Bulgaria Ski discussion board

Hi All
After several trips to pamporovo winter and summer I really fell for the place so 3 yrs ago I decided to purchase an apartment in the five star Royal Lodge complex I purchased direct from the developer a company called CRYSTAL HOLIDAYS.
After completion I went out to see my apartment and it was better than my expectations and I was really happy with it and could not wait to get over to pamps for summer trips especially with the new road open to Greece.
My maintenance fees were 800 Euros per year and I paid them to a company by the name of De Groot who I since found out they are adledgly owned by the developers.
All was ok for the first year I paid my fees as normal but in the second year after the owners paid their fees the maintenance company walked away with all our fees and left the building unheated hence a lot of pipes froze and eventually bursting causing a lot of damage.
After paying aprox £70,000 I now have an apartment I can not use nor even get access to and worst still is that I received a phone call from a friend who is in pamps skiing and he went down to the royal lodge complex to check his apartment and witnessed several men loading TVs, tables and chairs into a van I now fear the place is being looted and it is very frustrating sitting here in the UK and can do very little about it.
My reason for writing on this forum is in the hope that maybe some one from the Pamporovo authorities i.e. Mayor, police ,or tourist board reads this and will take some action because this story in its full will eventually come out and it will not help the Pamporovo tourist industry at all and the good people of pamporovo deserve better, All because a couple of fat cat developers wanted to line their pockets and their will be a lot of people in the UK and Ireland paying for this for the rest of their days

Do not expect any official body to take any action at all. Frankly your only hope of any action is to take the matters into your own hands. It is likely the developer, management company, maintenance company and likely the lawyer you used, are all and the same...
My advice would be to contact other owners who will be in a similar position, form an owners association, appoint a lawyer, and investigate your position, and how you can move forward..
Your agreement was with the management company, not the mayor, or anybody in fact in Pamporovo..
Varied success has occurred in Bansko, the courts in most cases coming out on the side of the owners. Appreciate if you can accumulate over 51% of the actual floor area in agreement with other owners, then you can form your own management, and oust the existing management... If you consider this, good luck, it can be a lengthy process, and ultimately could be costly, but it has been achieved, and the routes are being simplified...

Cheers Steve for the advice, we have a owners association taking the actions that you have described at this moment in time.
My reasons for posting on this forum was propally just a shot in the dark that some local authority in Pamporovo would see it and may be take some action to stop the looters from vandailising and stealing our belongings because i still want this complexe to work out and become a success.
A lot of British and Irish people have lost a lot of money because of corrupt Bulgarian developers but of course you can not paint them all with one brush as i know there is a lot of good genuine people in Bulgaria.
The owners association are currently considering repairing the damage caused by the maintenance company while still persueing a legal case against them but of course if we do not stop the looters we will not have a building to repair.
So if any one reading this thread could give me a good local Bulgarian authority who would genuinley have a interest in my perdicament i would appreciate getting their contact details.

There is no local Bulgarian authority who would be interested, as most arrangements are between developer and purchaser.
I suppose if looting is continuing then a simple report to the police would be the only course of action.
3rd party security could be a consideration, at least to secure the complex, but obviously this will cost money...
Do you have a contact on the ground, a lawyer or the like ?? Action would need to be taken fairly quickly, does the complex still have a company managing it ?? if so, to pursue them really could be your only course initially...
Your situation is not unique unfortunately, sadly a number of developers have not just ripped off buyers, they also have misled suppliers, furniture, tv's, kitchens etc who have not got paid, and in some cases the builders themselves...
You will have to act quickly and instruct a decent lawyer, the courts in Sofia are looking very kindly on most cases at the moment, identifying fraud etc, and in one case simply handing the whole complex over to the owners UK management company, leaving in this case the old developers with a 500,000E fee for costs... Again, good luck

Hi John
I am sorry to hear how things have gone at the Royal Lodge.
I agree with Steve, the best course of action is to form a collective of owners, all agree to put £x into a group account and get some group advice on a course of action. If you all have deeds to your apartments then you could appoint a management company to change the locks and secure the place and organise a general assembly of owners to vote yourselves as managing counsel where you would then have a say in the setting of the budgets and the general running of the place but to obtain this you would need to have the majority of the apartments and also the majority share of the common areas on board. Then you could appoint security, change locks and ensure that no further damage or theft is done to your apartments.

The offplancollective forum is a place where other complexes have already done this and they can discuss in a secure environment. There is a section already set up for Royal Lodge investors but there has been very little interest which makes me think they are either discussing elsewhere or are still fragmented and have not yet come together as a group.

Offplancollective.com is not just for problem complexes, many developments that are up and running and renting apartments use the forum to discuss on going maintenance issues or even to check on each others apartments. There is no hidden agenda, all it is, is an area designed for investors in property to make contact with other investors. Owners need to register and then apply to the admin team for access to the private sections for their development.

In our development we have 40+ owners registered and use the forum to discuss everything from menu's to thermostatic valves on radiators. We pay our maintenance via a group bank account in the UK (thus saving on international banking fees) and have this past year appointed a new management company which is working well.

www.offplancollective.com is not competition to bg.ski forum - it takes the property issues away and leaves this forum for the tourism and holiday related questions.