July 2014 Newsfeed

Hacienda Riquelme Owners
2014 July Resort Newsletter...........               
The Committee

Obviously the Committee should be congratulated for stepping up to the mark and representing ALL Owners in their  best interests however,  anyone that raises their heads into these elected positions really should be aware of the “dog eat dog” culture within Hacienda Riquelme.

All owners have invested considerable amounts into the purchase of their properties and the ongoing running costs of the resort. For contracts to be signed by the committee such, for example, the latest gardening contract when the contract, key performance conditions and clauses have never been published to all owners is inexcusable. 

- How are owners supposed to know if this 350,000 euros yearly contract is being spent well, in the right areas and with the key performance criteria being achieved?

- Is it just their gardening contract or the contract for all owners?

If owners then question the Committee on these matters then they classed by the Committee as trouble makers and are then named and shamed amongst all the fellow owners.

If the Committee is doing is dong such a great job, then why are there so many key problems across the resort. Where is the detailed case summary information of which 1.2 million debtors are in court and the stages of the court proceedings? Where is the information of how many debtors are untraceable, the key issue as confirmed by the previous resort president?

In terms of this website and others it should be noted that the previous resort president was recently quoted as stating:

"Hi

Thanks for continuing to send me your monthly updates, I always look forward to them - the quality is excellent and if I ever return to an elected position I would seek your help with the Community website, such is the quality of the website.

Best wishes,

Michael"

It appears that the current Resort President has a different viewpoint probably due to the hole he has dug!

And finally as the Committee represents all owners interests then they clearly need to be aware that fundamental issues will be raised as and when required. If the heat becomes to hot in the kitchen then they can always stand aside, do the decent thing and resign, (that is resign twice and not still stand as has happened !), as the issues, and owners with these issues, will not go away. The committee may change overtime however we will not be it 5, 10, 15 years or whatever we will still be around to show the true Hacienda Riquelme Culture and spirit.

Overview
Not really a good report on the current state of the Resort. It is really does question what exactly Resortalia and the Committee do on a daily basis that supports the concept of a 5 star Golf Resort!

1) The mess at the Workers Compound continues unabated and the situation appears to be getting a lot worse with rubbish dumped everywhere.

WOULD YOU BUY OR RENT AN APARTMENT THAT LOOKED OUT ONTO THIS?

 

2) And yet at the same time didn't the Committee members did really well with the clean up of the old supermarket site! Could that be because some of them overlook the site!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

3) At the same time we have the roads collapsing next to the post boxes and some of the children play areas being an accident waiting to happen especially for the under 5 kids with electric cables exposed.............

4) We have the old Polaris strips being dumped to create another eyesore!

5) The irrigation to the Sports Area has been stopped

6) The gardens grass and trees are in very poor conditions throughout the resort

7) the Greens and bunkers are in a poor condition

8) The lakes have seen better days



And this is all with 1.2 million euros of debts and rising.


As we approach the 5 year anniversary of the HRGR Association and its affiliated sites
then we have seen Resort Presidents and Committees come and go, however we have never seen the Resort in such poor condition as recently.

Time for action and change!

SPANISH DREAM HOMES ~ NOW ABANDONED!

 Comparisons to HRGR?

SPANISH DREAM HOMES ~ NOW ABANDONED!

They say every picture paints a story and never more so than the images I captured last year which shows in no uncertain terms how a Spanish dream home can turn into an abandoned nightmare!

I had joined my daughter for the last few days of family trip to the Costa’s.  My girl didn’t have much time, or indeed inclination to research the area, it was a quick getaway she was looking for with sunshine, and a pool for the kids being the only ‘must have’s. So she booked a villa through Owners Direct which looked as if it would tick all the boxes.

 The holiday home was on a development on the edge of the El Valle Golf resort, which is between Banos and Mendigo just off the Murcia-San Javier motorway.  The approach was lined with quite pretty houses of various sizes. 

Pink and crimson bougainvillea draped itself round trellised gateways, pots of red geraniums, blazed against the white washed walls, it was all picture perfect.

Pretty whitewashed houses, it all looked so promising! 

At first glance, the house really couldn’t be faulted.  It was well maintained internally, plenty of big rooms, nice out door area, all this along with the long hot sunny days, what more could you ask for.

But apart from one bar/restaurant, which was situated within the very posh club house, and one very small adjoining supermarket, there truly was NOTHING else within walking distance of either the villa we were staying in, or the hundreds of other properties in the area.

No friendly little café bars, no dedicated bakery, no place to sit and watch the world go by. To me, it truly was a place of nothingness!  

Of course this is probably not an issue for holiday makers such as us, who want to hire a car and go out and about to the beach and see the sights.  But on a daily basis for expats, there was no sense of community.  Nowhere to go where you might bump into friends for a coffee and a chat, as you would do in a friendly village.

Plenty of apartments for sale here!

At any time during the day, the only sound to be heard was the occasional gentle thwack of the golf ball as the players made their way round the course. During my daily walk to the one, tiniest of shops, I did not see one other person, ever. The streets were generally deserted and on closer inspection, so were many of the houses and apartments.   

This was in August, school holiday time in the UK and I would have expected to hear children playing in the swimming pools.  Shouldn’t there have been extended families staying in these large villa’s laughing and chatting, and whilst I know the Spanish often retreat to the hills in the height of summer, surely some of them would have been in residence?

Holiday home pool and patio, ticked all the boxes!

The design of the patio area at our own villa, meant it was very easy to take a peek at the houses situated on each side of our rented holiday home. They had both been abandoned. To the left, the swimming pool was home to frogs and mosquitoes, and a horrible green algae covered what was once the blue tiles. A family of feral cats had made their home on the terrace and the associated smell was overwhelming.

To the right, amazingly, the doors to this house were all unlocked, I actually walked into every room, and the property was full of quite expensive furniture, white goods, pictures, linens and crockery.  It was as if the owners had just left one day and never returned. The overwhelming smell inside this house was of damp and it was obvious the place had not been visited for long time.

Whilst my visit to El Valle was short and sweet, I realised that the original purchasers of the hundreds of properties on the development, probably had expected more, when they signed on the dotted line.  I wondered what clever marketing had resulted in the sales of many of the properties.  What had the developers promised ‘would’ be built? How had they ‘sold’ this dream to the purchasers?  I’m all for peace and quiet, but this was more like a ghost town.  

 

Sadly neglected garden home to feral cats!     

Even with my own personal quest to return to Spain, (and virtually anywhere will do!)  I wouldn’t want to live, even for free, on a community built virtually in the middle of nowhere, and I can’t imagine why anyone else would want to either. 

Perhaps THIS above anything the reason for the abandoned houses.

I recently wrote about the impact homesickness can have on the strongest of relationships, but surely WHERE you live can also be the making or breaking of any relocation dream.

On reflection, and with the benefit of hindsight, do you wish you’d chosen to live in a different town, area, or even just a different type of property in Spain?

Maybe you even know of, or live near El Valle, if so, perhaps you can paint a different picture.

http://www.eyeonspain.com/blogs/rosiewalters/13106/ONCE-SPANISH-DREAM-HOMES-~-NOW-SADLY-ABANDONED.aspx

1.2 MILLION DEBTORS and RISING...................

Previously from Ron:

"You words claiming “debtors have doubled in the last two years”. This is not true, they have not. The number of apartments with debtors last month was 311.  The number at the end of 2011 was 353. This is a 13.5% increase in the number of debtors. Obviously there is an additional debtor, PW since 2011."

Well Ron, the comment that was made related to the EUROs comparision which is NOW 3 TIMES the level from when Micheal departed...

mmmm

 oh 353 out of 1,864 apartments is VERY HIGH as well...and as we understand rising............

Clowns ?

No more Resort President Newsletters..................!

What a shame and another case of the non-existent communications and participation to all owners. We have a number of websites, blogs, twitter and Facebook pages already in existence to help the committee with!

In terms of the smaller communications going forward, then maybe it is worth a word on communicating the sabotage of the greens that has taken place recently.........  but then why would they tell all owners what has been going on?

We know, the committee knows, so why shouldn't everyone know?

Dog eat Dog attitude continues.....?

Details from our affiliated site:


Webpage Hits continue to grow!!!!!

                               
We start the month with a massive thank you for the "webpage hits" which have exceeded all of our expectations and shows that the HRGR Grapevine continues to grow from strength to strength.

All Resorts have issues at different levels and are no surprise to many. Progress is being made at Hacienda Riquelme sometimes however time and time again, one step forward leads to two steps back.

The continuing issues requiring addressing are:

• The ever increasing level of debtors with insufficient reporting of summary case details and tracking
• Over expenditure in the general community participation which is not shown in the sub community financial statements.
• Potential changes to the statutes of the community without prior sub community approval.
• Participation of all owners in the EUCC public areas and compliance with the EUCC Statutes including IRM starting to pay its monthly fees.
• Security of information and compliance with data protection regulations
• Competitive tendering of all key contracts with service level agreements in place for performance monitoring.
• Appropriate realistic compensation and resolution to the building structure issues.
• The water runoff issues to the sports area car park need to be resolved together with the removal of the floodlights.
• The workers compound needs to relocated as per the submitted Resort plans and replanted or screened off.
• The chemical risks identified within the resort require immediate actioning
• The eroding hills in front of the Sub Communities need to addressed ASAP especially in light of the recent earthquake. 
• The sinking and cracking swimming pools.
• The desert conditions in which the Resort is built needs to drive a sustainability plan on how we use less brought-in resources and assess alternatives such as LED lighting, solar energy and rain run-off capture.

One area of concern that has now been there for the last six months is the Presidents December newsletter which is still freely available for anyone to access over the internet

http://www.hrgr.es/index2.php


Will the Committee ever fix this lack of security?

Dog eat Dog attitude continues.....?

As reported by the Hacienda Riquelme Blog the Council has now decided that the grass verges can disappear within the resort.

What is very concerning however is the position of the Committee to seek damages against other owners for this valid issue to be raised in the first place.

So we have a committee that does not like to communicate with fellow owners and when collectively fellow owners raise issues to the Murcian Council, then the Committee will then sue them for damages.


The "dog eat dog attitude" continues!



We await what will happen with the second owners appeal that is underway to Murcia Council!


Holiday makers be aware!
From last June's Presidents Newsletter:"

June, July and August are the months when those owners who rent their apartments seek to optimize their revenue so that HR resembles a holiday resort.

Unfortunately, too many holidaymakers are attracted by some of the extremely low rentals that can be had here but who do not understand that apart from the golf course, there is little else to do. If the holidaymaker does not have access to a hire car, their options are decidedly limited.

If you rent, please make sure that your tenants understand the limitations of our facilities. HR was designed as a 5* golf resort and is just not suitable as a general holiday resort."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You have been told!


Debtors
We have now been told by the Resort President the bleeding obvious that it is not easy to collect debts.

Of course debt management is never easy however unless the right level of experienced resource is dedicated to the task then it is even harder.

Resortalia should be congratulated on now employing more debt "management" local personnel however questions should really be raised as to why now, why so late in the day when the debt is three times the debt inherited by the previous Resort President?

At the same time, better late then never, is the confirmation, that unless Resortalia has the debtors correct updated address then no debt will ever be collected. Didn't the last Resort President state this informally 3 years ago!

As the majority of the owner debt is for owners that cannot be traced then it does really question the strategy being utilised.

The truth "outs" eventually!

Boom time for Spain's costumed debt collectors

If you owed a few thousand euros and found your footsteps dogged by a man wearing a top hat, tails and silken cummerbund, wouldn't you pay up rather than face the humiliation of being shadowed by someone dressed like Count Dracula?
As Spain's economy falters, the debt-collecting business is booming and has devised colourful new variants to play on people's embarrassment at having their indebtedness paraded in public. El Cobrador del Frac – "The Debt Collector in Top Hat and Tails" – is a nationwide operation which sends employees dressed like Hollywood villains to collect debts. To underline the message, the theatrically-clad collector carries a black briefcase with his calling spelled out in capital letters.

Chasing bad debts has grown 30 per cent this year, says Juan Carlos Granda, a director of El Cobrador del Frac, adding: "We expect demand for our services to soar in the autumn and winter as the crisis deepens."

Following the collapse of Spain's building boom, the clients who use the company to get their debts repaid are mostly small and medium-sized construction firms. "We advise the debtor initially by fax," says Mr Granda. "Some pay immediately and others don't. So we send a collector round in uniform, in a conspicuously labelled car. They feel ashamed because we have made their indebtedness public."

El Cobrador claims a 70 per cent success rate. "We are dealing with professional debtors who know all the tricks and who can pay but don't."

Spaniards are often slow to pay debts, a tendency that goes back centuries, says Pere Brachfield, a self-styled "debtologist" at Barcelona's School of Business Administration. Spanish law allows a leisurely 94 days to settle bills, compared with a European average of 30 days. It can take three years to pursue a debtor through the courts, during which time the company may have gone bust or changed its name. No wonder an estimated 60 per cent of creditors write off their debts.

El Cobrador de Frac, set up 20 years ago, has 550 staff and many imitators. Other collectors dress up as clowns, monks, bull-fighters or masked swordsmen. One always works with his dog and attributes his high success rate to the barking that accompanies his visits. Another plays the bagpipes until payment is received.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/boom-time-for-spains-costumed-debt-collectors-922500.html

Maybe its time to send in the Clowns............!



Golf Course Lakes

It appears that some of the smaller lakes have been filled slightly by lowering the water levels of the main lake. Not really a long term fix, but time will tell especially with the hot summer conditions underway. Watch this space!

Hacienda Riquelme - Golf Course Condition

Following numerous concerns, complaints and vociferous comments over the last weeks regarding the very poor current condition of our Hacienda Riquelme golf course, an on-course inspection meeting took place last week (23/4/14) between Colin Archer (HR Committee member responsible for Golf), Enrique Herrero (Director General of IRM - the golf course owners) and Francisco Allo (Head greenkeeper from Selprats - the golf course maintenance company).

The topics of discussion during the inspection were the very poor condition of the greens, the lack of water in the lakes, the increasing damage to tees and fairways being caused by rabbits, the hardness of the sand in the bunkers and the poor condition of the netting around the driving range after damage suffered in recent high winds. The netting is being replaced as this is being written.

Below is the communication the Committee has subsequently received from Enrique Herrero of IRM which we pass to you …...

“Here I include the explanation of the situation of the golf course that we have been having for the last weeks. Please resend it to the rest of the HR residents as an official statement coming from the IRM company.

 1) The grass variety in Hacienda Riquelme is Paspalum Vaginatum that gets the winter appearance once the temperature is below 7 degrees. This means that during the winter presents a brown appearance and without any signs of activity. In order to avoid this poor appearance during the winter we have to do several re-seeds of other varieties that are more resistant to the winter temperatures but don´t stand the high summer temperatures, so that they start to die gradually during the summer, helped by the application of some herbicides to end up with a playing surface which is fully Paspalum. The last re-seed was with Poa Trivialis.

The consequence of doing this operation year by year is a weakness of the original variety (Paspalum Vaginatum) as well as a contamination of bad seeds that end up spoiling the condition of the greens. To avoid this damage it is convenient to stop the re-seeding for one or two consecutive years within a period of 10 years. The problem of those years is that the aesthetic appearance of the greens is very poor even on the first stages of the spring phase, and it also affects the rolling of the ball.

What is more, the growing of the Paspalum in spring is very irregular as you can see in the fairways of Alhama, Saurines or Hacienda Riquelme. It also depends on the year; there are some years with long periods of evolution as unlikely the current year. There are physiological aspects that don´t have a simple explanation but in general, it is much more difficult when the autumn temperatures fall very fast and the spring season we have alternatively very warm weeks with cold days in the middle.

In this moment we are mowing the grass daily, using the rollers and making weekly vertical cuts to accelerate the whole process.

2) Regarding the rabbit damages, the fact that the native areas remain clean of bad seeds means that the rabbits are force to come out of their refuges on to the golf course to eat, chew the grass (main damages) and dig on the bunker sand. Currently we have license to capture them with cages but they got use to those and it is hard for it now to be effective. We are searching for other methods of keeping away those rabbits without needing of capturing them, and we are going to try an ecological repellent that apparently will keep them away.

3) The hardness of the bunker sand is difficult to avoid considering that our irrigation method is with sprinklers. What is more, it needs a certain degree of humidity to settle the sand on the bunkers.

4) Regarding the lakes as you know we are starting to refill the lakes; we have just started with the lake at the eleventh hole and we are going to fill the others gradually.

Thanks for your interest and cooperation

Best Regards,

Enrique Herrero Gil
IRM Director General”

The HR Committee’s own notes and views on this same meeting can be found as an attached document in the minutes of the recent April Committee Meeting held 29/4/14 when they are published.

Colin Archer

HR Committee Member – Golf

2014 May Hacienda Riquelme Newsfeed.........

Optimistic beliefs?

                               

We are frequently asked how all of the problems arose at Hacienda Riquelme Golf Resort and whilst we are not privy to all that has gone on within the confidential committee meetings, we are aware of the communities culture and substantial resort-wide material matters that exist today.

The presidents and the various members of the committee over the last five years have predominately consisted of retired expats that have very little to do having sold up or retired to the resort.

Back home in the UK, they would have had their own properties and gardens to look after, jobs and a local community to interact within. However, at Hacienda Riquelme it is really a ghost town apart from the two busy summer months when the occupancy of the resort grows from less than 100 residents to over 4,000 holiday makers. This was recently commented on and confirmed by a Telegraph Reporter from the UK.

In some parts of the resort it is so quite that even spotting a car moving within the resort is commented upon in the winter months. It can be days and days before anyone sees a new face or for that matter a friendly face out by chance.

So we have a group of expats that are bored out of their minds wanting to be within a committee to relive their boredom. That would be all well if they were to listen to fellow owners suggestions, ideas and problems but this is not an open, honest and transparent resort. It would also be wise if they had the necessary skill sets to manage a multi-million major operational site however, they do not and are lost with the "keys to the sweet shop" attitude.

Time and time again the committee have been asked to live within its means and not spend more than the cash it receives. To chase aggressively each and every debtor and not leave this difficult issue to Resortalia, a local small administration set-up that really does not have the international or for that matter local breadth and knowledge to chase 1.2 million euros of debtors. A clear example is the polaris debt where upon local sub communities were asked not to budget for these garage spaces in the 2015 community fees yet the general resort budgeted for the substantial town centre community fees for polaris based upon the committee decisions!

For every penny spent the committee really need to understand that it is not their money, their pockets but ours, each one of the 1,864 owners within Hacienda Riquelme. Time and time again they have signed contracts with insufficient local expertise or local benchmarked costings resulting in higher prices and profits to a select few companies

They really do need to engage and listen to the locally born population of owners that do have valid opinions and expertise, they can always help if they are ever called upon to be part of the decision making process.

Instead, their views are sidelined and material matters such as the empty lakes, the gardening contract, the workers compound, polaris strips and local costings are never considered.

We have previously called for a boycott of the Sub Community president positions as taking part in thee elections when the sub community presidents are never listened too or communicated too is really a complete waste of time. It is encouraging to note that a substantial number of owners took part in this boycott with the lowest level of attendance at the AGM in March 2014.

As we move forward the committee will move somewhat in our direction as can be seen by the implementation of the EUCC which we have called for some 2007. Now that this is implemented then perchance the golf course may start to pay their community fees having been a free loader for the past seven years.

The polaris lawsuit settlement was another clear example where the committee took the first offer on the table at 10% of the awards required to correct the building defects. This award now looks to be opportunist as the first instalment was not paid on time in Feb 2014. How on earth each sub community will fix their buildings defects with only 10% of the funds required beggers belief.

In closing,  a lot depends on the golf course company and their use of the water in the lakes to irrigate the golf course.

Now that one of the major lakes is now bone dry then it will only be a matter of time before all of the lakes are empty. Now is the time to grap the bull by its horns and clearly challenge the status quo otherwise we will end up with similar messes as other resorts.

Time will tell……………….. But sadly not within the Presidents monthly newsletters as these no longer appear, we wonder why no comments since December 2013!

So much for open and honest transparency and communications!