STOP COMPLAINING - YOU LUCKY PEOPLE

I read this blog every day and am surprised at some of the "petty" complaints that I read about Condado - we "hope to be" owners at the Golf Suite apartments phase at Condado one day but are told by PW that "they are delayed" - we have all paid our 40% 1st and 2nd payments back in 2007 and then NOTHING - I know from the many posts that all GS owners and their solicitors are being given the same "run-around" by Polaris - no money back - just wait because this phase is delayed - (till when ??????? no answers) - we were promised completion in "Summer 2009" and now NO ANSWERS - would love to be part of the community - paying our share of charges - paying over-the-top for our drinks in the surgery - worrying about dogs walking around the resort - hoping that we can reduce the community charges, trying to get the best reception for our T.V's,  worrying about the washing lines, etc , etc.

Can I PLEASE ask for HELP from all current owners - if you get any opportunity to put pressure on P.W. to ask about starting to build Golf Suites PLEASE do so - we would love to be contributing to community charges - we would love to be paying for drinks/food at Condado to boost Polaris profits and make this resort a success - we would love to be "Condadonians" and part of the community  - HELP us all to help you and become part of the "family"  - hope to see you all (one day ) - regards - Patony 

will polaris not offer you an alternative on jardines or naranjos to buy a non completion?why not ask,they are finished and the gs are a long way away

Hi

Does it not say in your contact that they have to be ready by such a date(usually in months from signature).

We did not read our contract too well and took everyones word for true what fools we were. We were told that we should be completed this month but they wanted us to complete last September we managed to stretch it out till December. They threatened us with loss of deposits and got quite heavy with our solicitor,

I hope you manage to get sorted but it might be worth looking at the contract you signed unless contracts are just one way when it matters and get your solicitor to really pressurise them.

Good Luck

Hi Lojnej

It is great to hear there are some other people on this forum from Halifax.

Hi Mark,

No Problem have pm you.

Simon

Hi Simon,

Could you please email - markbentley@blueyonder.co.uk as I still can't receive private messages. I am waiting for this feature to be activated.

Hi Patony

Good way to ask those who are already owners at Condodo to help by accusing them of being petty complainers, this will definitely motivate them to help.

Particularly when they are attempting to make sure the resort is run in an efficient cost affective and safe way for all present and FUTURE residents and owners. Some of the dogs you mention are wild dogs, who knows what diseases they may have but hay lets not bother about that who cares if some child gets bitten or caches a disease from the mess they leave. Or having no communications system at the moment (well except in Polaris World building) so people who live on the resort can communicate with the outside world without having to pay mobile charges which often have a poor signal anyway, or maybe to call for an Ambulance for someone with a dog bite or worse. As far as complaining about the community charges go, we are all happy to pay our fair share, the aim of those that are taking PW & RPM to task on this, is to attempt to make sure we are not ripped off by them just charging what they want, which would definitely have been the case if it hadn’t been for those petty complainers.

However turning to your petty complaint, which by the way I do not consider it to be. PW have put a considerable part of the resort on hold for now and whilst not being good news for those that have ordered properties in the affected areas is probably a necessary action, although they have sold some properties in these areas they haven’t sold enough to build them, but when the market improves they will start to build again. The issue of people paying deposits and not having a realistic completion date has been complained about sorry discussed on the forum numerous times particularly on the general forum. PW will tell you your contract states that your property will be built within 18 months from them starting to build, but that time only starts when they start your phase of the complex. Maria de Castro from Costaluz Lawyers who advertise on this forum and she regularly gives free advice on the general forum, she says that this sort of contract is abusive and that in law they cannot have such an open ended contract, if they are not able to provide a realistic start time for your area of the development you would be entitled to your deposit back in full plus interest. If you are not prepared to wait then I would ask Maria about this for yourselves.

Phil

Guilty of petty complaining with no regrets

Hi All,

I'm new to the forum. We're owners in Los Naranjos,Jardin07. I am shocked at the most recent charges for monthly maintenance and would urge you to delay payment until we have have some justification for thisextortionate charge. We have written and asked for the following

1.Date of Last years owners meeting and a copy of the minutes

2.Justification of the 2008-2009 service charge differences

3. By item breakdown of each of the services and their charge.

4.Date of the next owners meeting.

We feel we have been somewhat misled by Parador who quoted 'no more then £150 per year for maintenace'! Now we are being asked to pay approx £1200 per year - even taking into account inflation and exchange rate this does not add up!

The only way we are going to make any changes, is to stand together and jointly refuse to be blackmailed, because this is what this charge amounts to.

How can we help? Are there actions ongoing? We'd be pleased to hear from you.

We were sold a lifestyle, not just an apartment. At the present time we have an apartment with no lifetyle!

Helen

Helen welcome to the forum, Sorry but delaying or withholding payments will end disaster & asking people to do so is out of order, It's happened on La torre and they are 1.5m Euros in debt and could be made bankrupt if one of the service companies call in their debt.

I for one agree they are extremley high but will pay my dues and work with the association to get the costs down to a sensible level without losing the level service.

Have you given your email address to either association yet to be kept in the loop of updates? if not let me know and I will pass them onto you.

Dan

I share your frustrations as I was originally told to expect around 600 Euros per year on La Isla. Hopefully this may still be achievable as there is not a huge amount for them to maintain. 396 properties multiplied by 600 Euros equals 237600 so should be more than enough / in fact too much in my opinion to pay for standing salaries each year.

You'll be lucky to find an apartment anywhere worth living with maintenance fees of £150 per year or even 600 euros per year !  Certainly not on a '5 star' resort which is what Condado was sold as. Don't believe everything a salesman tells you about anything !

Hopefully contributions will reduce once the various actions in hand take effect. However, refusing to pay will simply cause more problems with the final threat of potentially losing your property completely. We need to be patient and await the outcome of current negotiations.

Condado may have been sold as a 5 star resort but for now it doesn't have 5 star facilities. I am not suggesting that I won't pay but I do share other people's frustrations in as much as residents will be expected to foot the bill for the maintenance of a resort that is far from complete. Granted I will get complete on La Isla as per the contract but clearly not with any of the other facilities that were expected. Common sense approach to this is that surely Polaris do not feel they can charge a full resort maintenance fee for a resort that has practically none of the facilities complete. I appreciate that Condado is a 8 to 10 year programme of work, however, a level of pragmatism needs to be envoked by Polaris because how do they expect to charge full up prices for a sparsely finished resort. Surely this has to be done on an incremental basis.

Hi All

I understand your frustration at the community charges with regard to the lack of facilities at the moment however that isn’t what the community charge is based on, Thing like shops, bars, restaurants and golf courses are the businesses PW and others will run on the resort which have nothing to do with our community charge. The Community charge is for the infrastructure and services we have, so this would include things like communications, roads, gardens, pools and services like waste disposal street cleaning and grass cutting, I could go on but I am sure you know the kind of things. Those told to expect £150 per year were defiantly given wrong information, unless you are confusing this with Councel charges, which we will also pay at something like this amount??? Most people on the forum were told to expect about 60 to 70 euros per month for the Community Charge, which was in line with the amounts other PW complexes have been paying. However we have two significant differences to the other PW complexes in that PW have landed us with costs that we hadn’t bargained for like the cost of provision and maintenance of the outer ring road, which the pressure groups are trying to have changed, and they have included in our costs the provision and maintenance of the TV and Coms infrastructure. This along with the expensive maintenance and service contract PW have signed us up to has made our costs more expensive. The other issue that is relevant is that a resort the scale of Condado should have economy of scale on its side which should have reduced our costs but at the moment infrastructure has been provided which has to be paid for, which is for properties that haven’t been built yet, so we are paying for that also. The pressure groups on Condado are doing all they can to take PW & RPM to task on all areas of costs and I think they are doing a good job so far. It will be better when we have our proper community representatives in place I hope! But this will take some time to get established. The important thing is it will be a 5 star resort and when this is all sorted out we will be owners at one of the best resorts in Spain

Regards

Phil

I totally agree Phil. However, I can not believe anyone was told the community charge would be 150euros per year, per month maybe. I was clearly told expect to pay around to £90 - 100 yes £'s not euros.

I'm sure you will all stop complaining in a few years time - YOU LUCKY PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shall I take it that you have no issues with what you are paying then?

For information I was told in May 2007 to expect annual fees of around 600Euros on La Isla. Just to reiterate my previous message, there are 396 properties on la Isla and for arguements sake lets say we base the community charge on 600 Euros for each dwelling per year this equals £237,600 Euros. Can you really see La Isla requiring so much maintenance because I don't see it. Granted there will be the gatehouse, small garden areas and potentially the bar area (no-one seems to know if this will happen or not so we may end up with nothing on La Isla) and 240k Euros as a minimum will fund an awful lot of upkeep.

I wouldn't call people genuine concerns complaining. People have a general right to be cautious as there should be a general expectation that people expect to see what they were shown in all marketing literature, etc. If Polaris World Partners are mis-selling properties and mis-leading people into sales with false information then Polaris needs to be all over these designated world partners like a rash.

Hi Daniels

Welcome to the forum.

I can only report the amounts most people on the forum had been quoted, which as I said was about 60 to 70 euros per month and as I alsosaid the person who was told £150 per year was either seriously misled or may have confused community charge with Council charge. Certainly if the actions of the mainly Spanish group on Condado are successful, in putting pressure on PW & RPM to reduce costs, then you are correct we will hopefully have nothing to complain about in the future well other how to keep the beer cold.

Phil

Hi Mark

The community charge covers more than the maintenance of your immediate property we also have to pay for all the provision and maintenance of roads including the outer ring road, street lighting, pools all gardening services, street cleaning, rubbish removal and so on, and so on. If the costs are reduced by 25% as has been indicated then this would be more realistic. As thing are at the moment the existing penthouses have the lowest community charge applied to them. Which bring me to another problem in that charges don’t seem to be being applied in a fair and understandable way, but that’s another story.

Phil

My take on it.

The communty fees are made up of the cost of maintaining your zone of the complex ( Jardines, Naranjos, La Isla etc ) plus your share of maintaining the common infrastructure  

Looking at the 2009 budget and doing some rough calc's (   It has to be rough because PW will not tell us how the fees are calculated ) I come up with a figure of approx €1.7M for the maintainance of the common infrastructure, lets assume that this cost is shared amounst all completed properties.  So given that at the moment there are 2972 completed properties, each properties share works out at around €570/annum or about €47/month.  As new phases are completed they will share in that cost.  So when La Isla is finished and either PW or the new owners start paying fees the infrastructure cost should drop to €502/annum or about €41/month, not a great deal - but when you add in the golf suites, all the planned Villa Janas, phase two penthouses, Mirador etc this will fail lower.     Again doing some rough calc's the AVERAGE fees should be around €109 at the moment, when La Isla come on line this will only drop to €103.  Significant saving can only be made by reducing the daft prices we are paying for infrastructure and admin fees,  at the current levels it would take another 3000+ completed properties to get the fees down to €80/month.   So lets all hope that they ( RPM ) do get the maintenance fees reduced by 25% as this will help get us somewhere towards a responable figure.

Phil

Mark you're also forgetting that nice "little" lake you have around your properties.

I think PW made a huge mistake on Condado with regards to the community fees.

From what I understand they did exactly what they have done on the other sites, appointed a management company who are complient to their bidding and hoped that us owners, in our ignorance, would just accept what we were told.

BIG MISTAKE as we all have the advantage of hindsight and can see the terrible mess other sites have gotten into with accumulated huge debts.

That said we have some hard working people who are trying their hardest to reduce these fees and questioning PW and RPM all the way to justify their figures and i think that has been one hell of a shock to PW and RPM as they have very quickly had to withdraw and re think everything.

So for me the bottom line is this..

We will get some reduction in the fees we were originally told. (The pressure must really be on RPM to sort this out fast as they currently have no source of income other than from PW.)

When the fees are announced we must ALL pay our share, even if we are still not happy they are correct, or we will be in the same situation as at La Torre. Lets not forget at the end of the day most of the buck stops with us all as we are owners.

We can then as a group, via our representatives, continue to work with RPM or their replacement to manage the community charges properly.

So come on everyone lets think positive...