# Wyndham Ocean Walk- POSTED email rec'd:Wyndham Mgt loses appeal on HomeOwners lawsuit



## vacationhopeful (Jul 14, 2012)

Wyndham may be removed as the management company. New elections for the homeowners per email today from the planiffs of this lawsuit.

Anyone else get this email?


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## Sandi Bo (Jul 14, 2012)

I did not receive an email.  Did yours go to the email on the account?  It is mine (and we are owners at Ocean Walk).


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## donnaval (Jul 14, 2012)

*Are confirmation letters running late?*

Removed - sorry, meant to start a new thread


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## vacationhopeful (Jul 14, 2012)

*Below is the content of the email I received:*


To Ocean Walk Resort Condominium Association, Inc membership: 
Your Board of Directors are pleased to announce that during the week of June 11th, the Fifth District Court of Appeals announced its decision ruling in favor of Ocean Walk Resort Condominium Association, Inc. (the “Association”) and against Wyndham’s appeal of the final judgment.  

As you may already know, your Association initiated litigation against Wyndham and took the position that Wyndham had improperly seized control of the Association and did not allow proper elections.  In a decision issued last year, Circuit Judge Graham ruled in favor of the Association and specifically found that Wyndham had improperly usurped the timeshare unit owners’ right to vote and thus was able to improperly control the majority of seats on the Board of Directors of the Association.  Wyndham appealed Judge Graham’s decision and your Association prevailed.
Your Association and the Board of Directors fought hard to win the right to hold fair elections and to end Wyndham’s control.  We look forward to serving the interests of all Association members into the future

For and by the direction of the Ocean Walk Resort Condominium Association Board of Directors. .


Tina Morbitzer
Morbitzer Communities, Inc.
2430 South Atlantic Avenue, Suite C
Daytona Beach Shores, FL 32118
386/304-6161 

and

Anne H. Delude, On Site Manager
Ocean Walk Resort Condominium Association, Inc.
386-256-4826



--
Detailstinamorbitzer2
tinamorbitzer2@cfl.rr.com




*Pasted above is the email I received ....*


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## rrlongwell (Jul 14, 2012)

vacationhopeful said:


> *Below is the content of the email I received:*
> 
> 
> To Ocean Walk Resort Condominium Association, Inc membership:
> ...



Not real surprising.  I placed my name in the hat for the upcoming Board of Directors election for Seawatch Plantation.  The process involved E-Mailing a Bio and Nomination form to a specific e-mail address.  

When I followed up to make sure they received the nomination papers, their initial position was they did not receive them.  They finally admitted they had received them and had deleted them.  They said I did not have to re-submit them because they still had them in the deleted E-Mail file.

Moral of the Story:  I guess, is if you are not the sanctioned Wyndham Candidate, have fun getting your nomination reconized.


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## ronparise (Jul 14, 2012)

This could be one of those things where you want to say...Be careful what you wish for...you might get it

Wasnt there a time last year when a pool maintenance project was put on hold (and the lazy river was closed) because the whole ownership condo owners didnt think they needed a lazy river?. or at least they objected to the way costs were apportioned

If the whole ownership group gets control Id be afraid that the resort amenities will suffer.


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## Sandi Bo (Jul 14, 2012)

I don't understand the whole situation, but there was definitely some interesting things going on when we were there last year (August), such as:

* No towels in the workout room, ask at the game desk 'oh, that's the south towers responsibility'
* The kiosk for selling tickets, etc, has been moved to the sales office, as opposed to right inside the main door (I'm sure decreasing sales for that person (who works on commission))
* Seems like the lazy river is the responsibility of the south tower 

Anyways, obvious in-fighting, definitely got the impression everything was divied up and I did not get the feeling the 2 sides were getting along.

Hope things get figured out, I love Ocean Walk.  I will have to understand better what is going on (especially if we get to vote).  

Thanks for the information Linda.


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## simpsontruckdriver (Jul 14, 2012)

My concern is for our reservation over Labor Day - if Wyndham will lose ownership, or just the owners' association.

TS


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## vacationhopeful (Jul 14, 2012)

Ron and Sandi,
Yes, the full-owner's and the Wyndham mgt have been fighting because Wyndham just does things, like say "Pay this amount today". Plus, throw in the Worldmark units (North Tower, I think). I think South Tower is the only place the "full ownership" condos are located. 

Also, I think the fullshare condo owners can contract with Wyndham to rent out their units - so Extra Holidays and the Front Desk adds those units to collect credit card fees, housekeeping fees, 40% commission off the top of the discounted rate, etc.

It has been messed up for awhile as there is no way to get a mortgage on any of the full share condos --- all have to be cash or private loans on the resale market.


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## ronparise (Jul 14, 2012)

simpsontruckdriver said:


> My concern is for our reservation over Labor Day - if Wyndham will lose ownership, or just the owners' association.
> 
> TS



Wyndham doesnt own anything except perhaps some unsold units. What they own at least for now,  is the management contract.


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## jjmanthei05 (Jul 14, 2012)

vacationhopeful said:


> Ron and Sandi,
> Yes, the full-owner's and the Wyndham mgt have been fighting because Wyndham just does things, like say "Pay this amount today". Plus, throw in the Worldmark units (North Tower, I think). I think South Tower is the only place the "full ownership" condos are located.
> 
> Also, I think the fullshare condo owners can contract with Wyndham to rent out their units - so Extra Holidays and the Front Desk adds those units to collect credit card fees, housekeeping fees, 40% commission off the top of the discounted rate, etc.
> ...



I think the no mortgage from a bank is pretty standard for "mixed use properties" especially after the real estate melt down. . When we were talking to my banker about a timeshare purchase. The first thing out of his mouth was "just so you know, we can't do a mortgage on that."

Jason


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## Sandi Bo (Jul 15, 2012)

My understanding of the situation at Ocean Walk is that the South Tower is the original structure, and what I think is being referred to here as full-ownership condos.  At that time, there was an empty lot the the north. Wyndham came in, made an agreement with the South Tower to build the North Tower (and manage everything). Thus the North Tower is the Wyndham side (with a couple floors reserved for World Mark).  The orginal owners have not been happy with how Wyndham ran things, and thus a year or two ago, the separation began. I thought the South Tower was "breaking away" to return to it's original way of operation and the North Tower would be managed by Wyndham.  (Kind of like their getting a divorce). There are things that are shared to between the two and for those agreements have to be made (check-in, game room, workout room, market, pools, security).

Do I have this right at all?  It sounds like the fighting has only gotten worse.

Worst case scenario, is it possible Ocean Walk (as a whole) could become a non-Wyndham managed property?  Being an Ocean Walk owner, is it possible we would just pay someone (other than Wyndham) to manage it?

Linda, were you an original (South Tower) owner or did you purchase from Wyndham (North Tower). Our contract was purchased from Wyndham (wondering why you got an email and I didn't).

This is Ocean Walk according to Sandi, anyone feel free to step in and correct me.


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## rrlongwell (Jul 15, 2012)

Interesting background.

http://69.16.236.4/~tugbbsc/forums/showthread.php?t=141706&page=2


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## timeos2 (Jul 15, 2012)

Sounds like the individual owners have won a critical right to be represented and control the HOA Board. That is a wonderful win for them and hopefully it can make Wyndham shape up as a management or let them replace Wyndham as management if they can't/won't do the job. 

In any case it should have no bearing on the status of Wyndham owners to utilize Oceanwalk.  Wyndham has affiliate resorts they do not manage and at the most that is what could happen here it seems. Congratulations to the owners for fighting this tough battle.  Now get control and get down to the business of properly running your resort with whatever management you may choose.


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## vacationhopeful (Jul 15, 2012)

John,
This is a MIXED use resort. The full-share condo owners basicly sued Wyndham. They control the South Tower, but I own Wyndham UDI deed there. This is most likely WHY I got this email and not others here. The North Tower is totally Wyndham and WORLDMARK owners. Wyndham will not be forced out of that management contract any more so than they would lose the Bonnet Creek management contract.

The worst part is the lobby, lazy river and other common areas are shared (to a degree). The unhappiness of the fullshare owners is VERY HIGH - I could see a chainlink fence with barbed wire going down the middle of the lobby and pool area until block walls got built (Berlin Wall stuff). There are two parking garages, but only 1 grand driveway. There is a North Tower entrance/exit into that garage - single car on the side street and I could see Wyndham being forced to use that for their tower --- but it is NOT easy to find.


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## timeos2 (Jul 15, 2012)

Linda - Having lived through an ongoing situation with two individual resorts being forced to share common elements in an ill-conceived plan to "save" both money I can say first hand it doesn't work. Some group owns the property yet is forced to share it so they want control. The other feels they pay X amount and should control or at least have a strong say on operation, maintenance and upgrades. Despite best efforts from both sides it doesn't seem to work. The idea may be good but the implementation seems to be problematic at best.


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## pedro47 (Jul 15, 2012)

Will this lawsuit verdict affect how other major developers run their management size of their business.  Will this be a domino effect for timeshare owners at other resorts ?


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## ronparise (Jul 15, 2012)

Are there two properties here, North and South, with two boards, or is it just one?


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## Cheryl20772 (Jul 15, 2012)

ronparise said:


> Wyndham doesnt own anything except perhaps some unsold units. What they own at least for now,  is the management contract.


according to the legal documents online, last year Wyndham owned 7.75% of 124 timeshare units and 6 "commercial units"; which is given as 9.61 timeshare units.  The legal action (as I understand it) is over whether or not Wyndham has the legal right to manage.  Document is here http://www.becker-poliakoff.com/pubs/articles/levine_a/wyndham_v_ocean_resorts.pdf


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## Cheryl20772 (Jul 15, 2012)

ronparise said:


> Are there two properties here, North and South, with two boards, or is it just one?


That is the murky mess.  There is supposed to be just one Board of Directors.  But I think it was in 2009, the condo owners managed to disqualify two Wyndham board candidates and put their own people on the Board.  Wyndham ended up with only one Board member and didn't like that and drew up their own Board and neither one was then able to do anything to manage the resort.  The two Boards didn't recognize each other. I don't know what the situation is today.

The two towers are not exclusive.  There are whole owned condos in both towers and they share amenities.


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## timeos2 (Jul 15, 2012)

In reading the decision it sure sounds like the lawfirm of Becker & Policoff won big again for the owners. They were the firm that successfully beat Sunterra for our resort. Then we got to choose a professional & qualfied manager & management team. We chose to remain affiliated with Club Sunterra (now DRI) so no owner lost any membership or use rights they may have had. We just got control as owners & improved the resort and opened even more options for use & trade.   

Hopefully this lawsuit victory will let the Ocean Walk owners now elect a truly representative Board and they can make the best choice for management (which may certainly be some other group than Wyndham). It reaffirms that jn FL at least it is not legal for developers to hang on to management or Board control after 7 years regardless of the tricks they try to use. I sure hope the owners now use this total victory to better their resort and properly control costs. Best wishes to them & congratulations! 

And of course it could happen at Bonnet Creek or any other resort as the rules are clear (although previously ignored by Wyndham, Wastegate & others). The owners have the absolute right to Board control & it cannot be waived or abused. Lets hope many other resorts pick up on this and oust the Developers at least from the control they hold illegally of the HOA Boards. Use your hard earned rights & vote them out!


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## vacationhopeful (Jul 15, 2012)

John,
Thanks for your insight and your experiences with your timeshare at the other resort. Seems the Becker law group has their act together ... they could make a fortune in FL alone against Wyndham.


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