Of course the resort did not keep pace with the rest of the timesharing community and TUG reviews to some extent reflect that.

Now the Mr. Cloobeck is back in charge quality and maintaining the quality has become more important. He's already announced improvements in soft goods and they have started to roll those out. I suspect more improvements are coming in the next couple of years along with more increases in MF's. Poplo Towers is currently going through and expensive renovatioin to bring it back up to industry standards for I.I. 5 star accomadations. I'd have rather seen smaller increases all along to keep MF's where they needed to be to maintain the resort.

With Greensprings, it's my belief that the previous management, Sunterra, didn't do enough to maintain and elevate the property to be among the elite in the industry. Mr. Cloobeck is going to raise the bar and bring properties previously managed by Sunterra higher up in the pack. That's going to take more money. This year MF's at Polo Towers went up double digits. In large part I believe because the HOA/BOD elected not to do much in the previous years to keep Polo Towers pushing ahead rather than just staying as they were. Once properties are brought up to Mr. Cloobecks standards I suspect you'll see MF's leveling off.

If it makes you feel any better, Marriott's Manor Club in Williamsburg took a BIG increase in MF's with a large jump in what they're putting into the reserve fund. I believe the reserve fund alone for Manor Club is up over $200.

Will increasing MF's be the end of timesharing in the future? I sort of doubt it. When we first purchased back in '98 I could easily find hotel rooms for less than $100. Now, most Motel 6 rooms I've seen along the highways are up around $49 and a decent hotel room in the midwest runs around $100. In high demand tourist area's during prime family vacation season you're likely to find the rates for just a hotel room are even higher.

Yes you may find owners that can't use their timeshare renting them out to cover the cost of their MF's. You may be able to find rentals available through one of RCI's outlets for about the same price as the MF for those resorts or maybe a bit lower but, in the long run I wouldn't count on this always being available. Things have a way of evening out and I don't see the developers shooting the goose that lays the golden eggs just yet.

Wait to you receive your Sunterra points Mf'S. The breakdown, your have to pay Mf's, you have to pay to belong to the club and also,you have to pay so much per point. Now lets say you have a week at Greensprings and you turned that into points in the club. You pay your MF's plus per point. Now, lets say this all goes to 22000 points. You will pay about 2100 for 2008.

[dougp26364]

Originally Posted by bobcat

Wait to you receive your Sunterra points Mf'S. The breakdown, your have to pay Mf's, you have to pay to belong to the club and also,you have to pay so much per point. Now lets say you have a week at Greensprings and you turned that into points in the club. You pay your MF's plus per point. Now, lets say this all goes to 22000 points. You will pay about 2100 for 2008.

Not exactly. You either own CSV trust or you own deeded units and have a membership to Club Sunterra, which converts those deeded weeks into points. NOT both as you are suggesting. I could just as easily kept our units as was and not join Club Sun. For that matter I can still revoke and remove our units from Club Sun and go back to the way things were.

If our units were part of Sunterra's trust we could not seperate them back out and we would not have deeds to our units. Our units are not part of the trust. We have already received our MF's for our Polo Towers units and, on top of those fee's will have to pay the Club Sunterra yearly membership fee of $151. In our case there is no fee per point.

Our Polo Towers MF's went up approx. 13% for unit and, I believe around 10% for the other unit (two seperate HOA's but both resorts in the same building). If I had placed those units in one of Sunterra's trust, an option we were not given, then we would have been billed per trust point as you suggest.

[timeos2]

Originally Posted by dougp26364

Part of the problem is owners asking for or demanding more and more services from their resort. Everything a resort does comes out of the pockets of the owners. MF's at 3 of my 7 resorts are up 10% or more. One was upfront about it and said that owners wanted free towel exchanges, additional security guards to keep non-guests out of our pools et.... Those items along with the normal increases in operating expenses caused the increase to be as high as it is.

With Greensprings you just became members of Diamond Resorts International and Stephen Cloobeck has taken a much more serious and active position in his company. Polo Tower had been DRI only resort for many years and, over the last 3 or 4 years had not increased MF's. Of course the resort did not keep pace with the rest of the timesharing community and TUG reviews to some extent reflect that.

Now the Mr. Cloobeck is back in charge quality and maintaining the quality has become more important. He's already announced improvements in soft goods and they have started to roll those out. I suspect more improvements are coming in the next couple of years along with more increases in MF's. Poplo Towers is currently going through and expensive renovatioin to bring it back up to industry standards for I.I. 5 star accomadations. I'd have rather seen smaller increases all along to keep MF's where they needed to be to maintain the resort.

With Greensprings, it's my belief that the previous management, Sunterra, didn't do enough to maintain and elevate the property to be among the elite in the industry. Mr. Cloobeck is going to raise the bar and bring properties previously managed by Sunterra higher up in the pack. That's going to take more money. This year MF's at Polo Towers went up double digits. In large part I believe because the HOA/BOD elected not to do much in the previous years to keep Polo Towers pushing ahead rather than just staying as they were. Once properties are brought up to Mr. Cloobecks standards I suspect you'll see MF's leveling off.

Far too many resorts, especially those that have remained under developer management, are in the situation you describe. Too little collected over the years for reserves (it helped sales to hold the fees artificially low), resorts now aging but not enough in the bank to maintain them much less mprove them to todays expectations.

I applaud Diamond for setting a higher bar but it will be the owners, not Diamond, that pick up the tab. It will be the same with many other resorts. Owners will have to decide if they trust the management that got them into this situation and if the average cost of ownership over the years - even with the likely fee increases and/or special assessments - is worth it. You will weed out those that think it isn't and, if proper steps are taken to improve collections, have a stronger and nicer resort in the end. Often you will find collection problems (too many delinquents) at these resorts and that is a major problem that must be addressed first or the bail out of owners will reach crisis proportions.

[dougp26364]

Keep in mind it was not DRI that got the Sunterra resorts into this mess. However, it was DRI that allowed Polo Towers to get to the point that a large SA was necessary just to bring the resort back up to industry standards and, they jacked the MF's at Polo Towers this year as well.

In all fairness, Stephen Cloobeck has had "other" interests over these last several years and I don't think he had been as active of a leader with DRI as perhaps he should have been. We he was more involved with Polo Towers it seemed as if things ran better. But, his active role in the organization was during resort developement.

Mr. Cloobeck had big expansion plans for the timeshare market. It seems to me that when the major hotel chains started to get active and competitive in the market he lost some of his interest in developing timeshares. To be honest, I was surprised when he got back into the indsustry in such a big way. In one major play he became one of the largest timeshare organizations in the world. Finally full filling some of the promises made back in '98 when we bought into Polo Towers and they added the word "International" to their name.

I often wonder if he now regrets allowing Marriott to brand the Grand Chateau, which was his developement before he decided to stand on the sidelines of the timeshare industry.

[bobcat]

Originally Posted by dougp26364

Not exactly. You either own CSV trust or you own deeded units and have a membership to Club Sunterra, which converts those deeded weeks into points. NOT both as you are suggesting. I could just as easily kept our units as was and not join Club Sun. For that matter I can still revoke and remove our units from Club Sun and go back to the way things were.

If our units were part of Sunterra's trust we could not seperate them back out and we would not have deeds to our units. Our units are not part of the trust. We have already received our MF's for our Polo Towers units and, on top of those fee's will have to pay the Club Sunterra yearly membership fee of $151. In our case there is no fee per point.

Our Polo Towers MF's went up approx. 13% for unit and, I believe around 10% for the other unit (two seperate HOA's but both resorts in the same building). If I had placed those units in one of Sunterra's trust, an option we were not given, then we would have been billed per trust point as you suggest.

One is in the trust, one I have the deed on. Both are in the club. Still ,151 for club, 344 for points. To me, Mf, club Sunterra and points fee. Still 3 chargers. Still high.

[JoeMid]

Originally Posted by bobcat

One is in the trust, one I have the deed on. Both are in the club. Still ,151 for club, 344 for points. To me, Mf, club Sunterra and points fee. Still 3 chargers. Still high.

Well, then, you're lucky it's not FOUR charges.
Your Deed
Your Club Fee
Trust per point fee
AND a Trust base fee