Have you got a Negative Property/Real Estate Story?
Have you had a bad experience, when buying a new property?
New builds” and “Off-plan property” are buzzwords of the past few years and are still hot topics for many people across the globe. As the idea of owning abroad starts to mature and many buyers have taken the plunge, what are the thoughts of the public today?
My experience - Buying a property in the Costa del Sol, Spain.
I bought a brand new beachfront apartment in an urbanisation on the Costa del Sol. The experience of buying was quite pleasant, a little unnerving as it all seems to go very smoothly. I used a good lawyer and what I thought was a reputable developer. There were some snags that needed sorting, the developer put most of the easy issues right, but never came back to sort out larger issues. I looked into taking them to court, but decided against in on the advice of my lawyers. We were lied to about the community fees, which the administrator just kept taking and the work wasn’t getting done on the urbanisation. The developer happened to be the president of the community and as such was working with the administrator to get the residents to pay all the costs towards the urbanisation. When we rallied around to get support, many owners were not interested and the developer still owned the majority of the development as such we could not throw him out! They got very frosty with us when we put up signs on the urbanisation to rally support and as such showed their true colours. The community is getting there now, slow but sure. As many new communities will not be set up until the urbanisation is finished, you are never in the know about who has bought there and how the community will be formed. You really can’t do much about this, just bear it in mind when you choose a place to buy!
I would like to build up a section to this website which praises good developers and ranks them, as I feel there isn’t a resource which provides this sort of information. “Built by buyers for buyers”? type thing (cheesy but good). Do you think this is a good idea?
I am always interested to hear from buyers of new properties. So if you have a story to tell, write in my comments section below.
Points you might want to include:
What were the problems?
Could the issues been resolved easily?
Were you treated well?
Would you buy again?
What would you do differently in the future?
edna mellor said,
May 23, 2006 @ 3:47 pm
We purchased an off plan property almost 2 years ago. We were informed at the time that it would be ready in June of 2005 give or take a couple of months. The property was actually completed in August of 2005. However becuase of the amount of property build in Spain the deeds are still not ready for signing yet. We have been given a date twice by the builders that they were ready for signing, only to be let down with excuses that they are not. Our solicitor informs us that there is nothing we can do about it as to sue could take up to two years and there is no guarantee that we would win. We bought this as an investment and should have been renting it out since last year, however the only pople who have made any money so far is the builders as 50% of our money has been tied up with them for almost two years.
The motto of the story is to ensure that you get some form of writen compensation clause in your contract for late signing of deeds if possible.
Does any one have any similar story and what was the outcome.
Siffice to say that we are frustrated and not too impressed at the moment.
Regards
Edna
Nubricks said,
May 23, 2006 @ 4:23 pm
I have heard this story over and over in Spain. I even posted about it a while back here http://www.nubricks.com/archives/22/new-developments-in-spain-not-ready-on-time/
Even if you do get a clause in your contract, it is not always easy to get the compensation, the legal system in Spain is a notoriously slow one!
I understand your frustration, but in many of these cases it is a waiting game, which is always hard if the flow of information is slow.