In response to the last comment on this forum by Roy Howitt, I have been authorised to post these comments.
Sun Coast Leisure have operated in the Costa Del Sol for a number of years, dealing with short term property rentals on behalf of clients. Our services in this respect are similar to those of Mr Howitt, key handling, emergency repairs meet and greet etc. We have never felt the need to advertise this service as Mr Howitt must know, referral clients represent the best recommendation of a service orientated business.
There are scams out there that try to take money from people however we are not one of them. We have checked our records and we have no record of any of our staff ever speaking to Mr or Mrs Howitt and from some of the comments made, it seems quite clear that he has not spoken to anyone within our shared ownership department.
We use a variety of methods to build a database of people to contact people and our staff are happy to explain this – websites such as ownersdirect, and homeaway (previously holiday-rentals) and data companies. Our company details and address are prominently shown and again are passed to clients.
Fractional Property sales and Shared Ownership are in their infancy in Europe and for us in particular, we have recently taken on a small number of properties in Almeria which will complete in due course. I will readdress shared ownership later in this post. We don’t know of any company big or small that will furnish third parties with information about their clients and it is surprising that Mr Howitt should consider it proper for a company to do so. There is of course the Data Protection Act which forbids this without prior consent of the client.
We do not wish to disparage Mr Howitt especially in view of the contributions he has made to this site over the years, but the comments he makes could quite easily be directed at his Property Management business.
His website does not have a business address, or company registration details on it and a search of his domain shows that it is hosted in the UK (personal data removed) and not Spain:
Domain Name: CORVERASERVICES
Date Created: Tue 29-June-2010
Nameserver: ns.123-reg(UK based)
Registrant Name: Roy Howitt
Registrant Company: Roy Howitt
Registrant Address: CO4 9UH
Registrant Address: United Kingdom
Could the fact that as English speaking individuals we all find it easier to deal with a hosting company that is English and doesn’t suffer the telecommunication infrastructure problems we are aware of in Spain.
Mr Howitt also charges upfront fees for his services, and advertises his newly formed agency websites at the bottom of his post.
We have no doubt that Mr Howitt is a man of good character and he provides a first class service to his clients, if he chooses to advertise in directories to generate new business, that is his choice – we choose not to as there are no definitive directories that work well at generating clients for a property management company.
We are not an Estate Agent and our website does not list property for sale. We note however that Mr Howitt has launched a property rentals site and a property sales site to which we wish him good luck and hope he has gained traffic from his post here.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion and this forum is here to help people gain a greater perspective and benefit from other peoples knowledge and/or experience. We as a business do not object to opinions, but either Mr Howitt feels in some way threatened by the prospect of Sun Coast Leisure extending its services or wishes to gain exposure from a controversial comment.
We would also agree that anyone faced with paying an upfront payment should exercise caution and we have spoken to numerous people that have paid €5,000 or €9,000 to lawyers for litigation only to lose their money without ever getting to court.
Shared Ownership also has the technical label Fractional Ownership and is a type of ownership used for almost any large lifestyle purchase where the buyers do not expect to use the property for the majority of the year and therefore look to share that property with other individuals. Examples of this are yachts, jets, cars and of course property – namely holiday homes.
As you have probably guessed, holiday homes in the main, refers to Villas and apartments of very high value. These are sometimes called private residences or resorts and represent a marketplace far removed from what Sun Coast Leisure operates within. However the principle is very much the same. A group of strangers are able to club together to buy a property and then share the use and ownership costs of that property. In the case of what we are doing, individuals can buy into a property for less than €8,000 and have a minimum of 2 weeks stay in a property in Spain, Portugal or Italy.
To bring order and flexibility to the arrangement, rules and procedures have to put in place and managed by a property management company. Of course the entitlement of when each co-owner gets to use the property also needs to be agreed and managed. We do this and also set up a legal structure so that any individual buyer is able to sell his share at any time without needing the consent of the other co-owners. This is known as a mezzanine structure and involves the setting up of one or more companies –it varies depending on the countries of the buyers, the country of the property and the rules in force of the community.
When a whole development is being sold on a Fractional basis, the developer pays for the structure to be set up (Polaris World for example), however when dealing with individual properties we pay this upfront cost and ask the seller to pay a third, as a returnable deposit.
This payment is protected and processed through one of the largest worldwide online payment gateways offering complete protection against fraud. We do not accept cash payments, Moneygrams or Western Union and if people wish to pay by transfer, it is paid into a fully registered SL company account.
Some of the Shared Ownership properties available are priced so that the seller (normally a Developer) receives 150% – 200% of the market price. The reasons for this are varied and include increased marketing and administrations costs (multiple sales contracts for each property) and accessibility at a lower price (i.e. buy into a €1million Villa for just €200Thousand).
We offer sellers on average 25% above the market value for the individual properties we sell. We feel that this is a reasonable amount from both the prospective of the buyer and seller.
The seller is able to liquidise their investment and possibly place their money where it can do more good for them and in some cases release the financial burden of a mortgage that leaves them with no or negative equity on the open market.
For the buyer, nobody likes to pay more than they have to, but to own part of a property in a 5 star resort for just €7,000 - €10,000 is unheard of anywhere else. Very few working families are able to use their Holiday homes more than 3 – 4 weeks of the year and after a number of years of ownership, choose to use it less than that. We speak to many people that cannot afford to use their property in peak season because they need to rent to cover some of the costs of ownership. So for a fraction of the costs of a full purchase and ownership, a person can enjoy what others have paid more than 20 times more.
When they want to sell their share after 5 years or more, they sell their share of the company and should get more than they paid, tax-free and without Capital Gains Tax. Some have pointed out that in effect, should the property value increase by more than €3,000 in the time they own it, the net cost of holiday accommodation would be free!
We are not aware of any customers that have lost money through dealing with us and would be happy to respond to anybody whom has had negative dealings with Sun Coast Leisure.
Colin Reeves
Consultant
