$5,893.32 special assessment for Diamond's Point at Poipu

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Yep. And the first victim in any courtroom is usually the truth.

Law in any area is whatever the person in the black robe decides it is.

How many units are there at the resort?

[timeos2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close timeos2]

Not exactly. It happens more than you realize. Looking to the Caribbean, owners at Guanahani Village in the Bahamas, mostly American, hired a Bahamian lawyer and stopped the developer dead in his tracks in the courts in a plan to undercut the rights of members. At Bluebeards Castle, in the USVI, the members battled Fairfield, the developer, for control of the HOA's (a total of six seperate HOA's as I recall within the timeshare), won most of them, fought off a Fairfield counterattack trying to regain control, and then took Fairfield to court. After gaining control of the HOA's they also kicked Fairfield out as management. Ultimately, Fairfield declared its Virgin Islands subsidiary bankrupt, waved a white flag and beat a retreat from the Virgin Islands. The level of thuggery that Fairfield (now Wyndham) employed at Bluebeard's Castle would probably even make Wastegate, who are quite thuggish themselves, blush.

And unfortunately BBC is a mess after nearly a decade of neglect and is unlikely to ever completely recover. IMO they could have accomplished the same result (both control & the money they netted after expenses) by settling long before the deterioration was so advanced. BBC is a tale of mistakes not success.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

How many units are there at the resort?

I'll go with 219.

$300,000 per condo. Hmmmm?! $6000 per week. Yup, it works out.

FWIW, the market value of a beachfront resort I am familiar with in SW FL, in a pricey area, works out to about $44,000 per condo, $880 per owner.

Gotta go, but I check some others I am familiar with if I remember.
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Has anyone noticed the $175 extra fee for exchangers and rentals?

[somewhat1 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close somewhat1]

5893

DRI will NOT release the owner's names. This has been sought after by many and a group went to the Attorney General's Office who stated that while it is required, there is no way to enforce it. They told me that they had to protect the owner's personal contact info. Seems like just a great way to keep themselves in power!

Has anyone made your issues known on Facebook and/ or twitter? We did make The Denver Post and San Jose Mercury aware of Diamond Resorts.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Most of the campaigns to oust developers which have overstayed their welcome do not actually ever have to go to court. The threat of going there is, however, one of the tools of making such developers see reason.

On the OBX, most developers did right by their timeshare members and handed over control and rode into the sunset, as they should. Three developers, controlling 8 resorts tried to keep ongoing control and management.

One of those developers sold out to a secondary developer at Bodie Island Beach Club. The members there organized, and instead of going to court, they went to the NC Real Estate Commission with what they discovered after doing their research. The Real Estate Commission, which has regulatory control over timeshare, opened an investigation, the result of which was the secondary developer relinquishing HOA control and management of the resort, a sum or money, and his real estate brokers license. The new member-elected HOA board then selected an independent management company.

First Flight developers tried to hang onto control of the four resorts it built,and was actually the first to be taken down, as a member rebellion against developer control that started at Dunes South spread to its other resorts. The concerned owners committees that emerged and raised funds to battle the developer in their early days got a windfall. They had not yet researched the law about prying the membeship lists out of the developer, which refused requests for them, when a disgrunted employee of the developer copied those lists and handed them to the committees. Dunes South was in the lead and had the bloodiest fight, all the way to the state Supreme Court, but they won at every stage and toppled developer control and management. The other three resorts rode that success and none had courtroom battles. Only one of them even hired a lawyer, but of course that one got the best settlement, the only one to get cash out of the developer, so it was worth the cost of hiring the lawyer. All of them got control of the resorts and ownership of unsold developer weeks.

Barrier Island Station, for years, held onto management and HOA control at BIS-Kitty Hawk, BIS-DUck, and Ocean Pines. One can accept BIS-Kitty Hawk, which is, even now, still in developer sales, but the other two have been sold out for years. Ocean Pines governing instruments provide that the developer would turn over control when the resort was 90% sold, its original developer sold it to BIS when it was something over 80% sold, but BIS even when sold out kept it firmly under developer control. The governing instruments of BIS-Duck provide for a hand over to member control when a certain percentage was sold or by a date certain, whichever happened first. Both tests were met for years, but BIS still held onto control. Fortunately, after long wearing out its welcome, BIS finally a few years ago agreed to relinquish its control of BIS-Duck. To my knowledge no lawyers were involved. The board there has now brought on a very well regarded independent management company and the improvements are already obvious.

Good luck owners. I wish you the best.

Keep in mind that most lawsuits never see a courtroom. They just drag on and on (one in our neighborhood for four years now). Various endings, seldom anywhere near what the plaintiffs envisioned.

OTOH, just lying down and taking it does not seem palatable.

Companies tend to pursue the course that will be least expensive to them.

[Ryne08 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Ryne08]

In this case if there was no developer at this resort than the special assessment would be more? True or False?

[Geckowest Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Geckowest]

How do we get to Vote on this SA

Do we get to Vote on this Assessment?

Can we vote to Close the Resort?

[MadOwner Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close MadOwner]

Facebook page for owners

Copy and paste this:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Point...27451960608#!/

I have created a facebook page to unite owners! Please share!

[MadOwner Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close MadOwner]

I created a facebook page to unite owners and hopefully create an owner list.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Point...27451960608#!/

[Geckowest Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Geckowest]

Well, as has been discussed already, statute of repose precludes suit against the builder. And as you are aware there's the question of potential product liability against the manufacturer of the building materials.

I have shared that information with a California attorney acquaintance who does real estate work in California, including condominium law. He is also an owner at Poipu is hoping to be able to attend the owners meeting in San Francisco and intends to pose various questions to the Board should he be able to make the meeting.

******

The board has given less information about insurance coverage, except to indicate the pessimism of legal counsel about success on that front. Personally, having some experience in doing cost recovery against insurance companies for similar situations (environmental contamination of properties where the contamination occurs incrementally over a long period of time) I am not at all surprised at that assessment.

After the courts decided in environmental law in the 1980's that, standing by itself, the phrase "sudden and accidental" is indistinguishable from "slow, steady, and unknown" casualty insurers have greatly tightened their policy language to ensure they are only providing coverage against act of God tyeps of sudden events, and to specifically exclude the type of long-term, incremental situations such as this.

As the policies for the resorts wouldn't have been in effect until the early 1990s, I would be surprised if the policies didn't have the new language that excludes slow and gradual events.

I'm really not trying to defend the Board. Not surprisingly, we have a lot of new people suddenly appearing, many of whom have clearly been uninvolved owners before, and who conflate various aspects of the situation. I think it's worthwhile to help sift through the information and correct the perceptions.

As I've tried to note , DRI and the HOA legally are not the same entity and in that regard many of the issues that people are directing toward DRI are more property directed at the HOA. You, however, provide a complementary perspective as to how the veil between DRI and the HOA might be pierced.

From my rudimentary understanding of environmental law, were we dealing with damages caused by a leaking underground storage tank, there would be considerable legal basis to attach liability to DRI. Unfortunately, that is not directly applicable to a property management situation as the environmental liabilities are governed by federal law, and the US Congress crafted an environmental liability framework that is deliberately and specifically more far-reaching than that provided in ordinary real estate law.
framework specifically to be

Please leep us posted as to what they find out at the meetings

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Gotta go, but I'll check some others I am familiar with if I remember.

Here's another one in a pricey area of SW FL. One building, 26 units, with amenities of pool, boatdock, hot tub, BBQs, etc:

Comparable to one building at Poipu.

$659,370

$25,360 per condo

$507 per owner

Here is a very nice 8-story SWFL beachfront resort, nicer than the buildings at Poipu. 42 units

$5,912,368

$140,771 per condo

$2815 per owner

So . . .

I'm thinking the $65 million pricetag to rehab Poipu is a bit out of line. Seems like you could buy a place for much less than that, or bulldoze and rebuild.

I can check market values, but commercial building costs are a bit out of my area. Anyone know what a 24-unit apartment building might cost to build on Kauai?
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I found this for Hawaii condo buildings: In 2010, there were 34 MLS properties sold with an average of 11 units and an average price $147,800 per unit.

That would be $2956 per owner if it was a timeshare.

Another way of looking at it is 219 units at the average 2010 sale price in Hawaii would be $32,368,2000, half what the Special Assessment totals.
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A few more current Hawaii condo buildings: As of now, there are only 3 with 40 units or more listed. Currently, in escrow is a 59 unit property (MLS# 1102100) with an asking price of $8,000,000. A 49 unit building (MLS# 1008610) in Waikiki is listed at $6,988,000, and a typical smaller building of 15 units (MLS# 1015284) is available at $2,450,000.

Do the math. Nothing's even close to the nearly $300,000 per condo in the special assessment.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Do we get to Vote on this Assessment?

Can we vote to Close the Resort?

A few resorts that have strong member-democracy do require that SA's be voted on by the entire membership, but they are the exception rather than the rule in timesharing. Given the extreme heavy-handedness in other aspects of resort governance at Point at Poipu such as defying Hawaii law by refusing to turn over membership lists, I suspect the odds of such a vote are slim and none.

The vote to close the resort is an interesting question, and it partly depends on which of the condominium laws your resort is governed by. In the begining states adopted condo laws based on either a) the Puerto Rico condo laws, or b) the HUD model condo laws, with the larger group being the latter. Then the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws promulgated the Uniform Condominium Act to the state and all adopted it. If a resort was organized after its state adopted the Uniform Condominium Act, then that act governs the resort. If a resort was organized before its state adopted the Uniform Condominium Act, then it is governed by the preceding state law, based either on the Puerto Rico act or the HUD model act.

Under statutes based on the HUD model act, it generally takes unanimous consent to terminate a timeshare. An exception is when the resort is substantially destroyed, and an argument may be made that due to the cost of fixing this water intrusion that the water intrusion has ''substantially destroyed'' the resort. However, a supermajority is still required to terminate the resort, 2/3rds if memory serves, and given DRI's share of the weeks, that is probably unobtainable. From my recollection, the provisions of the Uniform Act are somewhat more lenient but not that much. I have never looked at a set of statutes modelled on the Puerto Rico act.

Many condo docs are written where there are set times that a vote to continue as a timeshare either may be held or must be held, but those tend to be at wide intervals. You would have to look at your own condo docs to see if your resort happens to have that provision and be hear one of those periods.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Neither you nor I was directly involved in the Bluebeards Castle saga. I did however exchange some emails at the time with someone who was in the thick of it. From what I am told, Fairfield never put a viable settlement offer on the table nor was it receptive to the idea of talking serious settlement. That left plowing ahead with the lawsuit the only realistic option. I don't think the HOA's or their attorneys ever expected Fairfield to put its local affiliate into bankruptcy and walk away as they did, and that is what limited the HOA's recovery.

And unfortunately BBC is a mess after nearly a decade of neglect and is unlikely to ever completely recover. IMO they could have accomplished the same result (both control & the money they netted after expenses) by settling long before the deterioration was so advanced. BBC is a tale of mistakes not success.

[timeos2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close timeos2]

Neither you nor I was directly involved in the Bluebeards Castle saga. I did however exchange some emails at the time with someone who was in the thick of it. From what I am told, Fairfield never put a viable settlement offer on the table nor was it receptive to the idea of talking serious settlement. That left plowing ahead with the lawsuit the only realistic option. I don't think the HOA's or their attorneys ever expected Fairfield to put its local affiliate into bankruptcy and walk away as they did, and that is what limited the HOA's recovery.

I agree somewhat. The period that offered an easier way out happened before Fairfield was on the scene - or just as they came in (from my understanding they did place an offer on the table at that time which included most of what the settlement had BUT with Fairfield management. IMO that offer could have been used to get the resort up & running & then deal with the management at a later time rather than drag it out 5+ more years & watching the resort fall apart).

We weren't directly involved & don't know all that occurred so we'll never really know what could have happened or if it really was the best result. I do know that the resort is in shambles and the settlement falls far short of what they will need to ever fully recover. I still see it as a colossal failure NOT an owner victory of any type. It is a real example of what to avoid.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

In this case, it was not really a settlement, just what they were able to salvage out of the bankrupcy of Fairfield's USVI subsidiary.

I agree somewhat. The period that offered an easier way out happened before Fairfield was on the scene - or just as they came in (from my understanding they did place an offer on the table at that time which included most of what the settlement had BUT with Fairfield management. IMO that offer could have been used to get the resort up & running & then deal with the management at a later time rather than drag it out 5+ more years & watching the resort fall apart).

We weren't directly involved & don't know all that occurred so we'll never really know what could have happened or if it really was the best result. I do know that the resort is in shambles and the settlement falls far short of what they will need to ever fully recover. I still see it as a colossal failure NOT an owner victory of any type. It is a real example of what to avoid.