At the 2026 ROC-TBMA Summit in Orlando, Easy Reserve Study® (EZRS®) spent time with timeshare board members and resort managers from legacy and independent resorts. The conversations started in different places: hurricanes, concrete, new statutory requirements, and refinancing. They kept landing on the same number, the maintenance fee.
Every board wants to keep fees down. Every resort needs major repairs funded. When those goals collide, the fee usually wins this year, and the repair bill waits for next year, a little bigger. What we heard in Orlando was one story in four parts: what waiting costs, what happens when a surprise lands on top of it, who helps you see it coming, and what all of it means for the resort’s future.
1. Waiting Has a Price Tag
Jim Laidlaw, a resort board member, put the fear plainly:
“The biggest fear is a lot of them don’t want to put it in the budget because they don’t want to increase the maintenance fees, but if you wait too long, it’s going to be too late.”
A fee increase shows up on every owner’s statement. A deferred repair doesn’t, until the bill arrives. Deferral doesn’t cancel the cost. It shortens the runway to pay for it, so the eventual increase is steeper or arrives as a special assessment.
The fix is to make the hidden cost visible. Put two funding scenarios side by side: complete the repair on schedule, or push it out three years. Show the board what each path does to the reserve balance and to the fee owners pay each year. Once both paths are on one page, the board stops debating whether to raise fees and starts choosing which increase it prefers. EZRS runs funding scenarios against a multi-decade cash flow projection, so that comparison is ready before the budget meeting.
Showing the cost of waiting works when the future goes to plan. At Sea Club IV, it didn’t.
2. Surprises Don’t Wait Their Turn
Mary Sprangler, Vice President of Sea Club IV Resort, described back-to-back hurricanes followed by a structural review that led to more than $1 million in concrete restoration.
“Two very, very big things happened close in time, neither of which we had budgeted for.”
Resorts already juggle fast-wearing interiors and long-life exteriors on refurbishment cycles that overlap. An unplanned repair draws from the same reserve fund. When one hits, the board needs three answers quickly: which scheduled projects slip, by how long, and what it would cost to keep them on track.
The best time to find those answers is before the storm. Test the current plan against a major unplanned repair and see where the reserve balance dips. A board that has run that exercise already knows its options when the bill arrives.
Some surprises come from the weather. Others come from new legislation.
3. Know What the Rules Require Before the Bill Arrives
Hannah Jones, LCAM, Director of Association Governance at Vacatia, described what managers need as requirements change:
“It’s really making sure that we have the right partners in place that have the knowledge and the tools to help us implement the new statutory requirements.”
New requirements bring inspections, studies, and deadlines, and the repair work they uncover is usually the costly part. Bring reserve specialists and engineers in early, and ask them for more than a report. Ask for costs and dates you can put straight into the funding plan. A new requirement then becomes a line in the plan instead of a separate crisis at the next board meeting.
EZRS tracks state reserve regulations and helps customers meet state requirements, and every plan uses funding methods aligned with the National Reserve Study Standards.
Add up the deferred repairs, the surprises, and the new requirements, and you arrive at the question several summit sessions asked outright: what’s next for this resort?
4. Today’s Repairs Decide Tomorrow’s Options
Sessions on financing and repurposing legacy resorts looked past this year’s budget. Whether a board plans to refinance, reinvest, or repurpose, the first questions are the same: what does the property need, and what’s in the reserve fund to pay for it? A current capital plan answers both. A study from five years ago can’t.
Every deferred repair from lesson 1 shows up here as a narrower set of options.
The Thread: A Plan That Stays Current
Each lesson depends on the same foundation: a capital plan built on today’s costs, balances, and conditions, not the ones from the last study. EZRS keeps every resort’s plan current between studies. Managers compare funding scenarios before the budget meeting, see a recommended contribution for each path, and bring board-ready reports that explain each fee decision to owners. Management companies running several resorts see every property in one portfolio view.
Talk with our team about your resort’s capital plan.
About Easy Reserve Study (EZRS)
EZRS® makes reserve management and capital planning easy—from collecting and managing data to building plans and keeping them current between studies. Built for property management companies, resort management companies, reserve professionals, and the boards they serve, EZRS® brings reserve data, funding scenarios, budgets, and board-ready reports into one platform.
