Since all home ownerships are down more than 25% in Florida, I would like to know what the board has planned for Casa Ybel at this important time for our future plans protecting the ownership of our 3500 time share owners?
Several of our owners who were affected by this down spiral asked if Hilton was advancing their billings to a higher than usual needed expensive procedures for these hopefully short term problems, causing them to loose their units.
We should know the number of non paid maintenance fees
and what chance there is for owners (and how many) to recoup and pay up.

I would propose a plan in simple terms that could help our overall financial situation from suffering.

Stop demanding high unnecessary legal fees that does not help this situation.

The Association Boards should form a trust wherein these units could be held and keep an eye on the situation.

They (the Board) can rent out the units and use this income to pay for lost maintenance fees, this would keep us afloat and if the owner decided to drop out, our Board could sell the unit at certain price levels normally arrived at through the year.
The Association can establish a working fund, classified as reserves for the 3500 owners!

I WILL PLACE A PAGE IN OUR WEBSITE, WWW.CASAYBEL.COM
WITH THE UNITS IN OUR TRUST AND FREE ADVERTISING COSTS
TO COLLECT RENTALS TO PAY FOR MAITENANCE, OR SELL UNITS WITHOUT AN UNREASONABLE 35-45% COMMISSION.

If owners would e-mail the Board and start the ball rolling, I think we will place ourselves in secure hands by he Board and free ourselves for otherwise large losses going unnecessarily to various third parties!

Our Association set-up allows us do this!hHelp

Today I realize we have a problem with selling our
Casa Ybel units given up by unfortunate owners!
Our 2010 Budget, you received with your billings proves the point I raised in the above input.
Look under "Sale of Association weeks":
$33,000 worth of units were turned over to us was sold at an expense to us of $21,000 leaving us with $12,000. Why can't we turn that around?
I was told that IJK had a similar account but they lost it all to sales cost, and left with an expense in stead, to place the units for sale?
Also mentioned was that all our "used" furniture was given as donation to some organization (Does not give a name) when they found that we are not listed as a
non-profit organization and as such were not tax deductible.
Our Board sponsored and ran inexpensive ads in News-Press that Casa Ybel was switching out furnishings, and people came with wagons and trucks, and carried it away themselves after paying a nice price for "almost" new furniture. I remember Ed McElroy as our leader in this field.
2010 Board also denied TV in second Bedroom due to our increase in $10 for each week in maintenance fee.
One years cost for new TV did not have to be $520,
We could have bought them ourselves for half of that.
All wiring IS IN PLACE!
I found the first spot in our Board Meeting Report
from October 19, 2010 where a board member voted NO.
Mr. Elikan wanted to see no increase in our maintenance fees.
Vote him in again!
Last question I had was that the board contributing almost $60,000 from FGH to pool project, where did this money come from?
How does this match our annual payment for using the pool, including maintenance?
I see no mention in our Budget in pool expense; perhaps we need a greater breakdown in stead off all generalities.
Our old budgets had details you wont believe, and they made sense being much more translucent.
Or perhaps, are we all tired from reading "budgets"
In our day and time where even the US is running out of money?
Did I understand it right, That Hilton was telling us we were running out of funds in 2010? board approved them to use funds from this years not approved budget for 2011! no savings were planned?

I trust you will be at the Annual meeting, Carl, to raise these points on our behalf.

Casa Ybel owners should not make a mountain out of a molehill. The FGH Association currently owns 3 unit weeks that have gone through foreclosure. These units are currently listed for sale through Hilton Grand Vacations Realty and if they do not sell before July, they will be offered for sale in a closed bid sale to other owners. At our annual meeting this week we accepted bids on 4 other units that had been duly advertised.

As of April 27, 50 unit weeks had been referred to our attorney for collection. This is less than 3 per cent of our total unit weeks and the vast majority of these owners will pay their fees and taxes before their week of occupancy, (they can't use their week if they have not paid up). There are four additional units that are tied up either in Probate estates or bankruptcy that will be resolved when the court consents.

Association owned weeks are listed for rental and any revenue is returned to our treasury.

To summarize the situation, we have very responsible owners who do an excellent job of staying current with their obligations. A competent Board of Directors and an efficient attorney whose combined efforts have been working very well to make certain that our delinquency rate stays very low.

Lynn L Perkins,President FGH.

Do we have a requirement to sell or rent troubled weeks through Hilton, our management company?
We are good customers of Hilton. For the annual fees paid by Casa Ybel to Hilton last year (a couple of Millions),I feel the reported 2010 sale (a loss of $20,000 in our 2010 budget ) for a few units valued at $32,000, was extremely high.
It sounds like more than 60% in commissions.
Likewise IJK lost their complete value of inventory to sales cost in 2010, say 100% commissions?
As a board member I never recalled to have any influence in these type of expenses, it was done, and
never discussed till the Budget approval showed up?

I would never allow this in my own business.

Carl

The amount of unpaid maintenance fees and late payment fees appear on the closing statement as expenses deducted from the sales proceeds, but in fact it is not an expense as those sums are received by the association. Any amount that appears on the profit line is an actual gain (profit) to the association over and above the unpaid fees, etc.

By moving quickly with the foreclosure action we usually recover most if not all of the unpaid fees.

My question about selling weeks returned due to non-payment and the calculation of late fees to be paid by the the lost owner was really my question.
My input from lost owners were the late fees adding up to thousand of Dollars of legal fees that made it impossible to ever buy back his unit and be an owner again.
What legal protection do we need when we have the unit in hand already?
If it costs $20,000 to sell a few units I would offer free space on web to offer these units for sale with no commission? The association would be $20,000 richer to help overcome bad times.
It's all new to me with these tall fees due to the fact we now live in times of hardship galore.
Can the board find some solutions as is done in our
real estate to save homes, to help us not to loose
vacation homes the same way?
Respectfully
Carl J Appelberg

Lynn you might give up on carl understanding the situation as you can see he does not understand factual information. His whole post was a dig at hospitatilly and the board.w49