Lagrange / Soderev

Anyone know how to fill in the french claim form to try and get back the money we are owed.

I`m stuck on echu - echoir ? Ive only been paid about 37 euros from about 1100 owed from septembers payment.

Also do we fill it in now - will the December payment be paid.

Thanks in advance

Matt (LFDS owner)

An Irish commentator has expressed some scepticism as to

whether or not the financial difficulties allegedly being

encountered by the Lagrange group (and others) is

genuine.

So purely as a matter of academic interest, I tried to

find out. It irritated me slightly that I didn't know

whether the group was struggling or using these processes

as a cynical ploy to get owners to bear the cost of

improving or maintaining earnings. What I established is

that the corporate financial information is shrouded in

secrecy.

Unfortunately I couldn't establish who ultimately owns

the group, beyond finding one reference to it being

privately owned by a family. That source of information

is unreliable (WIKI) and unattributed so it may not be

true now, even if it was once.

I started by pulling the accounts of the French

companies. There are a number of these, the majority of

which do not have a requirement to file accounts. The

ones that do, have a Dutch parent company. Working back

up through the ownership trail, we end up with a Swiss

company, which is the ultimate parent. The trail goes

completely cold there. In Switzerland, with the

exception of banks, insurance companies and companies

traded on the stock exchange, there is no obligation to

file any information at all.

Working back up through the UK ownership chain (there is

a small outfit in the UK which basically consists of

holiday reps) you go via Luxemburg and end up in

Switzerland, where the trail goes cold again.

So what I can tell you is that it is a Swiss group based

in Geneva. I can tell you who the CEO is and where its

registered office is. But I cannot tell you its revenue,

its profits, its overall level of indebtedness or who

owns it.

Who knows who we are dealing with ultimately? I suppose

it might be a Swiss family with a mania for privacy. But

then again, it might not ...

This doesn't of course have any bearing on our position

as owners, but I thought it worth sharing.

Sorry for being thick but I have just read something on a French website in May concerning Lagrange.

I hadn't realised that Resitel which is in severe financial trouble (see other threads) is a subsidiary of Lagrange.

This article which was posted in May, stated that many observers were concerned about the financial state of Soderev another Lagrange subsidiary.

Does not look good.

http://immobilierandco.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/lagrange-les -residence-de-tourisme-resitel-en-difficulte/

Davey1

Hello . Found the forum today. Own residence on St Gervais

Les Fermes. Have been susp something wrong since last rent

late. No rent this last quarter!. I do think we should all

have some idea of a group decision and keen to keep in

contact with other owners within the residence.Will sit

tight for now .

Rent for June Quarter for Fermes de Samoens arrived in our bank account 25 July.

Atlantic Island

I purchased a small cottage on a development called 'Les Hautes de la Houle 'in Cancale near St Malo in 2008

It has been completely trouble free and the first I heard of this was when I simultneously noted that the payment for the 3rd quarter had not been paid in and received the letter from Soderev.

As far as I am aware the development is part privately owned and managed by la grange but I am unsure.
I opted for the full return in preference to usage and other than the initial viewing have not been there.

I am of the opinion that the development I am involved in is almost exclusively French owned so it would be interesting to know what the French owners are doing about this and I am sure there are other such forums and upset going on in France. Does anyone have info on this as my French is appalling.

MEP involvement seems a sensible route as I feel given the complexity of French Law and beaurocracy we will be lost and a co-ordinated union of owners rather than individual developments would carry more weight, be cheaper and distribute the relevant information accordingly. It seems there are some knowledgeable people on the forum and I am very gratful to whoever set this up.
ultimately though individual developments will almost certainly have to form thier own management companies and coordinated information sharing will be key

.

I can't find Tony in the list of posts but if anyone has an example, or guidance, of what should go in the 4 boxes (Loyer - Echu & A Echoir/ Autre Somme - Echue/ A Echoir), that would be much appreciated... Cheers, Peter.

Loyer échu is outstanding rent and loyer à échoir is rent that will become due for payment.

Autre somme = any other sum that is outstanding or will become due for payment.

To simonflynn

Good to hear from you,

I am a french national and I live in Ireland. I also

purchased in 'Les Hauts de la Houle' in Cancale in 2008

and I received the letter on friday.

I think we need to join forces to fight this and the

first step is to try to get in touch with all other

owners in 'Les Hauts de la Houle'.

From what happened with RESITEL, (I posted a message in

LEGAVOX.FR so you can have a look - my username is the

same), SODEREV are going to send us a new contract with

new terms that are very unfavorable i.e. a drop in rent

plus we will have to pay all the charges. So all taken

into account it's going to be a 50% drop in rent. We

should not accept this new contract pushed upon us as by

doing so we will automatically break the existing

contract which stands for 9 years. Cancale is doing quite

well so we need to fight to get a better deal. Note that

I actually have a sister using my cottage for the next 2

weeks and she is telling me the place is quite busy. I am

going over there myself on thursday and will try to get

the addresses from other owners.

You can contact me directly by e-mail @

jcalinquant@hotmail.com

Best Regards,Scubadog41196.5558564815

Yeah I'd understood the French, I guess my question was more about the period that we're talking; is this to the end of the leaseback period (or some other timescale) & does anyone have a sense of what the "other costs" might be? Thanks, Peter

Received Soderev Safeguard letter on 11th October. We have a property in Les Gets (Les Fermes Emiguy). Anyone else??

We have been 3 times this year and always busy. During winter it was packed out!!

Can you let me know how to join up the group mentioned in previous posts with other impacted (Soderev) owners.

I have asked the very helpful agent we used to purchase this property 2-3 years ago if he can shed anymore light?

Good luck to those who have decided to lodge their

own declaration de creance using Tony's good tips and

forms!

As far as I am concerned, I am having this done

professionally. I believe DIY is no moneysaver when it

comes to law, especially foreign law.

Tony, you have previously stated on this forum that such

insolvency claims are unsecured claims. This simply is is

incorrect and is misleading this forum's users.

When some of the leaseback owners who have used your

forms will be advised that their claim has been set

aside, will you also be providing them with another

template to submit a plea to the 'Juge Commissaire'?

To Finlay:

The french are on the LEGAVOX.FR forum (in french). See

http://www.legavox.fr/forum/immobilier/loyers-impayes-

residence-tourisme_37674_1.htm

Jean-Charles

owner in "Les hauts de la houle" - Cancale

You can look up accounts that have to be published here -

http://www.infogreffe.fr/infogreffe/index.do

I can't see that you would be able to locate the

financial information publicly though. The accounts for

the individual residences don't seem to be published

(unless I am missing something).

What you could do though, is get the accounts from the

Syndic - they send you those every year I think. This

shows all the expenses. Then you'd have to try to work

out what the rental income would be. That's a product of

the rent multiplied by the occupancy rates. That seems

to me to be very variable.

If there is an easier way of doing it, I would be very

grateful if someone would enlighten me.

I agree with Duffmary,<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

If as a group we approach an agreed upon French Lawyer (I understand there are already two being discussed) we should be able to strike a pretty good deal to have each members claim properly and legally compiled and correctly filled with the administrator and the court.

As a guide when I had to do this in relation to another leaseback scheme in 2009 it cost each member of the action group 119,6 Euros VAT included to prepare and file our claims for lost rent.

http://lagrangelatoussuire.forumactif.org/

another French active forum

Anyone interested in looking at the Accounts of SODEREV can see them all

here:

http://www.bilansgratuits.fr/SODEREV-TOUR-

-44510365800149/bilans.htm

I will try and answer a few of the questions based on my experience with the Resitel sauvegarde.
1. You should receive the rent from the date of the sauvegarde onwards - so if the sauvegarde was 28 Sept and your rent is due on 30 Sept you will only receive rent for 2/3 days.

2. The rent owed to you for the rest of the quarter will need to be claimed via a declaration de creance and you should receive a seperate letter telling you where this claim should be sent to. Having read other posts on this forum rents claimed via this process are paid over years so no chance of getting this money anytime soon ( if ever).

3. Lawyers. Ideally you need a French lawyer that speaks English. Before our group had managed to get together several owners had already taken and paid for legal advice. About 20 UK owners got together as a group to take some legal advice from a French lawyer and we split the cost between us. The lawyer managed to get responses from with M.Abitbol ( the administrator) and M. Bortolotti (La Grange's legal department) in an attempt to negoatiate a better contract but it soon became clear that La Grange were not interested in negotiating and that running up further legal costs trying to negotiate was futile. They agreed to pay for the rubbish tax and that was about it. The most important information we gained from this process was :
- that we were not legally obliged to sign the addendum
- a better understanding of the sauvegaurde process and that in theory our rent had to be paid under the sauvegarde regime.
- that our existing lease was still legally binding if we did not sign the addendum and Resitel did not cancel it.
- an understanding that compensation could be payable after the original 9 years of lease if we didn't renew the lease then ( several of us were not aware of this).
- told that if Resitel or the administrator cancelled the lease, compensation to them would not be payable.

4. Since then we have joined forces with the French owners and are using a lawyer appointed by them. However, only 40 owners signed with him so at the moment there is a minority paying the bill. That said, about 40 owners signed the addendum so there is at this stage less they can do legally which is why they haven't joined in the legal action. The French are now running the legal side of things.
You definately need to join forces with your French owners.

5. Getting any information out of Resitel or La Grange is very difficult. They are neither clear or transparent.

6. Accounts. We have asked again and again for full account information for our Residence but never received it.

7. Resitel have called a meeting with owners of our residence for later this month so we are very much hoping that the end will be in sight either way. At the moment less than half of owners have signed the addendum. Hopefully, one of the UK owners will go to attend the meeting. If he does, we will split his travel and hotel costs between the group.

8. The leases for the residence in Valloire were cancelled by Resitel last month. I believe they are now seeking a new management company.

Sparklygirl41197.4897106482

Re les fermes de samoens.

Has anybody got the form specifying the weeks available for

occupation for next winter/spring?

Normally I get this in July but despite emails and phone calls it hasn't

arrived yet. The keep saying it will be next week?

I have tried to phone the Paris office but have not got put through -

they are always busy?

I wonder how many owners have actually read their lease. As a result

of all this , I sat down to read it and discovered something that maybe

you are all aware of but I wasn't.

At the end of the existing lease the owner has to pay for the

refurbishment of the property at a cost decided by the management

company!!

When we bought the property we were told very clearly by the agent

that this cost would be borne by the management company. He used

this fact as a major selling point!

Another example of mis-selling and of course this agent is long since

gone!

Hi justme

Thanks for the post.

Do you mind me asking what does the dispute with them concern?

I have found it hard to get anywhere when small jobs needed to be

done to the property. I have mentioned these but got nowhere.

Other than that the rent has always been paid and the calendar for

occupation has come out in plenty of time.

Do you or anyone else out know what's going on now?

Is the les fermes de samoens in trouble or the fact that other

properties in other locations didn't rent as well and that is putting

pressure on the soderev group?

Sparkly girl - thanks for the in depth response... seems a lot of our

"learning curve" can be avoided through past experience.

Cathy8 - We were initially looking at Leaseback and (thankfully) decided

against. One of the shocking things for me was that they can (in theory)

renew the lease whether you like it or not. When I asked about this, they

said "oh, they never would do this, because it would undermine the whole

scheme and no-one would sign up in future".

I have to say, thats not the reason we chose against leaseback - ours was a

personal choice that we wanted more flexibility on changeover days and our

own use etc.

I think a lot of us certainly left a lot to "trust" when buying in a foreign

language. Certainly we did - one of the reasons being that even British

leases are impossible to understand!

I guess like a lot of us, I trusted the story I was sold by the agent who was dealing with the product some nine years back. I too believed it was trouble free investment that would pay for itself, all backed by the French government who would effectively 'guarantee' the safety of the whole deal. I was also lead to believe by the agent that yes, the apartment would be restored to its former glory at the termination of the lease! How wrong was I??

I think my apartment is next door to yours Steve in FdS. The apartment itself, the location and th e view are fine (as long as no-one builds on that field in front). Just a bit sickened to see that I was shafted by the deal I bought.

I am now hopeful that maybe this situation may eventually turn out to be one of those turning point moments that will lead onto some better and more fruitful arrangement. Fingers are crossed!

Hi I am a new member of the post. I represent a group of British and Irish owners of apartments in lagrange Prestige Les Chalets Edelweiss in La Plagne 1800. We have had a letter, today, from Soderev announcing their move into 'protective administration'. We do not have a date yet for the meeting . We are going to take legal advice on this matter has anybody done this yet?
Thanks

Hi Daft Doctor,

Does the letter not say thay the accounts will be available at the

meeting ? Not sent out before it.

Hi. La Grange use 3 management companies - Soderev ( Luxury properties), Resitel ( mid range) and another for their economy properties.
Resitel went into sauvegarde in March and we did not receive our Q1 rent - just 5 days to represent 26 - 31 March as they were in the sauvegarde then. Most of their failing propertie were in the Pyrenees area - ours is in the Alps.
We were asked to sign a new addendum which would give 15% less rent, paid half yearly instead of quarterly and pass all the property charges ( an increase from a fixed amount of €20 per m2 to the current rate of approx €56m2, TV licence, rubbish charges and any other charge they could think of). We were told that if we did not sign our lease would be cancelled. Everything added together was closer to a 50% decrease in net income - although this was unclear if you read the french small print ( some owners who did sign feel that they were misled into signing).
For our residence, about 50% of owners signed ( we think). We formed an owners group with other UK owners that have not signed and tried to negotiate a more reasonable deal with La Grange ( who seem to deal with the Resitel queries) - they offered some minor concessions but the new lease remained unreseasonable.
By June we had managed to join forces with the French owners. Some French owners and one Uk owner went to meet with La Grange in Paris - but again no compromise was found.
Q2 rent was paid 6 weeks late and only after legal action. Resitel deducted our share of the property charges for the Q2 rent ( it should have been deducted from Q1 but we didn't get paid that rent). However, we are also being asked by the La Grange Syndic to pay the property charges so it would appear that Resitel has not passed the money on.
Our leases have not been cancelled as threatened / promised - a number of owners would rather self rent and pay the TVA than stay with Resitel on such dire terms. Our residence is busy in both winter and summer with an average of 80% occupancy.
Neither Resital or the La Grange Syndic will answer our emails. Our next rent is due in 2 weeks time - if we get it. Our apartments continue to be rented. We are a very unhappy group of owners.
Hope yours doesn't go down the same route.

Sparklygirl41174.7054166667

Hi Sparkly Girl,

Many thanks for passing on your experiences. You are providing those of us at the begining of the journey with vital information.

You say that in theory the rents should be paid inder the sauveguarde scheme. Have you actualy received any rent payments since Resitel were put into administration?

Thanks

Hi Justme,

Having looked at Legavox, there is a post from a french owner jmd01 re-asking for contacts from LFDS. I know you have had some contact from french owners but he may be able to link more to the respective databases. BTW how is the list going?

Regards

likewise got the calender of occupation for les fermes de samoens today by email - better late than never. Hopefully the rent will appear at end of this month also.

I am returning slightly obsessively to the issue of the

intragroup transaction between the lease-holding tenant

companies (Resitel, Soderev) which are in administration,

and the holiday company Lagrange, which is not.

It is clear from the accounts of Soderev that the largest

part of its income (perhaps its only income? I can't tell

from the accounts) is received

from Lagrange. So anytime Lagrange feels the

pinch, it can turn off the cash to Soderev.

So our leases are worth in practical terms absolutely

nothing because in the event of default from Soderev, all

we get to do is sue Soderev. Soderev has no assets (I've

got a copy of the accounts if anyone wants them) and its

only source of income is from Lagrange and not, so far as

I can tell contractually protected. So our leases, under

either the old or any proposed new arrangement are not

worth as much as the paper they are printed on.

So what I would like to know is has anyone in the earlier

administrations demanded a parental guarantee? By this I

mean a guarantee that the terms of the leases will be

honored by the parent company. This company may have

some assets. I don't know because it doesn't publish its

accounts as it is a Swiss resident company. But it's

certainly got more assets than Soderev, which has diddly

squat. It seems to me that requiring a parental

guarantee is what anyone signing up to a new lease should

demand at a minimum.

Sarah41198.8832986111

In most aspects I agree with Sarah, however surely the other thing that comes in to play from Lagrange's point of view is that they have no holiday business without our properties?

I know that they do advertise other properties within their brochure but the biggest percentage by far are the ones owned by us. They are still taking bookings into next year and to keep a viable holiday business up and running they need our properties.

Just out of interest does any one know how far in advance you have been able to book on the Lagrange web site in the past? I've had a look and at the moment the booking calander is open up until May 2013 for our residence, which is when our occupation calendar usually swaps from winter to summer, but I don't know if this is the norm or may be a sign of when they are looking to cut and run after the next court administration hearing!

I've never had this calender d'occupation for Fermes de Samoens. Who specifically within Soderev deals with that? Whenever I've indicated I wanted to use my apartment it was always made available, but seems strange they've never sent me something which it appears other owners have received...

What's the latest view on rental payments? Anyone taking any wagers on if/when we'll next be paid and what deductions they'll come up with this time?

Yes that point occurred to me, curlywurly.

There are three possible scenarios.

1. The Lagrange group is fundamentally sound but

cynically ridding itself of loss-making residences

through these processes of administration, leaving itself

lean and healthy going forward.

2. The Lagrange group is facing genuine financial

hardship, is planning to continue in business but is

unfortunately having to restructure to be able to move

forward in partnership with its owners.

3. The Lagrange group is going under, knows it is going

under, and is cynically planning to use these processes

to extract the last pound of flesh from its owners.

It troubles me that ultimately I don't know who or what

we are dealing with. I don't know who owns this group.

I don't know their intentions. I don't know their bona

fides. I don't know the financial position of the group

as a whole, but if I did, I'd know what was going on. If

scenario 2 applies, why aren't they more open?

You're certainly right on the different deals. I pay for usage through deduction of rent - seemingly I bought without rights to 'free' weeks.

Still battling those fools over the unpaid amounts?? Jeez, they are dumb!

If this really is negotiation stage with Lagrange, what chances do we have in redrafting the lease between landlord/tenant?

For example no compensation on termination of the lease period, a "capped" fee for refurbishment costs if we choose to extend the lease. Any other suggestions welcome.

Maybe this is a chance at this stage, if they feel we have a united approach and risk losing rentable properties, maybe this is the deal in return for reduced rental in the short term?

I can imagine if there are no properties to rent, as the other option is all tenants self appoint a mangement for their resort, then there is no Lagrange I guess??

The holiday rents get paid to La Grange to lagrange-holidays from the

holiday makers.

Our lease is with the part of the group that has no income stream.

Should have been wiser when we bought from LP Promotion now

advertised as Lagrange Patrimone in their holiday brochure, our lease

is with Soderev and all income goes to La Grange!

In the brochure a company called Traveland Resorts MDV is referred

to Carouge/Geneva, a new name to me perhaps this is the parent

company?

I think we need a forum that has some privacy for communication as

suggested our strategy is laid bare for all to see on this forum, this

forum has been very useful for communicating and informing - thank

god for the Internet and the posts informing really grateful to all who

have spent the time searching and sharing info.

Checked my french bank acc today. Lagrange have deposited 37 euros, about 1/30th of what it should be. An odd amount and no letter or explanation. Oh dear doesnt look good.

Hi Matt,

From what I understand, once in admin they are obliged to pay us future amounts due to avoid the next step of liquidation. As they went into admin on the 28th of September, they need to pay the remaining days of the quarter hence the 37 euros. Hopefully that bodes well at least for Q4's payment.

They will have to go back to the courts in March as the sauveguarde procedure is for 6 months, so I guess Q1 2013 payment is up in the air.