Maintenance Fee Gone Up? Here’s Why

Ah, the end of the year. The time when many of you are receiving your annual bill for your timeshare maintenance fees. Some of you are in for a nasty surprise.

Many of you are seeing a steep increase in your fees and may be asking why. For now, I’ll resist the impulse to ask you if you inquired about what the annual increase was capped at before you purchased, because I know full well only a tiny fraction of you did. 

Some of you may see an increase in fees for legitimate reasons such as improvements made to the property or the individual units. Some of you may see an increase in fees because the management company raised their fees. 

Many more of you may be seeing an increase in fees because too many of your fellow owners paid some self-proclaimed ‘exit company’ upwards of $5,000 to get out of their timeshare. 

These companies do irreparable harm to you, and all the other remaining owners. They may be successful in removing the owner off the deed, but the interest then sits unused and without maintenance fees paid on it. The more interests that aren’t being paid on, the more the resort increases the fees on the remaining interests. 

Don’t get me wrong; I still blame the industry for the very existence of these ‘exit’ companies. They continue to push contracts in perpetuity, the vast majority of the developers don’t offer a viable exit strategy and they do their best to suppress the secondary market. 

But the issue is that these ‘exit’ companies aren’t doing direct harm to the developers or the board of directors. They are doing direct harm to you and all the other owners. 

I have no respect for these ‘exit’ companies which are springing up at an astronomical rate. The fees that they charge are also rising. I just heard from someone who paid $12,000 to avoid paying a $954 annual fee on a fully paid timeshare. These companies and the people who work for, consult for and endorse these companies need to be stopped. 

History has clearly shown that the industry won’t shut these guys down, nor will state regulators. You and your fellow owners need to shut them down. Stop giving them your money and stop causing more harm to your fellow owners.