Residhotel (Rhode Tourisme)

Yes Jaward

Nothing like the smell of a fresh kill to bring out the vultures.

It is thru that many agencies never explained the total liability to their clients, but my experience in helping property owners in the past few years made me realise that there are many more persons in the same situation around and we only offer to give our opinion during a free consultation at first then assist you if you chose to. Basically just to try getting some solution to either avoid, cover or resolve the problems.

<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />Regards,

Eddy

And how do you propose to resolve the problem of payment of the 'indemnité d'éviction'? Have you managed to negotiate a waiver with any of the management companies and if so can you give us some concrete examples.

Regards

Sheridan

Sheridan,<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

In every commercial lease, in France, you have an invisible clause saying that if you were to evict the tenant (AT THE END OF THE LEASE), you will have to pay an “indemnité d’Eviction”. Why? because it is the case for every commercial leases therefore part of the law. Unfortunately, this may not have been sold to you as a business opportunity but a property.

This, you can not change unless you have an agreement with the Management Company (no I have never negotiated any waiver with any Management Company) also this should be only in the conditions that the Management Company (Tenant) respected the contract “the lease”.

With the non-payment of your rent, the Management Company broke the contract and you should have the right to evict them but this unfortunately follows a number of legal procedures and as you will see on the forum, it is better to join a group to take these actions as a greater number of owners will put more pressure on the solicitor to succeed quicker.

I am just starting to view some cases on a RH residence for the first time, this week, but I already know that there are a number of different leases for each property and X number of proposal in regards to the future rent (if any) or review of the lease like: reduction of yield, deferred payment...

In regards to a concrete example, I can only tell you that in another case (Residence Les Jardins d’Elisa) some owners successfully evicted their Management Company for non-payment (Therefore breach of the lease) but it also been the case of appeals from the Management Company which is slowing down the process for others.

Our services are to look after each individual investor in regards to his/her own problems like financial, taxation, etc... In regards to any legal actions we can only suggest where to go and give you some examples but before we do so, we will definitely need to view your lease as there are many different one around.

RH being one of the biggest Management Company in France it could be more complicated to evict them but as per what is mention in the forum I will presume that it will be grounds for you to evict RH (which is not always the best solution) and rent the property yourself.

Hope this will help a little. I will let you know on the forum how I get on with RH case I am following and their proposal.

Regards,

Eddy

Eddy,

How can it be "invisible" if its in French commercial law?

What i think you mean is that it is "invisible" as regards to our "Bail Commercial" which we have with the management company.

These "invisible" clauses should have pointed out to owners before they bought.The developers,agents,management companies,lawyers and notairs then wouldn't have got there fees!We are definatley aware now why they didn't tell us!

The question now is,Can we hold them to account!

I have emailed my Notaire and asked him why he didn't tell me

1)Penalty at end of lease

2)3,6,9 year break clause

I will post if i get an answer!

Regards

John

Eddy,

An "invisible clause" is a clause which, in my view, is grossly unfair.

See Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts which states, inter alia, that a contract which is:

"irrevocably binding the consumer to terms with which he had no real opportunity of becoming acquainted beofre the conclusion of the contract"

"enabling the seller or supplier to alter the terms of the contract unilaterally without a valid reason which is specified in the contract"

is unfair.

Regards

Sheridan

Eddy

I cannot see what your company can do except act as a middleman between us and the unfair French legal system and charge us for the privilege. This invisible clause suits companies like yours and allows you to make money from it. If you were so concerned about the welfare of leaseback owners why didn't you come here ages ago and tell people?

I would not touch any mediation company with a barge pole. From experience these are ex-agents who can no longer sell but know how the system works so create a new business.

If you look at the top of this site you will see a link to a Notiare of the name Fabien - he can be vouched for as a credible kind of guy.

Firstly get you command de payer put through and then you have a decission to make - either evict and rent yourself or go for administration leading to bankrutcy.

Your mortgage will have to be paid in the meantime.

Eviction may lead to balliff charges.

DO NOT WAIT OR HANG AROUND - DO IT NOW!

I am one of the owners from Jardin De Lisa so if you need any help feel free to add to the thread but no personal messages please as I seem to get bombarded (apologies to those I never reply too).

I will not charge you for advice (as that is not what I am giving) and secondly I will not try to strike a deal between your management company and you and take a cut of the profit the management company makes out of you for signing a reduced rent lease (oh dear another dead end created for yet another scam)!!!

My delight will come when the leaseback scheme is highlighted for the scam it is with no UK and Irish investors purchasing anymore and these people are out of our lives.

Mutley

Hello,
I have invested in Splendid aswell, and have not receive any rent. I have just sent a letter. But I have received any proposition yet.
But today, I have received the taxes to pay (local taxes + TV license), 488 euros....
I will try to find more info on other forums...
Does anybody have more info?



Roxie

PLease contact the following address if you are concerned with Splendid in Allevard


investisseurs-allevard-splendid@neuf.fr


Thanks !

Hi

I also have an apartment in Belles Roches in Notredame de Bellecombe. I have also not received any rental income for October. I have sent a couple of emails but have not yet received any reply.

Hi,

I have been given this forum address to all our clients
using Residhotel as a method of meeting up and finding a solution.
Ideally you should form an owners association with some legal
representation. Unfortunately, to those of you that asked me to send
you a list of owners that bought through French Property Ireland, this
is impossible due to our privacy policy but I have sent on this forum
address to clients so that you can make contact with each other this
way.

Deirdre
www.frenchpropertyaftersales.com

HI,

I am an Irish owner of a property in Cap Bleu and Resid Hotel have stopped paying rent, no rent received for last quarter 2008. As suggested by Frech Property Ireland I am interested in forming an owners association for Cap Bleu and writing to Resid Hotel demanding payment and perhaps looking at other solutions.

Anybody else from Cap Bleu interested?

I have advised this many times before and will do it again.

Find yourselves a good lawyer and hit them with ''Command de payer'' straight away or you may find yourselves without rent through the summer season like I did and theres nothing you can do apart from sit and beat yourself up over the fact someone is taking money off you in terms of renting an asset for which you pay.....Ouch!!!

It took from June to December for me to evict in which time I lost some 12,000 Euro and 5000 Euro legal fees which I have had to kiss goodbye!

Take my advice and get a good lawyer and one who at least 100 miles from your development

Wayne

PS dont expect payment if you get judgement,these crooks ignore the law!

Hi there,<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

My name is Gabrielle Achilleos and I run a company that looks after online administration for those that have purchased leaseback property in <?:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />France.

Having seen your post, I think we may be able to help you as we offer legal services in house and are used to regrouping owners to form a stronger 'force' against these management companies.

Its really a shame as leaseback is a good system but some of these management companies are really giving it a bad name. What happens is that the management companies recieve a big chunk of money from the development companies at the beginning to subsidise the launch (as of course the first year is always difficult to get started) they then use this up as tell the owners that they cant keep up with the rental payments...

In any case if you need to hand with this, you are welcome to contact me at contact@helpserviceonline.com or go to our website at www.helpserviceonline.com

I hope we will be able to help you soon!

Best regards

Gabrielle

Seamus,

Thanks for your reply and indeed I have learnt something about the bailiff which I was not aware of and which was never advised to me by my lawyer...even they are of questionable value apart from supporting the process.(Or was it hindering)

6% of outstanding rent...talk about everyone one but the rightfull owner getting paid handsomely is not the word

Step one issue proceedings for rent owed and the judge will award the amount owed and costs

Beware that you dont get your answer on the actual day of the hearing it normally takes three weeks

Bailiff has to deliver each judgement at a cost to you!

Step two after expiry of 30 days and none payment issue command de payer

Step three after 30 days of none payment issue summonds for eviction

Step three is the more complicated because the management company has the law and judges on their side.This took some 6 to 7 months just to go to court for the eviction hearing.

Step four obtain judgement for eviction and wait to see if settlement arrives before a pre defined date by the judge

Step five you obtain the eviction order and instruct the bailiff,this involve further costs and the bailiff is normally accompanied by the Police

Step six the management company logs an appeal within two weeks and the eviction is now back up in the air again

Step seven the appeal can take 6 to 12 months to come back to court,in the mean time you are in limbo.

Between evcition and appeal you have the right to rent your apartment as I do mine however beware that if an administration process starts before the appeal date is heard then you eviction is null and void and the administrator can apply to put you back on the original lease

The above is my actual experience and I have to say that French law is nothing more than a joke,I am indeed in limbo again and administrator can potentially take my apartment back onto the lease...unless of course...I put a three year lease on it to someone and he is then unable to take it back.However he can sue me for the losses incurred,mmm not sure how enforceable that would be!

Anyway I intend as do others to take this all the way and only by everyone bringing this up on forums will anything ever get done about it

My next move is to bankrupt all concerned in the process of miss selling,I dont care what it costs Im going to nail each and every crook involved.

Mike - we are in eaxactly the same situation and I have today instructed my solicitor to respond vigorously to this situation. Sharon Hill at YFP has also suggested some excellent things to do including dorming an owners co-operative and agreeinga common way forward.

One issue she suggests is to contact the managing agent who may be prepared to give us a list of owners contact details. That said it would appear that the majority of owners are likely to be French and so we would need to have bilingual ability. I will let Sharon know that she can share my contact details with any other owner so that we can try and resolve this issue

Hello

I am the owner of an appartment on the "Golf Garden" Levenois another development with Rhode Tourisme & have recieved exactly the same letter, saying they are experiencing difficulties & are going to reduce our rental income by 40%. Any advice would be welcome.

Hi Turlough,

I am a owner at Cap Blue and interested in a owners associaion.Getting in contact with Fabien to issue a 'commandement de payer'

Aidan.

Hello, I am new to this forum and actually living in France and living throught the same problem as all of you. Before getting into the commandment de payer you need to serve RH with a registered letter (with accuse de reception) called a "mise en demeure". The format of this letter is available on the over-blog. You can send it via internet with the website of La Poste and print the receipt of the transaction.It is the first step in the process as mandatory for any further legal action. On the blog there is also information on how to go about trying to negotiate stopping the mortgage payments for those of you (like most of us) are draining their savings to pay the mortgage In the letter that we all received RH states that the rent won't be paid before 31 March but nothing says they will pay then! They are also quite clear that the payment of the rents is totally tied to the renegotiation of leases at certain sites. Courage!!

I would like to be in contact with any of you who are owners at the residence Domaine de la Pinede in Prasmousquier (Cap Negre) . We are trying to organize ourselves. One of the owners has contacted a lawyer capable of filing a collective "commandment de payer".( The cost of this action is under 200euros) and who has already had great experience with RH. We are also trying to develop an up-to-date list of owners and their e-mails in order to create an owner's association,newsletter and a blog in both french and English. The general assembly should take place sometime around the month of March and we need to be ready! Thanks!

Hi

We are also owners of an apartment in Golf Garden Levernois and have just received a similar letter. We are also looking for advice and would like to hear from anyone else in the same position either in this development or others where Residhotel are involved.

I guess it would be a good idea if we all got together to deal/negotiate with this company in our mutual interest.

Any idea how to obtain a list of fellow owners contact details? and any ideas for a way forward.

Brian L

In a nutshell its happening all over France,I am also involved in the same thing but some 12 months out of pocket so far plus 5,000 euro in legal expenses.

My experiance is simple...NIGHTMARE!!!!!!

The law in France protects the management company and not the investor,I have done all the legal stuff and won every case however i have not received a penny from them as they ignore me my advocat and the courts

My advice is go to ''command de payer'' and then evict swiftly,if you still get no joy go for administration.This process will take at least 6 months and for that time dont expect any income.

It seems strange that each compnay uses the same tactics,In my experiance I think they are all in it together,lets face it being offered a 5 % hassle free investment is what we all dream of,however,the reality is that the developers and agents shift the property knowing this is unrealistic and then try to renegotiate

Sadly this is how they do buiness in france and they will try to get as many owners as possible to accept the lower rental,they know that its only a matter of time before people run out of funds and cannot pay the mortgage,therefore they have to sign under duress.

It will be funny next year when the developers and agents go out of business because theres no money, especialy UK money flowing in to buy their overpriced and oversold investment vehicles which are clearly nothing more than a way of shifting real estate on the back of false gaurantees

My advice is dont waste time getting groups together, in the first instance spend your time getting legal action in place,these people know the system and will mislead you all the way

Another bit of advice is to avoid solicitors in the locality of your claim,they all appear to have an unhealthy existence together in their own little world.

Thanks Wayne.

We have just been in contact with the actual developer of the development and it seems that he is in touch with other builders/developers about this situation and may assist us in our discussions with Residhotel. Obviously the developers also do not like what is happening, how will they be able to sell their developments if there are major problems with the management companies and reduction of rent etc.

Brian,

Beware of everyone and trust no one......as I say there is an unhealthy existence between them all,they blame each other to string out any actions as far as they can and bearing in mind there is little or no rental its only a matter of time before people have to sell back to them at a very low price

The whole things bent so take action and drop it if your problem is solved but dont wait around or sign any new contract

I would also research the developer and management compnay to find whos involved in what and if there are any other developments falling under the same stable

Good luck

wayne

Please, please follow Wayne advices... he is right.

If a builder, a seller, or a developer is offering you its help, it is just because they don't want you to take them to court!

Alan,
Our residence is getting together (as are many) and one of the owners took the initiative to contact a lawyer who happens to be the same one who has defended owners against RH several times already. He will depose a request (commandment de payer) in court in the names of each of the owners that wishes to take part in the action. So, yes it is individual in that each one has to take the step to associate themselves in the action. But it is colective in that the same lawyer will represent us at the same time. The link http://groups.google.fr/group/proprietairerh has a copy of the form for the mise en demeure letter as well as some other news. If you need more information the overblog is very well informed and if I can be of help just let me know. Good luck! Are you in contact with the other owners from your residence? There may already be an association that is being created.

Pleae do the following exercise:

Just calculate how much you should have earned with your initial management company (if they were paying you) and how much the new one is "offering" you and how much you should gain or loose...

Your initial rent x by the nb of years --- for example in my case my rent was supposed to be 6,180 euro per year over 10 years and 71 days so in total I should have earned 64,426 euro.

LVR was "my" management company and they paid my rents from 2006 to late 2007 so I received in total 12,360 euro from LVR.

Now Eurogroup and Quietude are offering me "a new lease". However both are with a rent deduction : 30% (base-case scenario - A) or 50% (one of the worse-case scenario - B). Both contracts proposed are for a new 9 year period... and on my initial lease only 7 remained.

So in A: 30% of 6,180 euro = 4,326 euro per year => 38,934 euro over 9 years!

In B: 50% of 6,180 euro = 3,090 euro per year => 27,810 euro over 9 years!!!

In A I will loose 22,866 euro and in B: I will loose 33,990 euro all in all… In scenario A, this amount is the same as the VAT deduction granted!

Those calculations are only valid if they pay me the rent… because the same thing which has happened with LVR could happen (and I am sure will happen again) with Quietude or Eurogroup.

Also in both lease they tell me that in A the rent will be paid from October 2009 and in B the rent will be paid from April 2009 (if I sign now)...

What do you think? Shall we sign? My answer is no...

hello

Are any of you going to the meetings on the 17 and 18 December in Paris - organised by Mona Lisa? --- Eurosites La Défense - Tour europe 33 place des corolles Paris.

Scrunner,whats the meeting in Paris about?

PS I like you listing of figures...it hits the spot and shows what these crooks are up too

In 21 months I have had the first quarters rent due,late of course and a payment minus 30% even though I havent signed to this effect

All in all this investment has left me out of pocket dso far..an I did the figs yesterday...32,750 Euro

I think that should answer anyones questions as to their next course of action

Bankrupt them!!!!!

Hi Maureen,

Have a look at http://54270joel.free.fr/rechproprio.php

and you will see that you are not the only one to have problems with Resid hotel or Rhode Tourism and so on.

As your residence is not mentionned, send an email to the webmanager and ask him to add a line for your residence in his table.

Set up an association - Fight for your rent (there are legal prodecedures to put in place) and tackle all the issues.

I understand you all being pissed off with the situation, as I am, but I do wonder what would be achieved by pushing the management company into bankruptcy and therefore receiving no income as well as having no company managing the residence.

It may be a case of the devil you know and something is better than nothing especially when a mortgage has to be paid.

Of all the forums that I have read I don't seem to remember anyone walking away with a truly successful outcome and, in most cases, have ended up out of pocket, not only due to unpaid rent, but also due to legal fees etc.

Brian L

Dear Brian,

You have to think short and long term. The ex management company running my flat ended paying in October 2007. I got my rent for Q4 2007 via a bailiff together with 2 other owners as we did a Commandement de payer and a Saisie sur Tour operator. It worked out that we gave in total 400 euro for the 3 of us, which have been refund when we received our rent back from the Bailiff. My rent was 1,700 euro.

Then the company put herself into bankruptcy but in order to avoid any questions from the court where the headquarters were, this management company changed the location of its headquarters from South of France to North of France… They had money to pay our rents, they had money to rent new offices, to move offices and to continue paying the employees… but as several other management companies do they stopped paying us (the owners)… they sent us a letter after 3 months of non-payment for some one us but for the majority it was after 6 months or a year. This letter mentioned a rent deduction of 30% and no rent increase as it is written in our lease. Only 10 owners accepted… they received ONE payment and then another letter arrived… -50%!<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

We went to several lawyers and they all advise us the same way: the management company has no right to do such things, we decided to fight. The transfer of headquarters has been cancelled by the court, and contacted the French government and with several other associations they granted us this extension of 12 months to find a new management company and to take time to sort out the problems in the residences.

Now the management company asked the court for help, we accepted it and an administrator has been nominated by the court. He broke our lease with the management company. So we now have our flat back. We have to decide what to do with it but at least we are currently free and don't have the assle of being paid or not. We made the choice of not keeping the management company as they were really crook. Our residence was full every single season since December 2005. The average occupancy rate was around 98% in winter and 70% in summer… we did not receive our rents, we were not paid, they were arguing all the time about our occupancy rights (we normally had 4 weeks per year, with some dates mentioned in our lease but the management company has several times asked us to change dates… but the flats were rented???)…

Currently some people in several residences are directly renting their flat. They make more money than they have in the past (non-payment) and what they would have had with some strange or unclean management company. For some of them they have completely contracted out of the schema (ZRR, Demessine), refund the VAT (around 20,000 euro).

In my case I don't rent my flat as I am going to court to ask for a cancellation of the sale. All in all since the beginning the lawyer costs me 800 euro. The management company has not paid me for a year now. Thanks to the lawyer I had one rent back and I am free of any lease or management company, trying to find the better solution to make my money back and to find out what I will do with the flat.

Hi

Back again.

So yes you can ask the bailiff to deliver a Commandement de payer in group. It will be less expensive and will be more effective.

For Wayne: I agree with some of your points above but "Step three is the more complicated because the management company has the law and judges on their side.This took some 6 to 7 months just to go to court for the eviction hearing." Is not true.

Up to now in the Residence de Tourisme's court cases, it took between 1 month and 4 months (several cases: All the residence ex-LVR, the Residences in Lourdes & so on) - max of 6 months (Transmontagne & Residence Privilege).

MikeF I too am have a flat in Les Belles Roches and have watching things develop with increasing apprehension. I received my full quarterly rent in early December. What does worry me is what happens if RT go bankrupt. Luckily I have not spent my TVA. to be quite honest I'd give back the TVA and have the block run as some other arrangement other than leaseback or even organise the rental myself . Please feel free to contact me. I'd be happy to take part in joint legal action. My French is not good enough to take on a legal case to break the lease but I'd put up some reasonable amount to pay for legal fees.

Paris meeting of the french leaseback associations : Date : march 14th, 9-12h am ; contacts : fedartsec@yahoo.fr ; 1 to 2 delegates by association. If you are isolated, please precise in order that we take you into account. The meeting room can take up o 60 peoples. all details will be sended on request.

some good points in favour of both short and long term views but trust me these management companies wont be any worse off,in fact lots of them do this to cross subsidise other developments in their stables.If this is not the case then they will simply be increasing their margins at your exspense.

Agreed there are those with mortgages and desperate for income,however,I believe this will be a long term objective of the management companies and once they have got away with it once there is nothing to stop them doing it again

The French do this in business,they will push to the very end and the ones who suffer are investors,in our development we have banks taking apartments back and selling them on at major discounts.

In my eyes leaseback is nothing more than a cash cow for the greedy developers,estate agents and management companies,for those of you who have mortgages then you need to calculate your emergency funds because the longer this goes on the more money you will need to subsidise your investments.

My advice is to obtain a set of accounts and see the difference of income over the recent years,if indeed rentals remain static then why should you give up 40%

A contract is two way which has to be abided by both parties,once one breaks then you have an opoertunity to exit

Act fast decisive and with maximum force

Wayne

for the Cap Bleu owner's : some French people have already started to fight please click on the "NOUS ECRIRE" on the right hand side of the page and ask for the contact details for the residence.

http://54270joel.free.fr/rechproprio.php

Maybe I never explianed in detail

Step three took me 6-7 months to eviction with numerous court cases on the way which were delayed on a couple of times.

Commend de payer June expiry

Eviction 16th Decemeber

Wayne

Hi all

We are still in negotiations with Rhode re Golf Levernois they have now offered a 30% reduction instead of 40% and with a weeks useage but have also now thrown in what seems like a threat. They seem to be saying that under commercial lease law that they as a tenant can withdraw from the contract after each three year period which they will rescind if we agree to their latest offer.

I understand that this is the norm under a standard commercial lease but not sure if it can apply to a leaseback. Has anyone else heard of this and what do think? This certainly was never mentioned when we bought the property. If this is the case then all leasebacks surely are at risk. I would never have signed up for this if I knew.

Brian

I currently have a similar contract in front of me and my lawyer is telling me it has to be a nine year contract to be classed as a leaseback for VAT refund. I am refusing to sign it. I now have the TVA people saying if I dont do the Kit Fiscal I may loose my VAT refund. I have told them today to prove to me I have accepted the property as completed with a signature and asked them if they are happy to class the property as a leaseback with a 3 year lease. No reply as of yet.

I have 2 leases for the same property, one issued by the sales agent that I based my purchase on says I should get rents a year in advance and the one just issued by the management company says a year in arrears.

I am refusing to sign anything for anybody and am trying to get the sale cancelled.

Seamus - Any knowledge or advice you have on this would be appreciated by me and Brian L.

Mutley

Noel,

Does this 3 year break rule apply to both parties?

I assume you would then have to repay any outstanding VAT.

John