I noticed on the Red Frog website that in addition to Lot 13, Lots 35 46 and 69 are also for sale. Does anyone know anything about the compensation for the original owners?
I had offered Red Frog to sell my lot for what basically was a double commission with me getting my deposit back when a new deposit was put down and the rest at closing. I thought this was a win-win situation. If I closed, Red Frog would get no commission or at most a single commission if I chose to sell. I wouldn't have to go through the closing process and had a chance of getting my deposit back sooner. Red Frog's response was that we could give you back your deposit when we got a new deposit. Nothing more.
I had thought it would have been a great sales gimmick. If all of us knew we could sell our places at some profit, we would all feel safer about our investments. Selling lots does not seem to be one of Red Frog's weaknesses. The few of us that decided to sell would give Red Frog some extra money. New buyers would see how much money the original buyers were making, feeding new buyers greed that they could do it too.
My dream would be for the strike to end, villas to get completed and closed, and Red Frog decides to do something similar to my proposal. Perhaps if the strike ends, a group of us, a pre-home owners group, could convince Red Frog. It would be hard for there to be any unhappy campers. If so, they could just sell and make a good profit. Any comments?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I wanted to give Red Frog a chance to post a response to the comment (which has now been deleted, I see... not by me!) Here is the original post along with Scott's responses in bold.
==================
Reports out of Bocas conclude that the strike ended months ago Not True
and that there is no money left to do anything at all including pay the workers what is due them by law, get the furniture out of storeage, etc. Also not True.
Almost all of the RF staff, including John who is this – the John that was let go from Property Management?, and security guards have been laid off. Not True, we still have a least six security workers per shift as I understand it. And this will always fluctuate according to the security need.
All the architects and engineers were given 30 days notice last week. A few of the more junior ones were given a pre-notice that if things don’t pick up in new sales, we will have the right to let them go. Plus, many of those engineers actually belonged to our construction partner Cocige. This is a business and we are smart enough to know that we can’t stay in business by paying people when we have nothing for them to do.
The remaining employees missed their payroll last week. I haven’t heard that, we have NEVER missed payroll, it is likely getting paid on Monday since the first is on a Saturday.
Justin has bailed and starts with Sunset Point on Monday. I met with Justin on Tuesday and we discussed the very low sales volume – due to low activity from the US and I gave him an option to stay or leave if he wanted. He had already received a better base pay offer and decided to resign, as simple as that. Again, I don’t know why people are so alarmed when we are trimming off the fat. They should be glad.
There is essentially nobody left... Having let go something like 10-15 people recently hardly counts as nobody left. I don’t know the exact numbers off the top of my head but there are still something like 60 people still working in the various functions…
To the Bloggers:
I shared this information with Scott because I thought the issues needed to be addressed. Since 507 is not really a property address, I sent along the entire post so that Scott could respond in context. Had it been from a real owner (or one we can identify, rather) I would have kept their anonymity but perhaps rephrased the questions to look like they were mine.
Everything Scott said was more or less corroborated by a separate conversation with Paul McBride of Prima Panama. As you know, they have formed a group of foreign developers to lobby the government on Red Frog's behalf.
I am not sure who 507 is or what their motive might be, but I am very disappointed by the knee jerk reaction to events on the island. 507 is obviously living there to have this kind of up to date information (or at least been invited to contribute by one of the owners). But these types of rumors are destructive and non-productive.
As for me, I am most interested in seeing our properties built so that we can either enjoy them or sell them as we see fit.
Seems like this topic is too hot to handle. I sent e-mail inquiries to both Sam and Paul of Valle Escondido to see how they would handle your situation, and they declined to comment so far.
This morning Paul pretty much said that it is up to each developer how they handle a situation like yours. But he thought your win-win was not as attractive to a developer as you might think.
Other than that, specifics were not forthcoming since I had to get to an appointment and most of our hour conversation was about Red Frog, the corrupt Panama government and the fact that dropping to #4 in the world's tourist destinations did not bode well for our little country's near future.
Great work.
Post a Comment