English
FrançaisI have a leaseback apartment at Le Neptune St Pierre la Mer. It was leased to Odalys who did not renew the lease at the end of last year. The reason was clear. The building was in a terrible state and needed urgent work to restore heating and hot water as a minimum let alone the disgusting state of the public parts.
Their management company SGIT had allowed the place to fall into disrepair over the last 10 years according to one employee.
SGIT are now sending out huge bills to the owners for the work – once this is done Odalys might be prepared to come back!!
I am not sure what our legal rights are as owners – I know Odalys were supposed to return our flats in a decent order – my apartment was ok – it’s the public parts and the general state of the building. SGIT have just sent out huge appels de fonds – a basic studio they are asking 7000 euros for the work. I argued to get rid of SGIT at the last meeting but other owners have seemed reluctant to fire them arguing they know the building best - so this hasn’t happened. I suspect a lot of owners won’t pay even though SGIT are threatening penalties of over 1000 euros for failure to pay.
We have also now had some interest from a company called Vacaneole and I wondered if anyone knew anything about them.
It is the usual leaseback nightmare – Can anyone advise.
There are a number of English speaking owners who would be happy to pay for the right legal advice.
So you currently have no lease. You always have options. I cannot give you legal advice but we have a lawyer who could. But it is best that you act as a group. Do you have 1 (or a small group of owners) who can represent the others? You should also post this in the Odalys forum so it goes automatically to Odalys owners.
Hello, looks like 2 issues here.
The 7k bill issued by syndic(management company) would have to passed by owners vote. Normally syndic manage the shared areas on behalf of owners so seems a bit odd if it includes apartment refurb. Syndic can enforce those payments so difficult for any owner to avoid. It may be worth checking meeting minutes to check what "majority article" resolution was passed under. Article 24 is a majority of meeting attendees and proxies, Article 25 is 50%+ of all owners and think Article 26 is 66%+ of owners. That kind of resolution may have needed a Article 25. However at a minimum it sould like owners need to agree a refurb of building, shared heating etc anyway.
If commercial lease was not renewed you could explore with other owners other types of leases. The disadvantage of a commercial lease is you will have to compensate operator at end of term if you decide to exit lease as you are closing off opertor's source of income. This compensation is usually 2 to 3 years of your apartments turnover ie all rental income earned on apartment by operator. Also difficult if you ever wish to sell as new buyer has to take over lease.
Another option is to sign shorter rental contracts which still contain 3 of the 4 "hotel services". This means you keep your leaseback-lmnp tax status and has advantage in that you could exit this shorter contract, pay back tva and sell freehold at some stage if you wished.
Disadvantage however is that larger opertors will only sign commercial-leases. If most owners sign commercial-lease with large operator you and other will need to find a smaller opertor or local immobilier to sign your shorter contracts. If utility-meters have not been setup, larger operator may have higher usage on their apartments. However huge advanatge is you are in full control of your apartment.
small addendum to previous post: You may need to check that the commercial leases are not still active. Renewal is automatic afaik unless cancellation of lease is registered at local commercial court. Existing leases may be sold on to a new operator with old conditions.
Another leaseback nightmare - I feel for you