These are my personal images and photos that show the beauty of the view from Deer Ridge Mountain Resort and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cobbly Nob and the Gatlinburg, Tennessee area.
Just click the Play button to watch - or click Big Picture to see a much larger slide show on a dedicated page here at DeerRidgeOwners.com.
Deer Ridge Litigation Fund
Do you, as an owner at Deer Ridge Mountain Resort, believe we are ALL entitled to have access and be able to copy the books and records of our Homeowner's Association?
So, do I.
But, apparently, Employee Joe Thomas and President Luther Parker and the Board disagree - and are doing all they can to block access, publication and candid discussion of the Asinine Assessment, special deals and favored treatment - at the expense of all Owners.
What ARE they so afraid of us finding out?
Maybe it has to do with the HUGE $10,000 overcharge for my HOA Fees, special assessments, water and cable TV bill - which, in my personal opinion, is due to fraudulent intent or at least gross negligence by the Deer Ridge Board of Directors and / or General Manager Joe Thomas. Please see the posts for details.
We have no choice but to file a lawsuit against GGRC and RML in order to finally, once and for all, make it clear that OWNERS do have a right to all the information about our property and our investment at Deer Ridge.
If you have thoughts and ideas and suggestions, please post them here on this blog.
If you have any clout with the Board, convince them to stop the charade - and let the owners have the information that all owners own!
If you want to help cover the legal costs to get us the right to see the bids for $50,000 for nuts and bolts - and the other background documents for the $353,500 Asinine Assessment, please click on the Donate Button below.
With enough in donations, we can hire BOTH an attorney AND a forensic accountant for the whole process through the Court in Sevier County to make absolutely certain we win EVERY point - and never have to fight Employee Joe and the Board on this stuff again.
Even a $100 contribution will help show that you are in favor of an open and FULLY transparent homeowners' association at Deer Ridge Mountain Resort!
Thanks so much to those of you who have already contributed!
GENERAL DISCLAIMER FOR ALL PAGES AND POSTS AND EVERYTHING ELSE I DO OR SAY REGARDING DEER RIDGE AND ANY AND ALL RELATED PARTIES:
Note: The following, and the information on any and all other posts and pages by me about General Manager Joe Thomas, GGRC, RML and /or the Board of Directors and its members, or any related topics, are my personal opinions based on my ongoing investigation into the actions and inactions of the GGRC and RML Board of Directors and / or Joe Thomas, General Manager.
While I believe these allegations to be true based on my objective analysis, these opinions remain as only allegations until I, or others, prove things in court.
My goal is to offer all owners all the information and evidence that I have available so that everyone can reach their own conclusions.
Please note the obvious:
Everything I ever say or write in person, via emails, or on my blog, about Deer Ridge or any and all related entities and organizations or any and all affiliated personnel or owners, is strictly my own personal opinion of course - based, in part, from my owning a unit at Deer Ridge for over five years - and on my own personal history.
That history includes earning a Presidential MBA degree, being awarded a Bachelor of Science, With Honors, in Engineering Physics from UT, working for NASA as a rocket scientist at Marshall Space Flight Center, 30 years of CEO experience directly employing and managing many hundreds of people at multiple companies I personally started and operated (including one that I took public), 15 years experience buying and selling over $100 million of property and managing more than 45,000 rental units - AND being able to read and do four-function arithmetic.
Legalese - And Powered Wig - Off
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Welcome to All Deer Ridge Owners
Welcome to all owners of Deer Ridge Mountain Resort condos in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
My goal is to help all Deer Ridge owners to have a voice in the management and operation of your property.
Click on the TITLES of any of the following subjects to read the whole posting - and see the comments made by your co-owners. You can also type any term into the below search box, or any word or term in the search cloud.
Click the big image at the top of the page to return to the front page at any time.
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Investment Analysis For A Rental Condo At Deer Ridge
Will you really lose $40,000 cash if you buy a rental condo at Deer Ridge and use Ridge Management Ltd?
As an owner-occupied home, Deer Ridge is an incredible value with THE best view in the Smokies and great amenities.
However, several owners and would-be owners of Deer Ridge condos have asked me if these units are a good rental property investment or not. To help answer that question
objectively, I had to analyze the real moving parts of buying and owning here.
Get my complete, detailed investment analysis based on buying a rental condo unit at Deer Ridge Mountain Resort in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
It shows what you MUST do to make money when you buy a rental unit at Deer Ridge.
Every Dollar You Pay For Deer Ridge Is The WRONG Amount!
Please read the various posts here on this Deer Ridge Owners Blog - and see my evidence and analysis which I believe shows conclusively that EVERY dollar of HOA Fees, EVERY dollar EVERY special assessment, EVERY water bill and cable TV sent out for YEARS to ALL Deer Ridge Owners has been wrong!
In many cases at least ONE THIRD of ALL owners have been GROSSLY overcharged. My calculations show that I have been overcharged more than TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS in the past 50 months I've owned at Deer Ridge.
The Board has been WRONGLY and arbitrarily ignoring the requirements of the Master Deed and the Bylaws for YEARS.
If my analysis is correct, the Board has zero choice. They MUST abide by the Master Deed Percentages.
But they haven’t.
However, if the Board knowingly ignored the clear directives of the Master Deed and the Bylaws when allocating costs to various unit types, and overcharging certain unit types on a regular basis, my opinion is that the Board and Joe Thomas may have acted fraudulently.
If they have not been fraudulent, then they have been, at the very least, grossly negligent.
Read the various blog postings - and judge for yourself.
Comments Welcome From All Visitors
You are welcome to leave your comments on the various posts on the blog. You no longer have to be registered to comment. (Even regular contributors had trouble remembering their log on passwords!)
Note that SPAM blockers are in place - and all comments require approval to be visible.
So, let's hear from you on these topics!
To view the comments, you need to click on the post topic to see the entire post and the comments.
"We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert." — J. Robert Oppenheimer. This includes the Board of Directors of Deer Ridge Mountain Resort.
Will you really lose $40,000 cash if you buy a rental condo at Deer Ridge and use Ridge Management Ltd?
As an owner-occupied home, Deer Ridge is an incredible value with THE best view in the Smokies and great amenities.
However, several owners and would-be owners of Deer Ridge condos have asked me if these units are a good investment or not. To help answer that question objectively, I had to analyze the real moving parts of buying and owning here.
The following is my detailed investment analysis based on buying a 1-1 condo unit at Deer Ridge Mountain Resort in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The numbers for the other sized units at Deer Ridge are very similar, bottom line.
Here are a few pages of the analysis to show you the format. Click any of the following pages to immediately download the full report.
The Main Assumptions – Using RML To Lease and Manage:
$50,000 purchase price with $2,000 for initial improvements and $2,000 for closing costs.
Down payment of 25%, with a mortgage of $37,500 at 7% fixed for 30 years.
Total resulting initial investment of $16,500.
28% marginal tax bracket, 15% long-term capital gain and no state income tax.
The current $3,400 special assessment for 2011 and 2012, with an additional, average $1,000 per year assessment per unit starting in Year 3 and required for other things like roof, parking lot and “oh, by the way…” ideas from Joe Thomas and the Board.
Annual appreciation rate of 3% per year, as an average, over the next 10 years.
Selling costs of 10% – to cover brokerage, closing costs, etc.
Rental income per night averaging $90 per night after accounting for specials, packages, Hotels.com / Expedia / Etc. discounts with rental rates increasing, on a net basis, by 3% per year.
Continuation of the historical Joe Thomas and RML 39% economic occupancy for all units on average at Deer Ridge across the entire year. This equates to a 61% economic vacancy rate. (This is the historical average across the past 8 years – with no signs of any improvement.)
40% RML management fee. (RML has upped this fee several times in the past – but this is the current charge.)
$270 per month for the HOA fee (the highest per sq ft. charge in the entire Gatlinburg, Knoxville area.) This represents an 82% overcharge compared to the amount that should be charged for 1-1 units according to the Master Deed. This is expected to be a major point covered with upcoming litigation filed against GGRC and / or its Board of Directors.
Water at $116 per month. This represents double what should be charged for 1-1 units according to the Master Deed.
Contents and liability insurance of $300 per year, $500 per year for internal maintenance and/or forced upgrades required by RML and another $500 per year for repairs. Maid service is shown at only $100 per year for spring cleaning. Also shown is the RML pass through costs for credit card fees of about $250 per year.
Cobbly Nob taxes of $668 and Sevier County taxes of $400 per year.
Electricity of about $1,000 per year on average along with charges for cable TV and telephone.
Expenses increasing 5% per year.
The Projected Numbers – Using RML To Lease and Manage:
Negative Net Operating Income for all ten years after all income and expenses. This means, even without a mortgage of any amount, the property loses money every year. Over 10 years, this adds up to a loss of out of pocket dollars more than $31,000 – excluding any net proceeds from sale.
With the 75% mortgage described above, the numbers are a lot worse. Over 10 years, your loss of out of pocket dollars would be almost $68,000!
Taking appreciation into account, if we sell after 10 years and sell the unit for $67,200 after buying it for $50,000 with 75% financing, then the loss after all benefits of every kind would still be almost exactly $40,000!
That is a $40,000 LOSS – Not Gain – With everything taken into account after 10 years!
This means after owning at Deer Ridge for 10 years, there would be zero net profit – and it will end up costing you $40,000. This equates to costing you $4,000 a year in order for you to have a place to use and enjoy as a vacation home – assuming you are not “RML Abusive” and want to actually use your unit during the summer or holidays or during the peak foliage time in October.
If you were to actually hold for longer – say 20 years, it gets even worse. In that case, it would end up costing you over $86,000!
The Conclusions – Using RML To Lease and Manage:
Using RML to manage your property, it makes zero sense to buy a unit at Deer Ridge strictly for investment purposes, as a rental unit, expecting any kind of positive ROI whatsoever – EVER.
Did you rent your Deer Ridge Mountain Resort unit through Ridge Management Ltd., RML, for all of 2009?
Wonder how your unit’s performance stacked up against the other units for rental? Well, here’s a chance to find out.
An owner of one of the 2-2 units at Deer Ridge provided me a copy of their year end RML statement. Here’s what their numbers looked like for 2009 (used here with their permission):
A Quick Analysis
Owner X had gross rental income on their unit of $14,454 for all of 2009.
In December, the income was $456 for 6 rental nights according to the above information. This works out to an average nightly rental rate of $76.
Since this is a 2-2, let’s assume that the average nightly rental was $105 per night across the whole year.
This means that for $14,454 of gross income, this unit was rented for about 138 nights out of the 365 nights in a year.
This means that this unit saw an economic occupancy of only 37.7% – or conversely, a vacancy rate of 62.3% for the year.
These numbers are consistent with the entire Deer Ridge property as a whole, which has suffered from an average annual economic occupancy of only 39% for the past 8 years under the very questionable leadership of General Manager Joe Thomas.
Is Deer Ridge A Good Investment? / Bad Investment?
Owner X saw distributions for the whole year of $4,504. This works out to an average monthly check to them of about $375 per month.
From this distribution, Owner X had to also pay: Sevier County taxes, electricity, content and liability insurance, HOA fees and other maintenance from wear and tear and theft. All of this added up to about an additional carrying cost of about $5,800 for the year.
This means, that Owner X lost about $1,300 for the year – not counting debt service. This also does not include the costs for any of the thousands of dollars the board is requiring for the upcoming Asinine Assessment.
If the monthly mortgage payment was $320 per month, then the total LOSS for the year for Owner X was over $5,000!
If Owner X keeps their unit for 10 years – and these same trends continue, this means that the aggregate loss for them will exceed $50,000!
Does this make it a good investment – or a bad investment for owning a condo at Deer Ridge?
The answer to that is not quite so black and white – and needs a much more in depth analysis to reach a valid conclusion.
Because so many owners, and prospective buyers, want to know if Deer Ridge is a good or bad investment, my next post will be a comprehensive analysis and downloadable document – so you will finally KNOW the answer!
Check out our new Deer Ridge Owners webcam for the current view from our balcony!
Just click the photo for the most recent update. Updated every 5 minutes.
Top 10 Cam Award!
Our new Cobbly Nob TN site was just chosen as an Earthcam Top 10 Webcam!
All of this in just our first two weeks of operation - and before we install our new wide angle, high definition lens! Stay tuned for even better images!
EarthCam, Inc. is the global leader in providing webcam content, technology and services and ranks among the top 1% of all websites. EarthCam.com is the world’s favorite webcam network and the EarthCam Network cameras have been seen on top news shows, including CNN’s Headline News.
New YouTube Channel For Deer Ridge Owners!
Check out ALL of our videos on our new YouTube Channel for Deer Ridge Owners:
We already have videos that will walk you around the whole property and give you reviews from past guests and tourists. Find out what they REALLY have to say about Deer Ridge!
We are adding even more videos in the next few weeks - so check out our Deer Ridge Owners Channel often!
Update: Just added two new videos for a total of 20 videos so far! Check them out!
Owner Files $3 Million Lawsuit Against HOA, General Manager And Board Members
A homeowner in Gatlinburg, Tennessee has filed a $3 Million Lawsuit against his HOA, General Manager And All Individual Board Members at Deer Ridge Mountain Resort.
In response to their meritless, retaliatory $1 Million defamation lawsuit against me, I have now filed a $3 Million lawsuit against Deer Ridge Mountain Resort, AKA Gatlinburg Golf and Racquet Club HOA and Joe Thomas, Luther Parker, Larry Ohm, Margie Duncan, David Barone and Tom Reise, all as individuals.
If you believe in free speech as much as we do, we need your help - no matter where in America you may live.
The Deer Ridge HOA board and individual board members have filed a $1 Million Lawsuit against me in their ongoing attempts to stop this blog and have its contents removed. Click Press Release for details.
This power clique wants to continue to block free speech on this property and to keep their illegitimate secrets hidden from other owners.
They are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars of other owners' money on legal fees to keep themselves in power while they continue to break both Tennessee state law and Deer Ridge property law.
We need your help with the legal fees that will be required to force them to abide by the law - and insure that Deer Ridge Mountain Resort is entitled to free speech like the rest of America.
If you would like to join with others who believe in free speech and believe that all of the 305,000 Home Owner Associations across the nation should be protected from tyrannical boards that ignore the laws, please click the
Donate Button below.
Even a donation of just a few dollars would be very greatly appreciated as a way of showing that we have financial support from thousands of Americans for these important issues!
Thanks so much to all of those of you who have already contributed!
Please help us broadcast this Press Release to others you know who can spread the word. You are welcome to link to this site from Twitter, Facebook or other sites.
With your help we can fight and win this $1 Million lawsuit - and keep this blog active - and an inspiration and model for other HOA Abuse Blogs across the nation.
Owner Comments