The converstation with Paul lasted over an hour. He was very gracious with his time, considering he just got back to California from Panama and will only be here a week. So I thank him for that.
The first 15 minutes was spent with him giving us a run down (Janis was in on the conference call with me) of his accomplishments as a developer in Panama, establishing his credentials. Then he described some fo the problems that they have run into while doing their project; problems which foreign investors also had to deal with when doing business in the country.
Since he made it clear he really has no first hand knowledge of the day to day operations at the Red Frog project, we kept the discussion at a very high level. Though he did hint that he may be becoming more involved in some of our issues. To help solve them would be for the good of the Panama economy as well as for other developers. For this reason, I was not able to get answers to specific questions about material choices or other questions or complaints specific to the Red Frog Beach development.
However, what I did get was a promise that he would go back to Joe and discuss with him ways to go about giving the owners more information than we have been getting. He agreed that the Red Frog policy of not sharing openly about what's going on with the project only lets peoples' imaginations run wild.
As you may know, he and Sam Taliaferro (developers of Valle Escondido) have formed a lobbying group of foreign developers (of which Red Frog is one) who are all dealing with the same sorts of issues; everything from government (or sometimes lack of it), the courts, the unions and so on.
One of the things we asked was, what can we, as owners do to help get the government on track and he suggested we could contact our senators and congresspeople and get them to pass the Panama Free Trade Act. The state department had this article on file from 2005 so it makes ne wonder why it has not passed yet. Guess who's going to e-mail his representatives tonight about this?
He touched on the SUNTRACS problems and what the unions are trying to do basically is have the developers pay them so they can get their 2% off the top before they pay the union members (Sound like the IRS?). Of course, the union workers are completely against this, but it's the union that is holding up the process to get this concession (or so I'm told), even in some development projects where the workers have not even voted a union in! Isla Viveros is one of those developments.
As for the question of developer liability, it is different in Panama and limited to one year... however, as Paul said, no developer wants a project as big as Red Frog to start falling apart before they finish building the last of the units. And as we know, the developers don't make their money back until the end of the project anyway, so it is in their best interests to keep everyone happy and produce a quality product.
We asked about financing options and he said he would check with Joe and get back to us. I would suggest if you are in the situation where you need some financing now, you might check with Sam@PrimaPanama.com. He has been very responsive to my questions. I tried to ask my realtor contact in Bocas about tinancing, but he is out of the country for a family medical emergency.
Another topic that came up was the rights of possession land, and Paul said he thought that land without title could not be financed. For that reason we are extremely concerned since our beach front lot is rights of possession which we were told would eventually become titled land. (Perhaps the lawsuit concerning the Pelican Bay-Cayman Beach area will have some effect on that issue.) But as it stands now, we were expecting to finance a portion of our villa purchase. As the time draws closer to the beginning of construction, this will be a big problem that will need to be fixed.
By the time we got to this last topic we had talked for a little over an hour and didn't want to monopolize any more of Paul's time, so we signed off and promised to keep in touch. Sorry I couldn't get to more of the specifics about how Valle Escondido handles their business end and it didn't seem appropriate for the high level of the conversation. However, you might shoot an e-mail to PanamaTravel@mindspring.com and see if he can answer the questions for you.
Mick @ Lot 83
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Paul was correct when he said ROP land is not eligible for financing. Most, if not all, ROP purchases in Bocas except those at Red Frog Beach Club, are heavily discounted for that reason as the buyer pays cash. This information has been public information for the past five years and has resulted in a two tier price structure for properties in Bocas.
The ROP land in Turtle Beach and Red Frog Beach phases is not the land being disputed. This is further round the coast to the east and is part of the Pelican Bay phase.
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