Le Crystal Cagnes sur Mer

I notice I also haven't been paid the April money, although in recent times they've been 2 or 3 weeks late so I had not chased it up.

I'll drop an e-mail to Caroline Bret at Coralia to see if she can shed any light on what's going on. I'm going over to Le Crystal next week so I'll ask Sandrine to chase it up if there's no reply before that.

Fingers Crossed !  Hopefully we can also get some more contact with other owners.  There are 79 flats in Le Crystal and it would be nice to have an effective body to represent our interests.

Hi Lesjsmith and BMK. I’m glad that I found this site and forum.

We, my wife and I, are owner of an apartment in Le Crystal.

Also we noticed that the rental income didn’t show up. So a couple of days ago

we sent an e-mail to Mme Sandrine. After some days without replay, we phoned her this Friday the 29th of May. She told us that Coralia has a cash flow problem for the moment and that the reason was too few reservations, she also told us that Mr Villard at Coralia will in the nearby future send a letter to all the owners with some kind of explanation over the problem.

I asked Mme Sandrine for a real honest answer if we should have any reason to be worried, if there is a risk that Coralia will go bankruptcy. Her answer was, not for the moment but if the low frequency of reservation will go on for a while, of course there is a reason to be worried. After that call, I tried to connect with Mr Villard but unfortunately he wasn’t in his office.

I can tell that it isn’t easy to deal with this when we are 2000 km away, we live in Sweden.

I wonder what will happen if, and I say if, Coralia will go bankruptcy. Of course we own our apartment, that is clear, and of course if no one will rent them out, there will be no rental income. But what will happen with the VAT? If I understand right, when we bought the apartments we paid no VAT, and the conditions for that was that the apartments will be rented out for twenty years. Now it’s little more than five years, so do we need to pay 75 % of the VAT? Or what? Hopefully the problems are just for a short time and things will get better, but I think it’s a good idea to be prepared.

Again, I’m so glad that I found you, because we don’t know anyone else at Le Crystal, and of course together we are stronger so let’s hope that more owners find us.

Sorry for my not so very good English. 

Hi Lesjsmith and thanks for your reply. About the other owners, at least their names are on the documents from the yearly meetings, but of course there is no contact 

information available. Maybe we just can ask Sandrine for a mail list? I don't know if that's a good idea?

We'll keep in touch. Best Regards Stephan and Ann-Catrin.

Dear Lesjsmith, I thought about one thing more. I can send you a text message to your cell-phone with my mail adress, at least that will be a start on a contact list.

I can see your mobile phone number in your profile, but should there be a number for the country, is it +44 (England)? Or you can see my number in my profile, so you can text me.

/Stephan

Hi Guys - my name is Barry McKay (hence the BMK user-name). I'm just back from a few days in Le Crystal. I met with Lionel Villard when I was there and he said he would be sending out the letter which I presume we've all received by now !  I did ask M Villard to advise owners abouit the existence of this forum so that we might have some opportunity to discuss the position. I don't know if that was done or not - certainly there was  no reference to it in the copy of the letter I received.  However I have had a direct e-mail from an Irish couple who own in Le Crystal and they asked me about this forum so perhaps Coralia will notify our co-owners.

I guess like most of you I need a bit of time to digest the letter and its proposals - a not insignificant reduction in rent and a change in payment dates being the principal (but tot the only) changes. I'll hold fire on any knee-jerk reactions and give it a bit of thought over the next few days. Hopefully by then we'll have a few more people in the forum.

Sorry Lesley - yes the mobile number sounds right for dialing from abroad.

Cheers

B.

Les - I don't think I correctly posted my contact info when I joined this site - if I didn't, my mobile is a UK number 07850 414195.

Cheers

B.

Hi everyone. I have just received approval to join this forum. I have recently been in contact with Brian Mc Kay. My husband and I are owners of an apartment in Le Crystal. We also have a mortgage and we are quite worried.  We live in Ireland. I have sent an e-mail to Coralia/M Villard but haven't yet received a reply. I have the contact details for a Dublin couple who also have an apartment so I will tell them about this forum.

Hi everyone

I sent an e-mail to Caroline Bret on Friday for the attention of M Villard but haven't yet heard anything. I sent a further e-mail to her today stating that I havent heard

from him.I also asked her if she could send the web address for this blog to all of the apartment owners in Le Crystal who have a contract with Coralia.

English version.

Hi everyone, we asked Caroline Bret for an english version of the letter. We just got it on PDF, if anyone of you owners at Le Crystal want it, just text me on my cell phone your mail address, you find my cell phone number in my profile. We also think that it could be a good idéa to compile a contact list to all the owners, we need name, address, phone and cell phone number, mail address and number on the apartment. If you mail to me, I will put together a list that I will send to everyone.

Best Wishes Stephan 

Hi All - I've just had a phone call from a French owner - a doctor who lives in the South of France. His English is pretty good (a lot better than my French).  He is interested in organizing an Association of Co-Owners which I understand would be a formal entity to represent owners' interests in disputes with the management company. Iniitially he is trying to contact the French owners but obviously he would like to include those of us who are from outside France  as we make up the majority of owners. 

He was quite happy for me to include his contact information on this forum. His name is Dr. Vladimir Kronz and his email address is   vladimir.kronz@free.fr

Hopefully he'll get a few more owners on board ;  I'll send him an e-mail asking him to join this website as it's probably the simplest way we have of communicating - at least for the short term.

Hi Stefan

Caroline sent an e-mail to everyone today with the link to this website. I had asked her to send it to all 79 apartment owners and she kindly did this.

Eileen 

Hi Barry

I just sent an e-mail to the French doctor. It is great to have a French contact. It was nice of him to contact you. 

Thanks for doing that Eileen - much appreciated. I agree it was nice of him to make contact and it will be very good to have him on board. 

Great to see that at 9am this morning there are now 12 members of the forum.

Hello  . My name is Yvonne Mc Keon, living in Ireland. We own an apartment, and like some of the previous people posting here, rely on the rental income to pay back  most of the mortgage. Hence this news is particularly worrying.  However,  we are vcry pleased  to have this forum- apart at all from the immediate crisis, it is good to have a forum for co-owners.   Four members of my extended  family own apartments also, so while I will not be representing them directly, we will no doubt be able to muster a collective response.  I dont know enough about the situation on the ground in France to offer any views on this matter as yet, and await further contributions with interest.

kind regards

Yvonne Mc Keon

Hi everyone

Good to hear that there are other co-owners who feel the same way about their investment in Le Crystal. We have only heard about this forum yesterday via an e-mail from Caroline. We happened to be in le crystal before letters were sent and we met up with Lionel Villard. Sandrine very kindly advised us when we arrived that there was a problem with the payments and a meeting was arranged with Lionel. Despite our concerns we found him very approachable. The following are some of the points from the meeting which you will probably know from the letter, poor economy, late rentals, higher discounts and did discuss comments on trip advisor and suggested more promotion of area.

Did question if lower income could we expect lower costs, I.e if occupancy low costs should reflect this. We were looking for a copy of the letter in English but we have not received same so I would appreciate a copy via e-mail if possible, thanks.

It would be really worthwhile to form an association as suggested difficult as it might be to meet up but perhaps owners from Ireland could assemble in a location conve,intent to everyone and discuss matters in more detail.

I have decided to forward my e mail address which may ease method of communication and perhaps we could eventually set up a group e mail.

Thanks to all concerned for setting up forum it is a great idea.

Brendan and Bernie Grehan Ireland brendangrehan@eircom.net

We, as owner of an apartment at Le Crystal, have joined this forum to be part of the discussions about how we best can act to secure our values. And we are also positive to be members of an owner association.

It is disappointing to see relatively few members of the forum. It is going to be hard to come up with a consensus as to how to proceed. I read on another forum that it is possible to request the names and addresses of co owners. Does anyone know anything about this?

I too have read that comment on another forum within this website. I think it was a French solicitor, who referred to the specific law.

However, even if we get the contact details we may not get a response from everyone. The other owners have been notified of this forum and one has to ask why they wouldn't join - my worry is that some people may think they can ignore the situation and that their problem will be solved by everyone else taking a reduction in rent, leaving them unaffected. 

I think the next question for all of us is - How many owners do we need to have ?  Vladimir, is there a particular percentage of owners that we need to have in order to form an Association?   Je pense que la question suivante pour nous tous est - Combien de propriétaires devrions-nous avoir? Vladimir, est-ce qu'il y a un pourcentage particulier de propriétaires que nous devons avoir pour former une Association?

My name is Brian Collins and both my wife Moira and I own a property in Le Crsytal. We had also contacted Sandrine in mid-May regarding the non-payment of rent and 

she did explain the situation as was clarified in the correspondence just received from Coralia.

We only realised this forum existed after receiving an email from Coralia on

To all Le Crystal owners!We had also hoped that more of the owners had been in the community. The situation that has occurred is not easy to manage and the more we are, the stronger we become. We try to make a list of contacts which we will send to everyone. Therefore we are very happy, if you that have not contacted me yet, want to email your contact information to me. Send a text message to my mobile 00460722005480 or send an email to stephan.hermansson@telia.com. Hope to hear from you soon. Many thanks to all of you that already has contacted me. Best wishes/ Stephan

Apologies. We only heard about this forum when we received an  email from Coralia on 8th June informing us of it's existance.

It's good to have contact with other owners.

hello

so i'm trying to finalyse the document for the association, and to send it to the prefecture , but i have to wait for another french co owner to sign the paper, after this i will need a document from every one to allow to represent you for the assocation. i'm contacting an attorney too to see what it is possible to do

Best regards

vladimir kronz

Hi Vladamir

Thank you very much for your efforts on our behalf. They are much appreciated. If we can do anything to help you please let us know.

Cordialement

Eileen

Another worried Crystal co-owner hereby signing up. Forming an owner´s association sounds like a good idea. I have been in contact with four other Swedish co-owners. We have discussed a few items: 1) Bancrupcy for Crystal Gestion is a potential disaster for many of us, 2) We are prepared to sign the new contract leading to a 20% reduction of rental income for 2015, beacuase getting 80% of the projected income is still MUCH BETTER than getting no money at all. According to their letter, 100% of the co-owners need to sign, otherwise it won´t work. I find it hard to believe that every single co-owner really will sign... 3) If we agree on the new contract, could we ask for a small compensation? We have suggested to M Villard that we get another free week e.g. in early July or some other time when they are not very booked up. That would cost them nothing but could be of great value for some of us.

Thank you for your post Anders. I have just received an e-mail from Caroline in response to my questions regarding  

• whether everyone would have to  sign up to the new management agreement for it to work

        and

• the vat

        and 

• the 1 million euros payable to the local council 

The following are the answers from Caroline:

"I had a meeting yesterday with Mr Villard and I can answer to your questions.

Indeed, if we do not have 100 % of positive returns, CRYSTAL GESTION SARL will not be able to continue the management of Le Crystal Residence.

En effet, si nous ne recevons pas 100 % de retours positifs, la SARL CRYSTAL GESTION ne sera pas dans la possibilité de continuer la gestion de la résidence Le Crystal.

Regarding the VAT refund and 1 million Euros compensation clause, I invite you to read your co-ownership rules and your acquisition documents (after “fin de partie normalisée” paragraph you have another paragraph called “conditions particulières”).

Concernant la clause de remboursement de la TVA et l’indemnité d’un million d’euros, je vous invite à lire votre règlement de copropriété ainsi que vous documents d’acquisition (après le paragraphe intitulé « fin de partie normalisée », il y a un paragraphe « conditions particulières »).

Hi,

The chance of getting an answer from all 79,  if nothing is done, must be very small. There are all sorts of reasons for this.

If we, in this forum, could get a list of all owners home  or perhaps e-mail adresses, it might be possible to adress all.

hello

so we have to sign the new contract, ( but we have to know that the company crystal gestion is very weak and can stop  very quickcly) .

so i want to have a paper from each member that allow me to represent them in the assocation that i'm creating

in case of bankruptcy, we will use this assocation .

best regards

vladimir kronz

Hi Guys - a great forum and long overdue as a means for us all to communicate with each other and share experiences.

Naturally as the vast majority of correspondence is received in French I default to google translate to get a general sense of what the

content refers to - the recent email highlighting the existence of this forum was great as it had been duplicated underneath in English

however I was in shock at reading the content of the forum and had no idea this was going on.

This morning I received the standard letter notifying payment which had a €653 applied - last year I had to get a new boiler / water heater

installed but the price was under €500 so I assume the difference was for the smoke alarm?

Has cash flow improved?

James Murphy

Northern Ireland

I also received a payment which was cosiderably lower than I would have expected prior to the current problems. It is made up of the normal quarter rent with a significant reduction for charges 2013/14.  I asked Caroline for a breakdown of these charges and she sent me a copy of a letter which I had NOT previously received.  This letter showed the calculation of the Non Recoverable Condominium Fees which seemed horrendously high (It was also gross of TVA).  I think it would be very difficult to continue to bear recharges as high as this AND a 20% reduction in rental income.

Dear James,

I can confirm you that you have understand the whole amendment:

-          Changes start on January 2015

-          Payment will be done on September 30th and balance on December 31st

-          Annual rental income reduce from 5 868,86 € to 4 695 €

After several meetings with other co-owners, we have added two clauses in the amendment (you will receive it soon) :

-          return to good fortune, that is to say that if, at the end of the financial years of management, it turns out that the operating results were positive and that the state debt is brought back to normal, then it is agreed that the Manager will increase the rent to reach the initial rent. Rent increases will be calculated so as not to jeopardize the continuity of management, other provisions of the amendment which is otherwise applicable.

-          eviction compensation calculated on 1% of the outcome done on your flat the year of the cancellation. Eg, if we do 10 000 € of benefit on your flat, we will ask you 1 % of 10 000 € so 100 €. That is too say that we will not require this sum as it is more expensive to start the procedure to ask eviction compensation than the amount we fixed.

As it is an amendment, it just changes so point of the current lease, so the final date is still the same as the one on the lease contract in 2017.

I do hope I have answered to your questions,

Kind regards,

Caroline BRET

Secrétariat

CRYSTAL GESTION Sarl

Siège social:

1 avenue de Passau

06800 CAGNES SUR MER

Tél: 04 93 08 66 39

Fax: 04 93 08 77 27

Adresse correspondance :

Chez BACOTEC GESTION SARL

Résidence PALMYRA II – 4 Avenue des Alizés – 34300 CAP D’AGDE

Tél. 04.67.26.40.35 – Fax 04.67.26.03.90

De : James Murphy [mailto:jamesmurphy999@btinternet.com] 
Envoyé : mercredi 8 juillet 2015 10:56
À : bacotec@wanadoo.fr
Objet : Re: English translation availability

Dear Sir

Further to my email yesterday it would be of benefit prior to me making a decision forwarding to me an English translation so I can be fully informed 

I see you intend to retrospectively apply the changes commencing from January 2015 and that in the future the quarterly payments will cease - instead half will be paid in September (obviously after the busy summer months) and then the remaining balance in the following December

It is my understanding my amended contract income will reduce from 5868-86 Euro to 4695-00 Euro

Can you clarify that there is a clause that gives the impression that the payment will be linked directly to the occupancy overall of the Le Crystal Complex during the period?

Is this a permanent amendment to the current contract or does it only last until 2017 when it will be null & void reverting back to the original contract terms that I signed from the outset

I would appreciate a prompt reply so I can make my decision.

Regards,

James Murphy

I believe that signing the revised contract is a better option than not signing it.  Does anyone disagree ?   (If you would prefer not to say so publicly, please feel free to drop me an e-mail at bsmckay@groveroad7.fsnet.co.uk and I'll post your comment on the forum without any names.)

Hello Co Owners 

My Wife and I are also owners of an apartment in Le Crystal, we live in Ireland, apologies we have only recently discovered this forum. We are delighted to have found you and share your concerns.we are also extremely frustrated with the leaseback agreement and the supposedly guaranted rent. we have signed the document and returned it to Bacotec.please feel free to contact us,

Michael & Nancy Banks Email banksmc@eircom.net

Hello

so for resume, bacotec look likes to want to continue the activity ( and it's better than nothing even we have lost 20 % )

we have to hope too that the charge of syndic nardy will decrease next year ( after they can recover cash from insurrance )

so wait and see

vladimir

Hi Everyone

We signed up for the new terms and conditions. Has anyone received a cheque? I thought we were supposed to be paid at the end of August or am I wrong?

Kind Regards

Eileen Hornibrook

Hi Everyone

We signed up for the new terms and conditions. Has anyone received a cheque? I thought we were supposed to be paid at the end of August or am I wrong?

Kind Regards

Eileen Hornibrook

Hi Eileen,

i think its the end of September for payment, also i just got an email from Sandrine informing me the roller shutter door in the apartment has to be replaced at a coct of €543.82, it makes it really difficult to make the repayment with all these reductions and costs !!

michael

Hi Michael

Perhaps we should look at meeting up ie: Irish  owners of  a leaseback appartment in Le Crystal. I say Irish owners because it would be easier for us to meetup .We received notice by e mail last Wednesday that we would have to replace our boiler and that we could receive a quote. On Thursday I sent Le Crystal an e mail requesting 3 quotes and a photo of the damaged  boiler. On Friday I received an e mail to say that they had to go ahead with replacing the boiler because the clients in the appartment refused to move to another appartment because they have children and that they couldnt be left without hot water.(We have a third floor appartment)

Like you we are concerned about the incresing number of costs which is quite a worry. 

I wonder if anyone knows how many people signed up to the new terms and conditions/contract.

Kind Regards

Eileen

Hi Everyone,

Just wondering if anyone has had any information with regard to the revised terms and conditions relating to our new payments which were due at the end of September?

Regards

Raymond and Carol O'Shea

Hi all,

i have not received any rent yet

michael

Hi

I think it is fair to say that we are quite worried. We signed up to the new terms and conditions but havent heard anything in terms of the payment which is very overdue.

Eileen