Polo Towers Las Vegas - 2009 Maintenance

[MAZxxx]

I've just received my 2009 maintenance fees for my 2 bed unit at the Polo Towers and find that they have gone up by a whopping 13% to $926.00. After paying a special assessment fee last year, I feel this leap is quite excessive and would like to hear other owners views of the situation.

I also wonder if they've bought up enough units by now to be able to charge just what they like because it does say in the accompanying letter that "you should expect increased annual reserve contributions to gradually build reserves and to allow for increases in the cost of replacement items due to inflation". I though we'd just done that with the recent special assessment.

Anyway, I'm now beginning to wish I took their first buy back offer of $7000 plus costs last year. As I only visit Vegas each year, I don't think there's much point in me holding on to it at this cost.

 

[dougp26364]

They're to high compared to other options in Vegas. I contacted Devbuyback and decided to accept their offer.

We've decided to sell out for a couple of reasons. We don't really need these units and wouldnt be able to use them next year and probably the next year. We like to cruise and own to many timeshares to be able to take a cruise without really juggling our current timeshare ownerships. That $2,100 (Villa's and Suite's units plus club membership fee's) would go a long ways towards paying for a yearly cruise. I can use the money from the proceeds to buy one other EOY timeshare to match up with the current EOY ownership we have and still have dollars in the bank (IF we want to do this). After 2 years of double digit increases, still very little money going into reserves and DRI's history of that large SA, I'm a little scared to hold onto this ownership. Especially if I'm not making good use of these units.

Maybe a few years down the road, we might regret selling. But right now it makes more sense for us to sell rather than hold on to the units.

 

[MAZxxx]

I think your right and if you don't mind me asking, how much did they offer for your unit? Was it a 2 bed suite or villa? I may well be looking to sell myself in the near future because I can stay at the Flamingo on my week for LESS than my maintenance fees and I also get the amenities and dining options not available at P.T.

I guess this is what the P.T. management want, for us to get fed up of the price increases and sell up.

 

[dougp26364]

I think your right and if you don't mind me asking, how much did they offer for your unit? Was it a 2 bed suite or villa? I may well be looking to sell myself in the near future because I can stay at the Flamingo on my week for LESS than my maintenance fees and I also get the amenities and dining options not available at P.T.

I guess this is what the P.T. management want, for us to get fed up of the price increases and sell up.

2 bedroom Suite's Skyview unit, $4,000 less $450 for closing costs. 2 bedroom Villa's unit $5,000 less $450 closing costs.

While the numbers aren't all that great, they are better than if I were trying to sell them on E-bay and quicker than if I were trying to sell them on Redweek. More than anything it's been the fact that I don't see myself being able to use our DRI points for the next couple of years and the difference between the cost and value of the points is to far out of whack. That, and they're STILL not putting anything of substance into the capital reserve fund. The Villa's is around $50 and the Suite's was down to a little over $30 per 2 bedroom unit. It won't be long before they'll be asking for another special assessment IMO. At these costs the units just aren't worth it to us anymore. Perhaps if they were the only timeshares we owned it might be different but, for us that's not the case.

FWIW, I own two Marriott resorts that have higher MF's and less flexiblity than our Polo Towers units. However, they each have close to $200 per unit going into the capital reserve fund, they've been maintained better than Polo Towers and they have more amenities than Polo Towers. So it's not just the high MF's that got me to move. It's been the 10 year history with DRI, the fact I needed to get rid of some of our ownership weeks (owned to many) and the expense vs value of that particular resort.