Good morning fellow owners. Hurricane Idalia has come and gone and other than the couple of days we lost in preparing for her arrival, the storm had no impact on our construction progress and the resort suffered no damage.
Recently, I came across some postings on various social media sites and would like to elaborate on some of the published comments. So here we go:
It was stated that HGV purchases insurance coverage to reimburse maintenance fees on our behalf. We are a Homeowners Association. HGV purchases nothing, they only facilitate the purchases of goods and services on our behalf from our operating fund accounts. It is important to remember that our maintenance fees pay for EVERYTHING involving the operation of our resort.
I read some speculation about how many individual people actually own weeks . We have 2,100 individual unit weeks. Due to multiple week owners, the actual number of owners is approximately 1,400. Now, onto the subject of maintenance fee reimbursement. A post was published that if you pay by check you will be reimbursed by check. That is a correct statement, however lacks clarification. Your maintenance fees will be refunded to THE ORIGINAL FORM OF PAYMENT, ONLY IF YOU REQUEST THE REFUND. To do so, you need to call HGV, ask for the maintenance fee department as if you are going to pay the fees and then request the refund. As we have stated previously, you cannot make this request until after the end of the calendar quarter that includes your lost weeks. And yes, in spite of the comments made, it does take about an additional 45 days. The reason for this is that across HGV, the refund process could involve up to 12,000 individual refunds.
I have not been to the property for several weeks, however, as construction continues to ramp up, I intend to visit again. From a personal perspective, since I have been so involved with the rebuilding process, I do now see a light at the end of the tunnel. The big obstacles we are faced with include rebuilding the back patio area and concluding the process of landscaping the property. The Board is hoping for a “wow factor” when it comes to the landscape design, utilizing all available insurance proceeds. Since we opened in the early 1980s, this is the first time we have been able to start with a blank slate with the design of the grounds.
On a final note, there have been some questions about maintenance fee increases and special assessments. At this time it is impossible to predict anything. Our budget meeting is in November of this year. Two things are known at this time. First, there are a lot of building repair related reserve items, for example, exterior painting, that will be adjusted to a new useful life that will impact our reserves, favorably. The offsetting factor known at this time is that our insurance premium expense has increased 80 percent year over year and the coverage now available to us has the potential to require us to assume a higher deductible in the future for any new named storms.
As always, please feel free to email me with any questions, concerns, or comments.
All the best,
Tim