Today's Vote

Phil,

The 86% comes from Jeb's second post.

Ted

Oh yer, Doh!  Jeb where did that figure come from?

Phil

To answer  Tarapa's post first

I am Michael Parsons and have been elected to represent my Garden Jardines 4 as President. I have quite a large number of contacts within my Garden but if anyone here from Jardines 4 has not contacted me before please do so as i need a contact for all our Graden. I will be making a formal introducion as soon as practical but am awaiting address details from the Administrators.

The question of the 86%

This figure was quoted at the meeting 82.14% PW and 17.86% Owners and from my understanding it means that the owners control 17.86% of the votes if all properties were built Mirador and Golf Suites etc then and assuming all sold then Owners would have 100% when La Isla and any other part is handed over and when any unsold properties are sold the owners % goes up and the PW% goes down.

So in any vote PW have the say? part of the reason at the meeting the people asked PW to vote first so they could go home earlier some even said why call a meeting, the Spaish are quite clever in that at the meeting when voting for the budget and the administrators there were no votes for no votes against and no abstensions thus forcing PW to use their vote.

As time goes by the owners will get more control of the resort but we are in a minority, biggest problem is PW do not pay 86% of the budget because its written in the instatutions (they only pay for completed unsold properties) which will be very difficult if not imposible to change. Although we have submitted a letter with considerable support to the council to change these but we await response.

There is much to be done but the only way to eat an elephant is in small chunks.

Thanks Mick, good to have the information, but that is pretty worrying.  Unless a legal challange works that sounds like PW have control of all community issues with their block vote, they can agree any budget, rules etc. and we, as the owners, have to foot the bill, but really have no say.

I sincerely hope that the Presidents are able to do something to change this, as with no Mirador or other properties on the horizon I don't see the control moving away from PW for any time soon.

Ted

Just found this thread which gives general information about communities and the running of them.

Thought it may be of interest.

http://www.eyeonspain.com/spain-magazine/president-community.aspx

Hi Phil,

I to read that thread on the general forum and was about to post the same link, but you beat me to it

http://www.eyeonspain.com/spain-magazine/president-community.aspx

Ali

Thanks for this - like this bit!!

Unless the community has vastly different sizes of homes most owners coefficients will be similar enough that a simple majority vote will decide. The condition is one owner one vote (not one vote per apartment). Strictly speaking a proposal can only be passed if it has a majority of owners and coefficients however if a situation occurs when a majority of coefficients (for example the builder may still own half the community so has 50% of the coefficients but only one vote) is for a proposal and a majority of owners are against he can not force through his proposal because both criteria are not met.

Ted

Hi Ted,

Yep I thought that was interesting as well.

For obvious reasons PW are not going to make anyone aware of this.

So my understanding now is that this talk of PW having 86% of the vote is actually incorrect as their ownership of the incompleted and unsold properties actually only gives them ONE vote.

Stonephil & Ted H

I like this too and hope that our instatutes concur? its very interesting and if it is law or corrrect then we may have a chance i will pass this on to our President tommorrow as he does not have access to this forum. But he does listen to all information and if he believes there is a means to favour us he will pursue it.

Mick

For anyone interested the link below takes you to a English legal translation of the Horizontal Property Act.

http://www.eyeonspain.com/spain-magazine/horizontal-laws.pdf

Thanks Phil - I prefer the last version!

The clause here is a vote by "majority of those present shall be valid if they represent more than half the value of the assessment quotas of those present" (for some things the proportion is different, but it always a mix of unit holders and quotas).

From this it would appear that polaris holds sway on every vote, as long as it has over 50% of the quotas, and attends the meetings.  I doubt whether their proportion will go below 50% for some time to come, so we will be stuck with them making the rules, budgets etc. and us paying.

I think Sergio, Mick and our other representatives will have their work cut out, but I am glad that we now have a number of committed people officially working for us.

Ted

Hi All

For PW to be using a voting majority of 86% they have to be using votes for properties, which are not built or completed, I may be wrong but I though they could only use votes on completed property which they are to pay community fees. If they are able to cast a vote on properties that aren’t even built and with no evidence they are to be built in the near future, we will never have a voice in the resort for years to come. It is my opinion the President should get advice from a reputable independent Law Firm on if PW contracts are abusive, or legal which I suspect they are not, the cost of this advice should be paid from our community fees, it would be money well spent. We have to know how we stand or PW will go on cheating us.

Phil

Phil,

In what way are PW cheating us at this moment in time?  My understanding is that they have 86% on the vote based on the lack of available Level 1 Presidents.  Why is that cheating? I am sure PW would like to hand over all the reigns for this type of stuff for the owners to squabble amongst themselves - can't really see the big gain for PW to be honest.

We need to move on now Phil.  Work with RPM for at least 1 year, whislt the community is established.  I think any talk of legal action is mis-guided - with only one winner - PW. It's been tried before on a number of PW sites with little success.  A lot of stress & cost for little or no benefit.  

The budget should be used to maintain & enhance the resort - not waste it on waste of time legal battles

Nick

I tend to agree.

We need to move forward positively and stop trying to find fault with PW and RPM.

I don't feel 'cheated' at all. God, they've delivered me a fantastic property on a great resort within a reasonable timescale at a time when most other Spanish builders are going to the wall.

I'll be quite happy to consider alternative options when I've seen some but these guys need to be given a chance over the next 12 months to show us what they can do. Then hopefully we'll see some competitive tenders, etc for the different services.

As Nick said, they have to fill the gaps where we have no representation but hopefully this will change as the resort becomes more populated.

Finally, there are frequent posts about the way PW are acting and legal action, etc. I will be VERY surprised if they are doing anything illegal that would be picked up by Spanish courts. I don't think they would take the risk and think their legal advisors know a lot more on the the subject than I do.

From what I can see we have had a huge advantage over the other PW sites, that of hindsight.

From what I understand and have read about La Torre for the first 18-24 months or so they allowed the Management company full reign and got into one hell of a mess and debt, which they are still sorting out now. They are not unusual,  take a look on the main forum or around the internet and read some of the horror stories about builders and communities.

We, the owners, headed by a few dedicated residents, and now of course by our elected presidents, have stopped RPM in their tracks. They have had to re think all of their policies and costings at a time when I feel sure they thought they could do virtually what they wanted and we would all stump up. The results of which are already starting to show.

So for me we should all support RPM, PW and our Presidents, pay our community fees on time and use the correct process if we are unhappy about something.

We own on what I believe will probably be THE premier golfing resort in Spain in years to come.

Be Happy ............... I am.

Hear, Hear.

From next week on, when the paper work is sorted, it is we the community that will be running the resort.  So lets all work together on this and give our full support to the new presidents. Viva Condado.

Phil

On that point made by Phil, of community charges, did anything come out of the meeting on Saturday with regard to these. I am completely unable to log onto the condadodealhamservices forum (managed a couple oif times after many tries a week or so ago and since then unsuccessful- infact PC crashes, so not going to attempt again) and this means that we've only had the bit of info on this forum and some updates from Dawn and Mike.

We intend to pay our Comunity Charge, we knew there was going to be one and whilst we want it to be as low as possible cant see any advantage to witholding it. Those fees dont go away and will still be due, but in the main we just want budget for paying it. 

Hi Nick

PW have appointed level 1 Presidents in the areas none have volunteered, this in itself has not given them 86% of the votes. The majority of the properties that have been built, are sold and it’s the owners that have the vote on the properties at level 1, not PW or the presidents they have appointed, unless the owners of the properties had given their proxy to PW, which I think unlikely. As I understand it and as I said in my last post "I may be wrong", but for PW to have 86% of the vote, I believe they are giving themselves the votes from the properties built but not yet sold which I think they are able to do, if they are paying into the community the fees for these properties? But they are also giving themselves voting writes for the properties not completed like “La Isla” and also the properties they have put on hold for the foreseeable future such as Mirador and Cortijos, none of these properties are they contributing to the community for but are using the vote from them to undermine the democratic process.

The gain for PW is to serve PW self interest and to limit the newly appointed Presidents powers by having this majority vote, they can vote anything down they don’t like. The suggestion in my post wasn’t to take legal action but to obtain legal advice, which in my opinion would be a proper thing to do for the proper running of a resort of this size, having gained advice the President should take the appropriate action in line with the powers provided to him in his appointment.

I am not sure what you are saying by stating “we need to move on now Phil” followed by saying “Work with RPM for at least 1 year, whislt the community is established” I haven suggested in my post not to work with RPM, however I would like to point out RPM are supposed to be working with and for us or more accurately our President. I would just finish by saying, in my opinion the other PW resorts have ended up with the problems they have because of inaction not because they took action and as you say our community fees should be spent on our resort, but we should be ensuring this money is properly spent and to achieve this our President should gain good proper advice from proper professionals as the President isn’t and couldn’t be an expert in all areas of running a community of this size.

Kev1

I completely agree we do need to move forward positively, and take proper action to ensure this happens. The job of our representatives is to monitor the actions of the builder and the management company and take them to task were necessary to ensure this happens. And like you I think PW have provided a fantastic property on a great resort within a quicker than expected timescale, although I wouldn’t be saying that if I was a buyer on Mirador for example having paid 40% deposit with no property in the foreseeable future. And as far as PW actions being within the law, if you are to spend some time researching the Internet, you will see plenty of evidence of where people have made legal challenges to PW contracts and PW have lost or backed down. Like any big company they use bullyboy tactics, knowing as individuals the majority give up and just accept the situation, but thankfully others don’t and stand-up to the bullies of this world, which is just what our President is attempting to do for which he has my full support.

Regards

Phil