In timeshare resorts, homeowners' associations do a lot of the things that you would expect them to do, from auditing the books to collecting delinquent maintenance fee payments to ensuring that you are paying the lowest possible premiums for insurance coverage. In many cases, homeowners' associations also keep track of things such as unit foreclosures, resales, and rentals — working to promote them when necessary or to clamp down on timeshare unit owners who try to skirt the rules of the resort. The list of responsibilities is long even when it is standard, to be sure.

Sometimes, though, timeshare homeowners' associations have to deal with extraordinary things that you might not anticipate based on your previous experience owning, say, a condominium. For instance, in 2004, an estimated 25 percent of timeshare resorts in the United States — most of them in Florida — were battered by Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne. The losses ranged from power outages to complete destruction, with at least thirty timeshare resorts having to stay closed well into 2005, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal's Real Estate Journal.

As you may have surmised, the challenge for homeowners' associations was multifold at these timeshare communities and far beyond the traditional scope of day-to-day management responsibilities. For starters, the homeowners' associations were tasked with:

• Keeping owners apprised of when repairs would be made, and when units would again be available for use

• Dealing with insurance companies to ensure coverage was provided

• Assessing any needed repairs that were not covered by insurance

• Finding local contractors at reasonable prices to make those uninsured repairs

• Using reserve funds responsibly, or levying special assessments, to pay for additional repairs

Other timeshare resorts have faced other unique challenges. For instance, back when timeshares first began to be developed in the United States, they did not typically include things like restaurants, spas, and other amenities that are in high demand today. Homeowners' associations were in the business of simply managing the business of the resort's units, such as taxes and property maintenance. They did not have to be experts in everything else under the sun, from pricing a hamburger competitively to hiring qualified massage therapists.

Today, of course, a resort without a restaurant is not likely to get a whole lot of attention from timeshare vacation-goers, and spas continue to be all the rage — which means that homeowners' associations sometimes need to take on the burden of managing an ever more complex series of services. In these types of situations, expertise is required on many levels. That type of specific knowledge base can be hard to find, especially when the homeowners' association members are scattered all over the country and, perhaps, the world.

It is for this reason, in part, that the American Resort Development Association offers assistance to do-it-yourself homeowners' associations by holding regional meetings full of tips and advice. Their experts fly around the country providing firsthand experience with things such as contracts, legal maneuvers, and other specialized information that homeowners' associations might need to know. You can learn more about the services that the American Resort Development Association provides at the group's Web site, www.arda.org.

The American Resort Development Association also works to generate support for ARDA-ROC, its grass-roots political action committee. The committee's mission is to fight any and all legislation that it feels is written in a way that could hurt timeshare owners financially or otherwise. Its efforts are usually at the state and federal levels, and they are important as the timeshare industry continues to evolve.

Some of the would-be laws that ARDA-ROC has fought against include attempts to limit the second home mortgage deduction, to impose state sales taxes on timeshares, and to tax timeshare owners as transient occupants, just as hotel guests are taxed in many states. If you end up sitting on your homeowners' association board of directors, these may be some of the issues that you will end up facing in addition to day-to-day management concerns.

In general, though, your homeowners' association's primary responsibilities will include holding any contracted companies — including management firms and maintenance workers — responsible for doing their jobs, setting the annual maintenance fees, and calling for special assessments. What do the maintenance and special assessment fees constitute? Read on.