AGM 2008 (november 8th)

Hi again

If the Townhall  agrees to grant LFO  to Phase 2 based on a contractual cooperation between the two phases I will agree with Max. This will ensure that phase 1 still controls thier own descissions. If developer has 70 unsold apartments in phase 2 and 30-35 in phase 1 they are very close to have the majority in votings. I find it very important that they will guaratee payments of fees in the future, (of course they will only be reliable for apartments the own)

Grethe

Hi Grethe and others,

To clarify: the proposal is indeed a contractual agreement between two independent communities with us in the leading role. Definitely not a merger as this would be impossible as you need 100% of all owners in both communities to agree to that.

Max

Some interesting points and ideas so thanks Gericom and Solgre. Just to be clear I am and always have been in favour of a link and close cooperation between phase 1 and 2. I am also in favour of maintaining community fees at their current level and reducing costs to stabilise our finances. My post on Saturday was intended to be balanced so that people could make up their own minds and was not a statement of my position.

Max and Maximo have been working on the proposed agreement with phase 2. Not only is the letter that Max refers to not publicly known, the rest of the committee is not even aware of it. Proper legal advice is required and it is better to take slightly longer and get this right then rush into an agreement that we regret later.

I agree that it would be good to obtain some sort of guarantee that Arrohabitatge will pay their fees to phase 2 as well as phase 1 although I do not regard this as winning concession. We are only trying to ensure that they do what they should be doing anyway.

Max is in favour of retaining GICS because of the relationship between Maximo and the town councillor responsible for infrastructure. She rings him once or twice a day at the moment. This is because she wants to solve the problems that are holding up the phase 2 FOL. I do not think that pleasing her on the phase 2 licence is sufficient to force her to do something about the road. My view is that she needs to agree a resolution to the road situation as part of the deal as she’ll lose interest in us once she gets what she wants.

This message was last edited by davmunster on 10/27/2008.

Hi David and others

I am not at all sure that my opinion is right.

But if we deny to cooperate with phase 2 - where will that leave us? It seems like we do not think that the legal report will be resolved with this matter. (and I think it would be cheaper to developer to install new waterpipes for phase 2) The Townhall might not loose their interest. But what benefits will that give us?

I agree that the Townhall will loose interest as soon as FLO has been granted. But if we can get a bankgurantee for fees from unsold apartments for a period, an accessroad(provided by the Townhall, maybe built on the land of someone else than Renfe), an agreement to share several costs. By this we have acheived several advantages.  I know Arohabitatge is supposed to pay fees anyway, but they will loose interest too if FLO is granted, and we will need to go to court for every euro.

I agree that it is wrong that Max and Maximo are working their own way. This is a complex matter and all committee members ought to be involved. (including legal advice)

Grethe


This message was last edited by solgre on 10/27/2008.

I’m not working in any way with Maximo. 
In a committee meeting with all except Ana attending Maximo told all of us that he was asked to write a letter to the councilor with possible solutions for phase II. Later this letter was send by e-mail to Hernan and me and possibly handed over to Javier as well. Weeks ago I spoke less than five minutes with Maximo about his letter.
We only discussed the contents in the committee meeting when it was proposed for the agenda of the AGM (I don't even know who put it on the agenda). David was there as well and Maximo summarized his letter in that meeting. I told David early on about Maximo’s ideas.
 
The proposal I made yesterday was made up by me without any input from Maximo.I just thought about the situation during and after the last committee meeting on Thursday which David attended as well. Maximo doesn’t even know what I proposed on EOS as I haven’t spoken with him since Thursday. 
 
To summarize: there is no hidden sub committee or whatever. I was just thinking aloud and alone on EOS about possible strategies.
 
Max

This message was last edited by max! on 10/27/2008.

Hi Max,

Re. the proposed contractual agreement - I don't understand.

You cannot contract with a party (Phase II Community) who do not exist.

Any agreement the Phase I Community come to with Arrohabitage will not be binding on the Phase II community and likewise anything Arrohabitage agrees with Phase I will not be binding on the Phase II Community.

You assume the Phase II community would wish to contract with Phase I as a junior partner to help bail out Phase I's budget shortfall - why should they?

How, by holding Phase II to ransom by threatening their future potential completion, do you expect Phase II to want to contract with Phase I.

Where is your 'leverage' now?

Hi James,
 
I understand your confusion. I’ll try explain how it could work based on my knowledge of the process. The following is not based on any discussion etc. Just my personal understanding of the situation.
 
I assume that eventually we (phase I) agree to a draft contract with phase II. The moment that exists the town hall will issue the license to phase II with the condition that the promoter signs that contract. Arrohabitatge will then be obligated to establish the phase II community with them as sole owners. That’s the normal situation to get a community started. You can’t complete before establishing a community of owners. I assume that it will be written in the statutes of the phase II community which Arrohabitatge has to establish. In this way phase II would be bound by the contract as they are dependent on phase I for water and electricy supply. A change of statutes is very difficult as it requires 100% of the owners to agree.
 
The other thing is that I certainly don’t want to hold phase II at ransom. My minority proposal is that we do agree to the demands of the town hall after making sure we get guarantees for Arrohabitatges payments of fees. I don’t propose to use the leverage we have for more than that quite restricted purpose. I want to leave out the 1.8 million claim etc. For me it’s important that the net result would be that both phases have a lower budget by sharing costs. 
 
Hopes this makes things clearer.
 
Max

Hi Max

Can you just clear this up for me, You say if the contracts are signed for Phase 2, Arrohabitatge will then be obligated to establish the phase II community with them as sole owners. Do you mean Arrohabitage will be in control of the community for phase 2. If so, for how long, when would the owners of phase 2 be able to vote in a new committee. Does anyone have any idea of how many apartments Arrohabitage own in phase 2.

Westport

Hi westport,
When the Phase 2 community is formed Arrohabatge will initially own all the apartments. As completions take place their ownership will obviously be reduced. Some prospective owners have already cancelled, others will try to avoid completing for as long as possible and others will simply not complete at all prefering (or not having an option but) to loose their stage payments rather than complete. We can't be sure but for these reasons it is possible Arrohabitatge will own more than 50% of Phase 2 for some time. They will in any event continue to own a significant number of apartments in Phase 2. 
If they appoint themselves as the committee (something which they forgot to do in Phase 1). It will be 1 year before the new owners can vote them out.

A number of people have told me that Perla is looking for proxies telling people it is time for a change. She is working for Arrohabatge so I hope no one will be fooled by her. The only way they can win is if to many people are complacent and don't use their vote. If you want to give your vote to someone independant Janmet is going to the meeting and has offered to act as proxy. There are several other EOS members who will be there but so far they have not publicly offered to act as proxies.

I think Perla must have a very short memory, if she thinks she is going to get our votes. Can't she remember the time when we all flew over to see our apartments, and were kicked out after 2 or 3 minutes. She would not even let us measure the windows to get curtains made. If she was the last person left on this planet, she still would not get my vote. What a cheek. Talk about two faced. I am sure everyone will see through her fluttering eyelashes.

Westport

Some people already gave me their proxy vote, so I’m willing to accept more. Preferably by PM as I think this is a tiny bit more believable in case of a legal dispute over them compared to e-mail.
 
I have outlined earlier on what my positions are in my ‘minority viewpoint’. No budget raise and the negotiation of a solid, realistic deal with phase II to be presented at a future EGM.
 
Max

Interestingly, I have received a phone call today from Perla who said that it was very important that I was represented at the meeting next week and offered to represent me.  I agreed with her and told her that I thought it was so important that even though we got back fron Spain yesterday my wife is returning for the meeting and that we must try to keep the developer out at all costs!  I always found Perla to be (and I am sure she still is) a very nice person but I am a little confused as to why she felt the need to call me.

She said that she was not representing the developer but simply letting me know where the meeting was at which point I thanked her and infromed her that I would post this message.

It is VITAL that we remain in control of the community.   Has anyone else had a call?  I would have thought that it would be imperative for any proxys to be posted via Max or Davmunster.

SRS

Hi SRS,
Thanks for keeping us informed.  Perla doesn't work directly for the developer these days but is acting an agent for them and is a frequent visitor to their offices.  Ana from the developer's office is contacting Spanish speaking owners and Perla is contacting foreigners in what appears to be a coordinated way. I don't think this is a coincidence. 
We will negotiate with Arrohabitadge with the aim of getting the best possible deal for residents in both Phase 1 and 2 but we need to negotiate from a position of strength and I hope that their efforts to collect proxies are less successful than ours as the consequences of the developer taking control do not bear thinking about.

Hi SRS

I would not believe Perla if she told me tomorrow morning was going to be bright and tomorrow night was going to be dark.

The latest development is that Arrohabitatge proposes a ‘Mancomunidad’ (a sort of superstructure above the communities) for phase I, II and even III. Their lawyer has drafted a complete statute for this structure. As it are 16 pages in legal Spanish I can’t easily summarize them, but essentially their proposal is a complete community which governs the common areas of the three phases. This community would be like our community and have an AGM, a committee, a president etc.  
 
For phase I this would mean that we would still exist as an independent community, but for all common matters we would only have a vote according to our quota in the bigger community. In their draft the swimming pools seem to be excluded so they wouldn’t be shared. The rest (road, water, electricity, etc) and service suppliers for these would be ruled by this new body. Costs for these would also be shared by the three phases. (there is a provision that phase III can withdraw when they are self sufficient).
 
It’s a quite common solution for developments like ours, but accepting this would be worse than the existing proposals as we would be vulnerable again to the developers votes (they hold most of phase II in the beginning and all of phase III now). We could be forced to accept internal rules for the common areas, new suppliers, etc. Based on our earlier experiences with Arrohabitatge this would surely be the worst proposal. 
 
So please attend the AGM or hand over a proxy to make sure that we won’t be forced into this. It would be a major setback and could easily cost us years before we are back in charge as owners of our own properties (which would be true for phase II and III owners as well)
 
Max

This message was last edited by max! on 11/4/2008.

Apologies, as I am sure that this will already have been posted but exactly where and at what time is the meeting.
Thanks
SRS

copied from the notice calling the meeting:
Hereby, and in accordance with the Horizontal Property Act, as President, I would like to let you know that the next General Meeting will take place at FLATOTEL (Torrequebrada, Benalmádena) See place: http://www.flatotelcostadelsol.com/situa.php?Idioma=ES on 8th November 2008, at 10:30 am. This is the first meeting with the second meeting at 11:00 am.