Opening Up the Market for Lodge Sales

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Opening Up the Market for Lodge Sales

by lakelandlodges @ 23/06/2007 – 02:41:45 pm

The Lodgers are continuing to campaign for the re-sale market for lodges to be more 'open' . If an Owner sells a lodge on Limefitt Park the owners are demanding a 7.5% sell on commmission. Over the past few years Owners have been selling lodges back to SLP. The lodgers are unaware of any private sales.

Opening up the market in our opinion would lead to significant increase in market activity allowing property sales to hopefully drive up lodge prices on the park.

If the Kirkstone phase goes slowly ( my perception following a visit a few weeks ago) then SLP must surely start to ask few questions

The current Kirkstone development will be pivotal in determining what happens to lodge sales over the next twelve months

Some questions

1. Having spent well over £1m on setting up Kirkstone ( demonstrates SLP committemnet to the Park ) when are they going to make a profit ( by selling 10 or more) ?
2. Why are existing owners not trading up ?
3. Why are existing owners not recommending or referring business ..is the scheme still in place ?
4. Why are SLP selling lodges in Carnforth and not in Limefitt ?
5. Is the sell on commission a sales prevention tool ...an SLP own goal?
6. The lack of a second hand market reduces the number of potential buyers .....who may one day trade up ?
Options:

7 Comments to Opening Up the Market for Lodge Sales

- Windermerelodge
- http://www.limefitt.com/smf/
- 23/06/2007 @ 05:48:56 pm
"The lodgers are unaware of any private sales. "

Depends whay you mean by a private sales I suppose. We bought our first lodge direct "from the owners", but SLP became involved in the negotiations as we wanted a longer lease than just what remained. They ended up in the middle and our contract was with them, but until we got to the end stages of buying it was just us and Ian and Jane involved.

I think their commission on sale would be more acceptable if it were at a realistic level (like waht an estate agent would charge) and if they did simple and obvious things that estate agents do like advertising lodges for sale on their web site.

If you search for Used lodges for sale at Limefitt on the SLP site you will read that:

"Sorry, there are no sales matching your requirements at this time. Please try again soon."

If I were selling a lodge and being told that they wanted 7.5% of the sales price I'd be more than a bit unhapy about that !!

At least they have started letting owners put up "for sale" signs now, although maybe it would be better all rund to advertise them properly and remove the signs which dont improve the site.
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- Windermerelodge
- http://www.limefitt.com/smf/
- 23/06/2007 @ 05:51:01 pm
And it should be pointed out perhaps that there are no private sales because the purchase contract states that all sales must be made via SLP - so a private sale would be a legal impossibility as things stand.
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- lakelandlodges
- http://www.lakelandlodges.co.uk
- 23/06/2007 @ 10:00:21 pm
John now we really debating the key issues were we collectively can make a big impact

In response to your comments

- most of the lodgers don't have a contract as we all bought from John Morphet

- Morphet in June 2006 met with the Lodgers Forum and claimed he was about to address the re-sale issue. He was looking at an option to create a seperate estate agent business to look after second hand lodge sales. He was looking to charge a commission which covered the marketing and sale of private owner sales and the transfer of ownership - this sound similar to your idea which makes perfect sense

- I have discussed this issue with SLP and todate nothing has happened. I agree with your observation about owners placing 'for sale' signs in their lodge windows!

- I note that Jim ( the ex shop manager ) has a lodge for sale at £107k. I assume he is looking for £100k and has to pay SLP £7k commission. Is this a private sale or being managed via SLP ?

- I assume SLP are more interested in new lodge sales and this issue ( of major concern for existing owners ) is not on the SLP radar .

- You can sell your lodge privately as one of our Lodgers has been trying to do for over a year but I believe is facing problems with respect to local estate agents willingness to market lodges given the 'contractual issues' and some other issues which I will investigate before making comments on this BLOG
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- Windermerelodge
- http://www.limefitt.com/smf/
- 23/06/2007 @ 10:43:50 pm
Well Colin - as you say these issues affect us all. They are also perhaps issues that are best discussed in a more private arena, and I agree about the collective influence. We really need to have a chat dont we ;-)
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- Windermerelodge
- http://www.limefitt.com/smf/
- 24/06/2007 @ 12:30:09 pm
"most of the lodgers don't have a contract as we all bought from John Morphet "

Been thinking about this - you must have signed a lease of some sort surely? Maybe not the same as they use now. I have got two totally different leases on each of my lodges.
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- lakelandlodges
- http://www.lakelandlodges.co.uk
- 24/06/2007 @ 01:38:35 pm
John

The first group of Applethwaite Owners in 2004 only signed a sales notice...an invoice . We were promised contracts which still have NOT been provided despite many requests via the Lodgers Forum. Hence the recent surprises

1. WxB passes now being restricted to owners not paying guests

2. General rates bills - didn't receive one in 2004!

3. Sell on commision rate

Despite many letters and calls to the SLP management we still don't have any answers

1. WxB - have you received the T%C's dcouemnt to support the application. When we approached Limefitt reception they didn't have the document and told us to contact Head office!

2. General Rates - I will send you the latest report which highlights some interesting calculations and allocation of cost methods

3. Commission is now down to 7.5% which will be tested one day in Court unless SLP listen to some of our recent blog entries
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- Windermerelodge
- http://www.limefitt.com/smf/
- 24/06/2007 @ 02:38:48 pm
Sales Notice - is that the one page (two sided document)? I have one those on my first lodge and on my other lodge a 15 page (or so) lease.

Re - WxB & Ts & Cs

It seems nobody can tell you about any new Ts & Cs simply because it seems there aren't any! I was told by Head Office that the Ts & Cs referred to on the application are just the Park Rules (so why didn't they refer to the Park Rules then ???)

General rates - I will look forward to seeing that document.

Commission - if it isn't referred to in an owner's contract (and it semms to be in some but not others), or if you just don't have a contract, I suspect it will be interesting when someone challenges it.

I think we would all love to see that tested!

7.5% for what they currently do is very questionable if you compare it to the 1-2% charged by most estate agents isn't it! I would love to hear their justification for it - especially with the current asking prices. Would anyone really think it good value to pay SLP nearly 20K to sell their 250K Kirkstone Lodge in a couple of years time, when a local estate agent and solicitor might jointly be asking 2K - 3k for the same work. I don't THINK so! Yet SLP don't seem to realise that it must have a negative effect on sales.

As you correctly say, a robust, simple and open second hand market would ultimately be to their advantage as they try to flog off the 30 or so remaining lodges on the Kirkstone development.
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