Seagrove Construction Question

[PrincessKel]

My family and I have been regular guests to Seagrove for many years. We think it is the most beautiful and relaxing place on earth. Last summer when we were vacationing, we heard and read that there is going to be some sort of fancy schmancy hotel where the Seagrove Market is/was located. I haven't found any recent information about it, wondering if it ever really happened (hoping it DID NOT!).

We can't wait to get there!!!! July is always so far away :roll:

[Smiling JOe]

Hotel Viridian, and it didn't happen yet.

[PrincessKel]

OOOOHHH! I hope it doesn't happen! It will be a very sad event to that wonderful area. If there is any place to voice a concerned opinion, will you please let me know.
Thanks for the quick reply. IS IT JULY YET?????

[kurt]

http://www.hotelviridian.com

[John R]

brought to you by the same people who own the market.

[Beachmom]

brought to you by the same people who own the market.
:eek: I didn't know that.

So, will it stay as is until all units are reserved? It looks like they have a ways to go.

[tistheseason]

When/where is the seagrove market relocating? Every time I'm there I expect it to be the last time at the ol' locale. A girl can only go "one last time" so many times -- but I do hope it stays put for a while!

[Smiling JOe]

When/where is the seagrove market relocating? Every time I'm there I expect it to be the last time at the ol' locale. A girl can only go "one last time" so many times -- but I do hope it stays put for a while!Downstairs in the Hotel Viridian.

[PrincessKel]

I went to the Hotel Viridian website and clicked on the "Contact Us" link. Of course it has something to do with money. From what I can understand, it is going to be condos and hotel rooms??? But the email I recieved said that contracts and such aren't expected to be signed until Fall 2007. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it WON'T happen.

[SHELLY]

[FONT="Century Gothic"]I went to the Hotel Viridian website and clicked on the "Contact Us" link. Of course it has something to do with money. From what I can understand, it is going to be condos and hotel rooms???

They call them CONDOTELS. In a nutshell, the developer builds a "hotel" and sells the hotel rooms to "investors." The "investors" get to use their "room" from time-to-time and in between uses, the hotel's owner rents out the room to guests, contracts the maid/linen service, and manages the property--all for a percentage of the amount they take in on the rooms "if" they ever get rented during the year. There's also the expense of the upkeep of furnishings and amentities as dictated by the establishment. If you happen to "invest" in a room that is next to the ice machine or over the air conditioner units, you may not have the rental traffic the developer "suggested" you might have and your "investment" will turn out being "Enron by the Sea." Condotels are pretty much the biggest real estate gip going--lots of fine print, lots of wherefores and therefores....marketed to folks who know no better.

.

[bennedy]

It is my understanding that sales are lagging and that the agent on site left to go make some money somewhere else. Nothing will happen until 80% of the units sell....... Long live the Seagrove Market and the grouper sandwiches !!!!!

[SHELLY]

It is my understanding that sales are lagging and that the agent on site left to go make some money somewhere else. Nothing will happen until 80% of the units sell....... Long live the Seagrove Market and the grouper sandwiches !!!!!

Development sales agents have knocked the Maytag Repairmen off the top of the list as "the Loneliest Guys in Town."
http://www.timvp.com/ad7.jpg

[sberry123]

They call them CONDOTELS. In a nutshell, the developer builds a "hotel" and sells the hotel rooms to "investors." The "investors" get to use their "room" from time-to-time and in between uses, the hotel's owner rents out the room to guests, contracts the maid/linen service, and manages the property--all for a percentage of the amount they take in on the rooms "if" they ever get rented during the year. There's also the expense of the upkeep of furnishings and amentities as dictated by the establishment. If you happen to "invest" in a room that is next to the ice machine or over the air conditioner units, you may not have the rental traffic the developer "suggested" you might have and your "investment" will turn out being "Enron by the Sea." Condotels are pretty much the biggest real estate gip going--lots of fine print, lots of wherefores and therefores....marketed to folks who know no better.

.


What an idea, the developer sells the hotel rooms where the owner will finance, insure, furnish, repair and other associated condo like costs. While the management company makes money off room service, a percentage off the top for renting your room and whatever charges they can profit from. Hey, insurance increase, the owner pays it, negative cash flow to the owner, that's life. :eek:

[SHELLY]

What an idea, the developer sells the hotel rooms where the owner will finance, insure, furnish, repair and other associated condo like costs. While the management company makes money off room service, a percentage off the top for renting your room and whatever charges they can profit from. Hey, insurance increase, the owner pays it, negative cash flow to the owner, that's life. :eek:

It was a good idea during the frenzy when so many "investors," suffering from recto-cranial inversion, bought up anything remotely resembling real estate...now dot.condos are a pretty hard sell and even harder to finance--especially now that commercial banks have been smacked on the snoot by the Fed.

.

[TooFarTampa]

It was a good idea during the frenzy when so many "investors," suffering from recto-cranial inversion, bought up anything remotely resembling real estate...now dot.condos are a pretty hard sell and even harder to finance--especially now that commercial banks have been smacked on the snoot by the Fed.

.

:floor: :floor:

Seriously, though, glad these "opportunities" are being exposed for what they are ... sweet deals for the developers and managers and little else. Glad they are now a hard sell. I hope the owner finds other things to do with that parcel, if he feels that he must.

[spinDrAtl]

They call them CONDOTELS. In a nutshell, the developer builds a "hotel" and sells the hotel rooms to "investors." The "investors" get to use their "room" from time-to-time and in between uses, the hotel's owner rents out the room to guests, contracts the maid/linen service, and manages the property--all for a percentage of the amount they take in on the rooms "if" they ever get rented during the year. There's also the expense of the upkeep of furnishings and amentities as dictated by the establishment. If you happen to "invest" in a room that is next to the ice machine or over the air conditioner units, you may not have the rental traffic the developer "suggested" you might have and your "investment" will turn out being "Enron by the Sea." Condotels are pretty much the biggest real estate gip going--lots of fine print, lots of wherefores and therefores....marketed to folks who know no better.

.

Your definition of a condotel is a little misleading. A project does not have to look like a hotel or act like a hotel in order to be a condotel. Typically, the property is defined that way if there is an on-site check in area and the property can be rented on a nightly basis. In many different locales, there are condo developments that are classified as condotels that have owner occupied units, units that do not belong to the rental programs, units that are rented/managed by the owners themselves, and also units that do long term rentals.

Condotel properties are not limited to 'hotel rooms' either. Many properties classified this way have units from studios to 4 and 5 bedrooms.

If an owner chooses to participate in a rental pool, then the things you say might apply in some form or another depending on the property. I'm sure there are some terrible deals out there and of course buyer beware, but all condotels are not alike. The classification of the property by itself does not make it a 'gyp'.

[Joefromseagrove]

For what its worth, I noticed the engineering firm for Hotel Viridian had filed a lien against the developer for work done last year that was not paid for.

[TreeFrog]

For what its worth, I noticed the engineering firm for Hotel Viridian had filed a lien against the developer for work done last year that was not paid for.

Is this public record? If so, where did you find it?

[Smiling JOe]

Is this public record? If so, where did you find it?liens are public records and can be found in the Clerk of Courts. Attached is the lien to which joefromseagrove refers.

[Miss Kitty]

New rule...every developer must post their plans on sowal.com and we will vote yes or no.

[SHELLY]

Your definition of a condotel is a little misleading. A project does not have to look like a hotel or act like a hotel in order to be a condotel.

In the case of the Hotel Viridian, it was planning on selling 28 hotel rooms (their words, not mine) and 10 condos. And you are right when you state that not all condotels are the same--some have even been known to pay their contractors for sevices rendered. <rimshot>


.

[spinDrAtl]

In the case of the Hotel Viridian, it was planning on selling 28 hotel rooms (their words, not mine) and 10 condos. And you are right when you state that not all condotels are the same--some have even been known to pay their contractors for sevices rendered. <rimshot>


.

I can't comment on Hotel Viridian as I am unfamiliar with that project, but your statement was pretty much a blanket trashing (as far as I read it) of condotel's in general, such as 'Condotels are pretty much the biggest real estate gip going--lots of fine print, lots of wherefores and therefores....marketed to folks who know no better. That statement shows a basic lack of knowledge of the property type. Project classification is only one factor involved in the investment value of a property. People have been known to buy a property classified this way and use it as a primary residence, therefore not even being a part of your 'investor' scenario.

Our condo at High Pointe was technically a condotel when Abbott Resorts check in office was on site. That office is no longer a part of the project so the property probably would no longer be classified that way. Either way, that project and hundreds of others are nothing like the statements you used to define a condotel.

[ShallowsNole]

This is all very interesting. :cool:

[SHELLY]

Don't even bother with condo-hotel

February 9, 2007
Dear Mr. Berko: I missed an opportunity to purchase a condo-hotel in Fort Lauderdale last April because I didn't have enough money for a down payment. Now I have the money because we sold our interest in a farm, which my brother and I inherited from our parents three years ago. I'm looking at this beautiful condo-hotel in Las Vegas with gorgeous grounds, top-grade construction, huge sparkling pool, beautiful lighting, magnificent appointments and a spacious entrance lobby that looks like something from an MGM extravaganza.

The cost is $690,000 and I'd put $70,000 down. My wife and I would live there three or four weeks a year and the hotel would rent our unit between $250 and $300 a night when we are not there and they'd keep 50 percent of the take. This is a hot market and I could probably sell it (it's 680 square feet) at a good profit a year from now. The condo-hotel concept is the fastest growth segment of the real estate market and I want your thoughts on this investment before I invest.

B.R.
Elkhart, Ind.


Dear B.R.:

Condo-hotels ... ugh -- and at $1,000 per square foot! I marvel at the consummate gullibility of a trusting, easily exploitable and greedy American consumer.

While I don't offer guarantees, I'm going to make an exception in your case and give you an outright guaranteed maybe that today's value of this condo-hotel in Las Vegas will be a heck of a lot less when you try to sell that property six months or a year later. I will also give you an absolute guaranteed maybe that your interest costs, insurance expenses, maid service, condo fees, real estate taxes and maintenance can exceed, by orders of magnitude, the rental income you want to believe you will earn.

I will give you a definite guaranteed maybe that, while annual hotel occupancy rates average 75.3 percent, the yearly occupancy rate for your condo-hotel unit will not exceed 40 percent. I will offer you as well a solid, guaranteed maybe that the rental income you naively believe you'll get will be enormously lower than your expectations. And I'm giving a straight-out guaranteed maybe -- even if your condo-hotel unit has a 75 percent occupancy rate -- that your rental income will fall steeply short of your rental expenses and at the end of the year, you will have a bleak, black tax loss.

If you try to sell that absurd investment a year later, I doubt that you will get 70 percent of your money back. I don't know of a single, living soul whose rental income from a condo-hotel exceeds expenses. The phenomenal rate at which these silly things are being converted or built in popular hot spots around the country reminds me of the boom/bust cycle in the tech stock and dot-com fiasco five years ago and the recent explosion/implosion of the condo-housing market. I think you're looking at a potentially devastating condo-hotel glut in a couple of years that may force a large percentage of these properties into foreclosure.

Before you shell out $690,000 for that glitz, glint, glimmer and gleam, try some common-sense research, which may be difficult. After a $70,000 down payment, you are going to pay 7 percent on a $620,000 mortgage, which is $43,000 in interest costs. Assume that your unit is rented 75 percent of the time (that's a generous assumption) at $275 a night, which is $75,000 a year in rental income. However, 50 percent of that rental income stays with the hotel, so you keep $37,500. Right off the bat, you're $5,500 in the hole. Include taxes ($5,000), maintenance ($5,000), management fees ($4,000), maid service ($10,000), plus insurance ($2,000) and your losses exceed $31,000 a year.

I hope you recall the enthusiastic time-share boom 20 years ago and remember how it went bust with a bang. Tens of thousands of saps and schnooks like you fell for the razzle-dazzle sales pitches, got gulled by sweet-tongued salesmen and signed their names on the proverbial "sucker's line." A year later, when they told their sales agents to sell the property, their agents responded, "To whom?"

I believe that most American consumers would eagerly buy a camel if a clever camel herder could figure out how to sell his camels for $100 down and $50 a month. Heck, Americans have already invested big bucks in herds of buffalo, ostriches, llamas and pot-bellied Vietnamese pigs, so why not a camel or an elephant?

"A sucker is born every minute, and a promoter born every hour to make certain no sucker is spared."

If you buy that condo-hotel in Las Vegas or even one in Miami, Orlando, or Fort Lauderdale, Fla., make sure that your group health policy covers psychiatric care because you're going to need it.

[Mango]

Having an on-site management company and a bellhop are two completely different things. A condotel limits the amount of time an owner can spend in his or her unit according to the rules or bylaws if you want to call them that. If it doesn't and still rents by the night, you're still going to have an investor concentration greater than 50% which will make the "condo" unwarrantable in the secondary market. Most banks won't touch condotels with a 10 ft. pole when offering mortgages.

[wetwilly]

:popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:

[Bobby J]

I think the most important thing not talked about here is do these "condo-hotels" have granite. I can not believe Shelly missed this question...:biggrin:

[spinDrAtl]

Don't even bother with condo-hotel


Dear B.R.:

Condo-hotels ... ugh -- and at $1,000 per square foot! I marvel at the consummate gullibility of a trusting, easily exploitable and greedy American consumer.

While I don't offer guarantees, I'm going to make an exception in your case and give you an outright guaranteed maybe that today's value of this condo-hotel in Las Vegas will be a heck of a lot less when you try to sell that property six months or a year later. I will also give you an absolute guaranteed maybe that your interest costs, insurance expenses, maid service, condo fees, real estate taxes and maintenance can exceed, by orders of magnitude, the rental income you want to believe you will earn.

I will give you a definite guaranteed maybe that, while annual hotel occupancy rates average 75.3 percent, the yearly occupancy rate for your condo-hotel unit will not exceed 40 percent. I will offer you as well a solid, guaranteed maybe that the rental income you naively believe you'll get will be enormously lower than your expectations. And I'm giving a straight-out guaranteed maybe -- even if your condo-hotel unit has a 75 percent occupancy rate -- that your rental income will fall steeply short of your rental expenses and at the end of the year, you will have a bleak, black tax loss.

If you try to sell that absurd investment a year later, I doubt that you will get 70 percent of your money back. I don't know of a single, living soul whose rental income from a condo-hotel exceeds expenses. The phenomenal rate at which these silly things are being converted or built in popular hot spots around the country reminds me of the boom/bust cycle in the tech stock and dot-com fiasco five years ago and the recent explosion/implosion of the condo-housing market. I think you're looking at a potentially devastating condo-hotel glut in a couple of years that may force a large percentage of these properties into foreclosure.

Before you shell out $690,000 for that glitz, glint, glimmer and gleam, try some common-sense research, which may be difficult. After a $70,000 down payment, you are going to pay 7 percent on a $620,000 mortgage, which is $43,000 in interest costs. Assume that your unit is rented 75 percent of the time (that's a generous assumption) at $275 a night, which is $75,000 a year in rental income. However, 50 percent of that rental income stays with the hotel, so you keep $37,500. Right off the bat, you're $5,500 in the hole. Include taxes ($5,000), maintenance ($5,000), management fees ($4,000), maid service ($10,000), plus insurance ($2,000) and your losses exceed $31,000 a year.

I hope you recall the enthusiastic time-share boom 20 years ago and remember how it went bust with a bang. Tens of thousands of saps and schnooks like you fell for the razzle-dazzle sales pitches, got gulled by sweet-tongued salesmen and signed their names on the proverbial "sucker's line." A year later, when they told their sales agents to sell the property, their agents responded, "To whom?"

I believe that most American consumers would eagerly buy a camel if a clever camel herder could figure out how to sell his camels for $100 down and $50 a month. Heck, Americans have already invested big bucks in herds of buffalo, ostriches, llamas and pot-bellied Vietnamese pigs, so why not a camel or an elephant?

"A sucker is born every minute, and a promoter born every hour to make certain no sucker is spared."

If you buy that condo-hotel in Las Vegas or even one in Miami, Orlando, or Fort Lauderdale, Fla., make sure that your group health policy covers psychiatric care because you're going to need it.

I hate to be the defender of condotels but just as there are disastrous investments of single family residences or rental property, there are also good ones and the same thing applies to this classfication. There is a huge difference between the Vegas tower described here and any other property that is classified as a condotel solely because there is a check in office on site and they allow nightly rentals.

I get bombarded with 'investment opportunities' and have looked at some proposals for condotels similar to the one above. While what he says may be true in this exact scenario, the blanket statement regarding expenses does not apply in all cases. In fact, in most cases, the 40-50% commission covers all those other expenses mentioned except real estate taxes. and hoa dues. When the management companies rent the place, the maid fees and management fees are part of the commission. Maintenance also typically comes from the gross rent as the management companies keep the contents standard from unit to unit but as always, it depends on the agreement.

But either way, if you overpay for a property, you will be in the hole. Most condotels do not require you to sign up with the management company so you could rent it yourself and not pay commission, just as many do with standard condo's or rental homes. Again, every property is different so keep attempting to paint it with a broad brush. As I said previously, the usual thing that makes a property a condotel is some onsite check in and nightly rentals.

Sorry to say that I own a condotel (not my property in sowal) and my rental income does exceed my expenses. It almost did from day 1. It's not a high rise but it is classified as condotel.

[seacrestkristi]

Is everything about the almighty dollar? Condotels are going to overcrowd this area, and ruin the small hometown feel. Why are more of these these being permitted in our county? I just don't get it. :doh: It's soon to be hotel city instead of a small hometown feel. :nono1:

[Smiling JOe]

Is everything about the almighty dollar?

You obviously didn't attend the Board of County Commissioners' Meeting this evening. If you would have, you would know that the answer to your aforementioned question is, yes.

[AAbsolute]

That is a very good property. Has there been a final determination of the fate of the Hotel Viridian? Has the property been flipped? Are there contracts on units? Does a corporation group own it or an individual? Is there contact info? Thanks

[Franny]

That is a very good property. Has there been a final determination of the fate of the Hotel Viridian? Has the property been flipped? Are there contracts on units? Does a corporation group own it or an individual? Is there contact info? Thanks

Due to the market conditions there was not a great deal of interest so it was tabled until the market returns from what I understand. One of the investors is George Hartley, and the Hotel would be located at the Seagrove Village Market location.

[PalmBeach]

The bottom line is that, given the current market condition, it is VERY unlikely that this project will ever be built. I will not conceal the fact that I am happy about this. I never liked it because of the design. The architecture is too modern for a corner that is basically the gateway to Seagrove. Also I believe that the plan required the removal of those awesome oaks at the corner. Also, the developer paid too much for the land to receive an adequate return. Their expectations were high because the project was planned at the market peak.

[AAbsolute]

I agree that the property is the Gateway To Seagrove. Location, Location, Location. I was going to rent a property from the fire dept. just down the street for 1,500.00 per month. Their rep. had said the hotel was going to rent it for 5,000 for a sales center and it fell through. I have been wondering about that transaction.

[tsutcli]

Never could understand how they expected the traffic pattern to work on that corner. Of course, the BCC can rationalize anything when it comes to more tax money for the Walton County coffers. Hope nothing ever is built there.

[jim45]

I think they should build it in the airspace over Publix.