Trouble in Paradise

The Greenpointe Communities of Riverhall and Hampton Lakes Brace for Turnover!

This is a long post! There is an executive summary at the end. Just scroll down! Better yet, read the whole post!

Every now and then I see commercials on TV about how living in our communities is like living in paradise. They show the beautiful homes (which they are) and show smiling, happy people playing golf, tennis and pickle ball (which they are and which we have), but there’s a problem. The HOAs, i.e. the residents, don’t own anything. The developer is in control and owns everything and we’re going to have to pay big time for the assets. Probably a lot more than the $480,000 that was used to buy it back in the day.

The communities of Riverhall Country Club and Hampton Lakes at Riverhall broke ground back in 2006. When the 2008 housing crash happened the place went bankrupt! One of the partners bought the whole shebang for a messily $480,000. At least that’s what I heard. That included hundreds of home sites, a golf course, a clubhouse with a restaurant, an HOA office building and an Amenity Center with a lagoon style pool, weight room, aerobics room, tennis courts, bocce ball courts and now we also have pickle ball courts.

After the country started to recover from the crash it was little slow going selling houses here. That is until the great covid relocation exodus started happening in 2020-21. So much so that the developer saw dollar signs and had the county rezone what was supposed to be an additional 9 hole golf course to more home sites in Riverhall Country Club. And also, rezoning a preserve area in Hampton Lakes to more home sites. So it took 20 years to sell the homes in the original plan and it will now probably take another 20 years to sell the homes in the expanded areas. This is mainly because of interest rates going up and every other developer in Florida having the same idea! So there’s homes going up everywhere!

And another thing, after telling home buyers that there’s going to be another 9 hole golf course to alleviate the backups at the 18 hole golf course, how does the developer get to say “I changed my mind, no other golf course and no preserve?” Isn’t that a classic bait and switch?

So what does that mean for the residents of these communities? My house is on a street that was initially laid down in 2006 and its still doesn’t have the final coat of asphalt on it. Only one street in our community has the final coat of asphalt on it. The developer says he will not put the final coat on any of the other streets until all construction is done even though many of the streets are fully built out with no construction traffic driving on them! Many of these streets were scheduled to get the final coat of asphalt, but the developer said the asphalt company raised the price at the last minute so the developer cancelled the deal. There’s something fishy about that. Now the developer says no final coat until all the houses are sold! Can you imagine waiting 40 years for your street to be paved with a final coat of asphalt?! In the meantime residents have to deal with an incredible amount of potholes! And those potholes take forever to get fixed!

There was a section of East Hampton Circle in Hampton Lakes that was totally riddled with potholes and a sewer cover that ripped out a few oil pans from passing cars. It got so bad that somebody high up decided to have the street ripped up and have a new first layer of asphalt put down. And guess what? That piece of road looks beautiful and no more pothole problem. I say we put the final coating of asphalt on all the roads. To those people who think that would be crazy because the road would just crumble and fall apart in three weeks from all the construction traffic, I say “nuts to that!” The section On East Hampton Circle has held up perfectly and its been over a year since that was put in and gets all the construction traffic it on it for Hampton Lakes. Riverhall Parkway is a beautiful road and has construction traffic on it for all three communities and its not crumbling and falling apart at all. Do it! Pave the roads! And by the way, the developer would be totally against it not because he’s concerned about us, but because he’d rather have the money in his pocket for as long as he can!

Now let’s talk about our beautiful lagoon style pool. Resort living at its best! Paradise!Right? Guess what, its not heated and is unbearably cold from November to May and that’s the “busy” season when snowbirds come down from the north to enjoy… paradise! When we were looking at homes here nobody told us the pool was not heated. The people who told us were the people selling homes at another next door community called Portico. When they told us, I figured who needs a heated pool? Its Florida! But that water gets as cold as the night and a lot of the times its in the 50s in the winter time. That pool water is ice cold.

Which brings me to one of my favorite stories about dealing with the developer people. I attended a general HOA meeting in the fall of 2021. Lots of residents attended. The board of directors were talking about heating the pool and said the cost would be $500,000. Me and a few other people immediately raised our hands believing that was an outrageous price. So we volunteered to be on a committee to explore heating the pool with the caveat from the developer people that it had to be a “turnkey” solution for it to get implemented. That was the first roadblock put in front of us. During covid, HOA board meetings where put on zoom and the videos were put on the HOA website. I watched some of those and there was a part in one where the HOA manager at the time said “we can’t get the pool heated this year (2021), but we’ll try to get that in next year’s budget.” I brought this up later at a meeting with the developer’s representative and sometime later the video was taken off the website! Suspicious, isn’t it? Little did they know, I recorded that segment of the video! I posted that video in our community Facebook group to show the residents the prior commitment to heat the pool, which now was being set up to fail.

At that time me and my fellow pool heating committee members thought there was only one pool of money that we were playing with and that was the HOA fees collected from the residents. Little did we know that there was another pool of money that could have been and should have been used. The developer’s money! Don’t you think that capital improvements to assets owned by the developer should be paid for by the developer, because we, the residents, are going to have to buy them later at turnover? Why would we pay for it twice? That’s another roadblock put in front of us.

Since we were told that we were using HOA fees to fund the project, we were then told that we had to get the approval of both the Riverhall and Hampton Lakes communities. Another roadblock! Then at a board meeting a resident brought up the question of “how do we know we’re not going to pay for it twice?” The developer’s guy said “I’ll check with the lawyers”. The next meeting we were informed that the lawyers said “NO”, so the pool is not going to be heated. Now all of this could have been prevented if we used the developer’s money. The estimate for installment was less than $90K which was a lot less than $500K. Plus, operating costs were projected to increase each resident’s quarterly fee by only $10 to $20. Ive heard that heating the pool is again being brought up, but now the cost is $300K!

And then you know what happens while all this is going on? The developer builds a brand new HEATED pool in the Riverhall country club section by the clubhouse with another restaurant and bar attached WITH HIS MONEY! Why did he do that while ignoring the pool heaters at the Amenity Center? Word on the street is that more homes were selling in the Hampton Lakes section, so he had to do something in the country club to entice more sales. So, in effect, he spent money with the hope to make more money. So, spending money on the heaters would have been nice for the entire community, but the developer chose just to be nice to their bottom line! It is America after all. All we are to the developer is pinatas stuffed with cash. So that’s some background on the developer people.

Now, let’s talk about the HOAs. We only have one HOA manger with one assistant to manage all three HOAs! That should change to having a manager and an assistant for each HOA, along with a different management company. I just get this funny feeling that every company the HOAs deal with are somehow connected to the developer Greenpoint. The Amenity Center’s HOA manager and assistant should be housed right in the Amenity Center in those first floor offices. They would be able to handle 90% of the tasks that the staff currently there performs which include checking people in to the facility, planning events, sending emails, minor cleaning and calling tradesmen for any needed repairs that the HOA manager deems necessary. There would be no employees of the Golf Course working there. And there would be no shared systems with the golf course including the totally out of control email system. The Amenity Center will send its own emails out from the Amenity Center to the residents of Riverhall and the residents of Hampton Lakes. The Country Club will send out emails to its country club members. The Riverhall HOA will send out their emails to the people who live in Riverhall. And finally, the Hampton Lakes HOA will send emails to the residents of Hampton Lakes. This doesn’t increase the amount of emails you would get, it would actually decrease the amount because now you’ll only get ones you want and that pertain to you! I don’t want to see anything from the golf course because I don’t golf. I don’t want to see anything about what the Bunker Bar is doing because I can’t even get in to the Bunker Bar!

So that’s the Amenity Center HOA. Then we need another set of people for the Riverhall HOA and another set for the Hampton Lakes HOA. What does that get us? Better service to the residents with less stress for the HOA staff. Everybody should be happy. The HOA managers will then have wonderful attitudes and will look forward to helping residents with their problems. All done with happy, smiling faces. Residents will not fear the HOA and will not call or walk in to the offices with fear and trepidation. Smiling happy people everywhere! How can I help, help, help ya!

What about the purchase price of the Amenity Center? What if there has to be a special assessment and everyone gets a bill in the mail for 5, 10, 20 or 30 thousand dollars?! Wow! $30,000. I’ve asked the developer underlings several times what they think the sale price would be and all I get is the “I don’t have a crystal ball, yuk, yuk” BS. They don’t want to tell us anything. Its all going to be a surprise. Maybe a surprise that some families won’t be able to handle. I’d hate to see anyone have to move out because they couldn’t afford the price tag!

Here’s another story of how we’re looked upon by the HOA and developer. I was riding along with the HOA manager (at the time) and the developer’s representative. We passed the sign on Riverhall Parkway that said we have a spa. “Where’s the spa?” one said to the other. The reply was “anywhere you put a massage table!” Followed by hearty laughter from both individuals. Boy, they put one over on us, didn’t they! And there I am, a resident, sitting right there. They were, in effect, laughing at me, and us!

One thing the Hampton Lakes HOA has to straighten out is the gate access to our community! Is it a gated community to start with? The gates are up 6am to 6pm for construction worker access. They’re down on Sunday and holidays. Hopefully when they’re down they let you back in the community when you want to get back in! Plus, do you have the right app, you got to download this new app, then you got to update the app, invite visitors with an email from the app to add them to the access list. And then your access strip doesn’t work anymore. And then you can get a new strip on Thursday but in the meantime you can’t get in or out of the community, so just stay put. Some people want to get rid of the gates. If that ever happens, part of that deal has to be that the county takes over the maintenance of the streets because I don’t want to have to pay to fix streets that we don’t own!

We have lots of complaints about cars speeding in the neighborhoods. Apparently, the only logical deterrence is speed bumps. I hate speed bumps. So they put in speed bumps and the speeders still speed. The only thing us Americans really understand is the almighty dollar. I never wore a seat belt until there was the possibility of getting a ticket for not wearing one. I say we put up a radar camera set up in multiple locations that takes a picture of the person driving a speeding car, the license plate number and the speed of the car. Then that becomes one of the fines the HOA manages. I can hear some people muttering the word privacy. All that information is already out there with the HOA or the gate app, etc. Speeders will stop speeding when they have to start paying fines.

So in summary, the following is a list of problems with their solutions. Why wait until turnover? Lets do this starting now! The future is NOW!

The Amenity Center HOA

1. Get a separate HOA management company to manage the HOA and put their offices in the Amenity Center. A different management company is needed. We would have to pay a couple hundred thousand dollars for the new HOA team.

2. All the golf course employees can now work exclusively for the golf course, at the golf course. We would save several hundred thousand dollars in payroll.

3. Maybe ask residents to volunteer to man the front desk, if needed. I’ll take Wednesdays!

4. Figure out the sale price. If the Riverhall people don’t want to be a part of the Amenity Center anymore, there has to be a buy out. There is no get out of jail free card!

5. A perfect solution for all residents would be to make the Amenity Center HOA a non-mandatory HOA. That would solve all our problems. Then we wouldn’t have to purchase it. The current owner stays the owner, or he could sell it to some one else. The owner would then have to operate it like a business. That means they’d have to learn something about customer service! Good luck with that! And heat the pool! With no special assessements!

Hampton Lakes HOA

1. There should be another HOA manager and assistant manager with a different management company handling the HOA affairs.

2. Change management companies, too.

3. If the developer sells the building that now houses the HOA offices, they’d have to find office space somewhere, or rent the current space.

Riverhall HOA

1. There should be another HOA manager and assistant manager with a different management company handling the HOA affairs.

2. Change management companies, too.

3. If the developer sells the building that now houses the HOA offices, they’d have to find office space somewhere, or rent the current space.

I think the only HOA that is being turned over at the end of this year is the Amenity Center HOA. That have the 20 year clause in its by laws. The Hampton Lakes and Riverhall HOAs don’t have that. So they won’t turnover until a certain number of home have been built. At least that’s what I think. I may be wrong. But let me know. Please leave comments and I’ll open up the chat feature here for free members so we can have an ongoing discussion of this whole process. Thanks everybody!

P.S. I’m going to send a link of this post to WINK News and see if one of their investigative reporters would like to look into things in more detail. Maybe get some answers for us and talk to some professionals and other people that have gone through this type of thing.