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Peter, You are correct, the unit isn't worthless. It still has rental value, trading value on Startwood, and Interval International. I have been able lock off and rent either the 1 bedroom or the studio every year that I have owned it. I then either bank or use the other unit. As example, I banked a studio week and was able to get a week through II in a 2 bedroom in Marriott Newport Coast. So you are correct there is value. My point is that re-sale values are highly impacted becuase it is in fact impossible to organize all the owners and agree on a rental floor. In the secondary market, rental price is key and one only has 12 months to "stomach" holding on thier unit. And as you point out, there is no oligopoly, it is completey a free market. Right now the supply is of low rent units is too high and the demand too low. When I price my unit I look at all the units available and what the average prices are. I have seen rents that are way above the average - I am curious if they rent their unit. So, that being said, it doesn't change that the HOA needs to look seriously at what is driving expenditures and find ways to provide quality resort experience yet reduce expenditures. Moreover, a "root cause" analysis needs to be created as to why our maintence fees have increased over the last few years and put together an action plan per issue to bring the fees down. The current trend is higher and higher rates and the HOA board has been completely silent as their response. I sent an email over a week ago and I have recieved no response. I brought out several issues. Here is the content of my email. Hello, My name is Jonathan Ruiz and I own two Island View EOY - Odd & Even units at the Kaanapali North Properties. The last four years the increase in maintanence fees has been horrendous. It is to the point where there is now near parity between secondary market rental rates on sites like Redweek.com and our dues. This fact has caused the value of ownership to diminish to near zero. Why would a potential buyer pay for a unit at any cost if they could rent at a simillar cost to owning? Again as maintanence fees and rental fees reach parity, it is an economic bad to pay anything for a unit. That is, as long as maintenence fees and rental fees stay in this state. At this point, there are no data points that have been communicated by you, the board, that cause me to believe that maintanence fees will go down in the future; the trend has only be higher and higher fees. In fact, I have recieved no communication as an owner about the board's feelings or plans on this matter. And this is a matter of grave concern. February 25th Meeting: Which brings me to my next point, the upcoming February 25th Owner's Meeting. I recieved my proxy in the mail but the only inserts it contained was whether I wanted to delegate my vote to the board or not. Why would I delegate my vote to the board when: Using the maintennce fee metric, the board performance has been poor There is no central site or communique' (electronic or physical) to find out anything about the board, who you are, and what your opinions are. There is no central site or communique' (electronic or physical) to find out what the agenda for the meeting is and what your opinions are, what the plan of actions are, what you are contending for Moreover, the requirment that we have to attend in person to listen in and voice our opinion is ludicrous in this day and age. I work for a technology company and most of our customers use either Microsoft Live Meeting or Cisco Webex to allow remote particpation in meetings. Both Microsoft and Cisco own all the infrastructure needed in our global data centers for this service. The Board would simply have to pay for a fee to use such a service and provide the dial-in information \ computer connection info to join. Owners can simply download the client from either company's web-site and particpate in the meeting in an Audio only mode by dialing in from a standard telephone or hearing Audio and seeing any PowerPoint presentation that is being used from their computer. Here are two URLs for you to look up each service: Microsoft Live Meeting: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/livemeeting/HA102030111033.aspx - note you can buy 5 professional users for $77.10 and allow up to 1,250 participants in the meeting. That would more than cover the number of owners who actually may call in. Cisco Web-ex: http://www.webex.com/lpintl/us/sem/web_conferencing2.htm?CMP=KNC-sem&TrackID=1011901&hbxref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dwebex%26src%3DIE-SearchBox%26FORM%3DIE8SRC&CMP=CMP=KNC-sem&goid=WebexUS_1011901 Given the devestating impact to the value of our property, we are at a very important fork in the road. On road 1, we do nothing and allow our property to reach zero value. On road 2, we actually put a plan in place to achieve lower maintenance fees (i.e. reduce expenditure, increase revenue, etc). We also find a lawyer willing to take on a "class action suit" against the government entities who have singled out time-share owners raising taxes higher than not only other condominiminum owners but hotels as well. Class Action Suit: The one arguement I have heard why increased taxes is justified does NOT hold water. That is, one blogger said that the non-residents cost the government more than residents due to the public services that are required to keep non-locals safe. My response is two-fold: 1) Other Condominuem Owners: Show me the empirical evidence of the governments costs that are explicit to providing safety to tourists. Second, show me that these costs are not re-couped in other ways such as the sales tax and resort taxes that are also paid by non-locals. 2) Hotels: The fact that there is disparity in the rate hotels pay vs. timeshares is a tremendous unjustice. Hotels are owned by big business, timeshares are owned by individual families. So the issue is this, charging higher taxes to time-share owners only hurts timeshare owners. Hawaii as a destination continues to be a place that attracks renters. Hotels will continue to have non-local tourists using their rooms and many time share owners are having to rent their units just to pay their soaring maintanence fees. So even if we take the argument that non-locals cost the government proportionately more than locals, that only applies to the justification for disparity between local condominum owners and timeshare owners. It does NOT make any sense for the disparity between time-shares and hotels. It would be also interesting to gather the data on how many hotel rooms exist in Maui vs. Time-share units. Given this logic, I can only conclude that the government of Hawaii is exploiting time-share owners because we are non-local, individual familes, who are un-organized and represent no political threat. On the other hand, hotels chains as Starwood and Marriott, have deep pockets and paid for legal teams and full time political lobbyists. This then means a portion of society has been sectioned off and exploited, thus the basis for a "class action suit." I would suggest the participants in such a suit would all timeshare owners in Maui. Maintenance Fees: I would suggest a detailed root cause analysis report needs to be completed on all the reasons why maintenance fees have soared. For each reason, an associated mitigation must be identfied. It is these mitigations that should be the on the agenda for the owner meetings and communcated to ALL OWNERS prior to the meeting. As an example, I understandt that many others have not paid their maintenance fees, having the impact of a reduction in revenue. The question I have is this, what is Starwood and the board doing to rent these units to non-owners and explictly what portion of that revenue is shared by Starwood and the HOA. It would seem to me that a majority of the rental income should come back to the HOA and only a small % fee should be paid to Starwood for their service in renting their unit. My logic is this - apparently it is our maintance fees which cover the operation of the property. If we bear the brunt of the impact why don't we also gain the lion share of the assocated rental revenue? This is another area that an action plan should be put in place. I look forward to your thoughtful response. Kind Regards Jonathan Ruiz Owner