Frankly, I have concerns about the (small, local) Tropical Sands management company's ability to handle this crisis effectively, particularly since they also manage 5 other (
all of them Gulf-front) timeshare properties on FMB, plus another (also Gulf-front) timeshare property on Sanibel Island,
all of them having obviously sustained serious Ian damage.
Could this be more simultaneous crisis at more properties than a small, local, timeshare management company is actually equipped or able to effectively address / handle?
That said, I find myself wondering if, when the TSR reconstruction cost / insurance reimbursement / current code standards math is undertaken, the 13 destroyed ground level units could / would just essentially become "stilt support" in a rebuild, in order to remain a timeshare property and still comply with current codes. Then again, that may not even be a realistic (or legal) option, since pursuing that option would surely mean first buying out the ownership rights of +/- 50 weeks x 13 units or about 650 unit / weeks. Maybe that's not even a practical (or lawful) option, I dunno. Just thinking out loud...
The devastation of Fort Myers Beach is almost beyond comprehension. Timeshare properties aside, one has to wonder if it can or will come back as anything even remotely resembling its' former self or if instead (as rapmarks has previously mentioned), it just becomes land for the footings for (altogether too many) new high rise condos.
Your concerns are valid, and the OBX timeshare resorts saw the same issues after hurricane Isabel.
The way a small local management company handled the rebuilds at two timeshare resorts, Bodie Island Beach Club and Sea Ranch II, led to the end of both as timeshares although both properties were completely rebuilt. Another resort, Ocean Villas I had the problem of one of their nine units being completely destroyed and unable to be rebuilt under existing building regulations, but that self-managed HOA handled that and is still around.
The management company that handled Sea Ranch II and Bodie Island Beach Club, both of which had serious damage, had a provision in their management contract that they would receive 15% to "supervise" any contracts on properties they managed. Insurance receipts did not cover that, and it was a large amount at both resorts so they took it from somewhere else. At Sea Ranch II, they were sued over that not being allowed under state law, and settled that lawsuit. What they did to carve out money for their "supervision" fee at Sea Ranch II was to not restore a commercial area and one or two units that belonged to the resort's former developer who still owned the next door Sea Ranch hotel. That former developer sued the HOA in one lawsuit over that and the management company in another. The rest of the timeshare units had been restored and the resort reopened but the HOA did not have the funds to contest the lawsuits and caved in, leading to the property being sold off under court order and the developer buying it back in himself.
What the management company did at Bodie Island Beach Club was to take the money for their "supervision" fee out of the HOA operating funds. The main beachfront building and the smaller north building were fully restored and reopened. The smaller south building was restored except for a pesky electrical issue they had not resolved so it did not reopen. However, in September, due to that removal of operating funds, the resort closed down for the rest of the year as it was out of operating funds. That led the former developer to team up with a local real estate operator to try to take over the resort and end it as a timeshare. The former developer still owned over a hundred "developer weeks" and his ally started actively buying off season weeks playing on the concern of owners over the resort shutdown. Bodie Island Beach Club also had whole ownership condos in the resort who voted along with the timeshare owners, and they secured those as allies. Together they secured majority voting control of the HOA. They still had a problem of forcing a vote to end the resort as a timeshare but pulled an underhanded legal manuver to accomplish that. They filed a lawsuit over a rather minor administrative issue against the HOA, which the HOA did not have the funds to fight in court and the issue was probably not worth it anyway. They got the case in front of a Superior Court judge who did not like timeshares, and with no one else there to object, of course won their motion, but afterward, their attorney told the judge there was another "little" issue that maybe they could put in the same court order, and that was since the resort had been sufficiently destroyed in the hurricane they needed a vote ordered on whether to rebuild. The HOA had no notice of that issue being brought up and the individual members were not even parties to lawsuit. At that point, the resort had already been rebuilt. The judge told the lawyer to go ahead and add that to the order, too. Many of the summer timeshare owners banded together and raised money to hire a lawyer and filed a motion to set aside that court order, but the judge who entered it had rotated out of the district and the new judge who rotated in after hearing the facts expressed sympathy but said he would not change Judge Griffin's order. The members were unable to raise the funds to take it up on appeal, unfortunately.
That one local management company was the cause of two member controlled timeshare resorts biting the dust even though both were actually rebuilt. The woman who ran that management company subsequently sold it and moved out of town. Whatever she had to settle for with the Sea Ranch II developer is the only financial consequence for her of what she did.
On a brighter note, two self-managed resorts (the HOA directly hired a manager and staff instead of farming that out to a management company) probably had the most efficient rebuilds on the OBX, and did so without any special assessments. Those were Ocean Villas I and Ocean Villas II.
Ocean Villas I was the resort that lost one of its units which could not be rebuilt. They negotiated an arrangement to buy a cottage across the street as a replacement, using insurance money for the destroyed unit for much of the cost and an SBA loan for the balance. They ran that by the owners of the destroyed unit with that as one option and division of the insurance proceeds on that unit as the other. The units owners voted to divid the insurance proceeds. Technically that should have meant the deep off season owners getting the same amount as prime season owners, but the HOA led some discussions not only among owners, but also to get the NC Real Estate Commission's blessing, to work out a formula where payouts varied with season, and everyone ended up buying in to the proposal. The members who owned in that unit signed their ownership back to the HOA and received their checks in return.
