buying off-plan abroad - cancel contract

avicola

Many, many thanks Clutton and Lakey.

I shall be on with the case, vigour renewed ...

The estate agent said I was 'nit picking' which they didn't think was useful. I couldn't make them see, or agree that they saw, the huge difference this could make.

I did post on another site to try and find out what are the requirements for the cedula to be granted, but didn't get anything useful back.

I will start looking again, as I agree, they can't surely have fulfilled all the requirements. But I understand that the pool, which is often left til later, is complete.

Cheers e-mates.

avicola

Ooh, it’s all going on now.
This is what I received from another Spanish solicitor about buying off-plan in Spain. It was in reply to my question about the existence of a two year period of grace after the initial 2 years that the licence covers:

a.- Work License is issued by the Local Council, parties submitted to their timeframes, conditions etc... are just Local Council and developer. Validity deadlines stablished for Work Licenses do not expire automatically, an express declaration of lapsing is needed and that declaration is just issued after a procedure in which the developer is heard. The only consequence of that is that the developer needs to renovate that Work License. No more consequences and of course, no consequences for you.

b.- Expiration deadline between you and developer are stablished in the purchase contract.
c.- Extensions of the timeframes of your private purchase contract needs to be communicated to you, justified to you and allowed by you. According to the doctrine of our Supreme Court.

Our contract gives 2 years (which ended August 2006) and no way have we had a request or granted permission for an extension.

Whilst points a and b are rather gobbledegooky, point c seems quite clear. What this would mean in actual fact, I don’t know. It could be that we still need to complete but get compensation (as I mentioned a while back), which of course won’t help as we can’t complete.

Another reply I got regarding the cedula was that it is for the building only and not the communal areas. I could get a specialist company that does a 650 point snagging list complete with report and photos, to have a look, but there doesn’t seem much need to at the moment, especially if point c is being used.

FraudBuster

Not read all of this, but what happens if the developers go bust and the directors do a runner to South America?

joysa.rude

I find it hard to believe anybody could be this stupid but assuming this is not a wind up here goes.

Are you seriously saying that with no real money of your own you used leveraged debt products to buy off plan property in a country where you don't even speak the language. You couldn't be bothered to hire a solicitor to translate/check the contract and took the estate agents word for it. Hint : never ask a barber whether you need a haircut.

Now it's all gone horribly wrong you want to know who is to blame - well take a long hard look in the mirror.

As to your predicament - you signed a legally binding contract and you owe the money, your only real option is bankruptcy. Contract law is a complicated beast and the legal fees will be comfortably into the six figure range if the fight becomes prolonged.

avicola

Yeah, we've done all that.

Lavendyr

joysa.rude wrote: »

*snip*

Links in signatures are not permitted according to forum rules, could you please remove it?

Lakey

To josy.rude, what benefit did you get by your last post?

As avicola said, done that been there, now lets get on and help her get her life back to some sort of normality.

Avicola, I hope that Richard Webster or NDG might be able to make more sense out of that lot of legal stuff.

At least you seem to be moving forward and not stuck in some sort of nightmare loop.

keep us posted.

:beer:

avicola

FraudBuster wrote: »

Not read all of this, but what happens if the developers go bust and the directors do a runner to South America?

The point you make is extremely valid and it is one which we have considered ourselves.

If that happens then I don’t think there is anything we can do.

But if anyone knows any different, please do say.

With that in mind however, what we did do a few weeks back was to begin to work out a contingency plan if we don’t get the money back.

Having pretty much decided that, it is good to know what our alternative would be.

ruggedtoast

Do you reckon you'll get the money back? I thought you were just trying to get out of being liable to buy the flats.

Usually if an entity goes bust its assets (which include debtors, presumably you) would be shared around the creditors, so it may not help you much.

avicola

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Do you reckon you'll get the money back? I thought you were just trying to get out of being liable to buy the flats.

Usually if an entity goes bust its assets (which include debtors, presumably you) would be shared around the creditors, so it may not help you much.

Depends how you look at it re getting the money back.

The contract says that they were granted a 2 year license to complete. That would have meant them completing August 2006.

Whether that constitutes breaking the contract I don't know.

It depends what the judge will say.

Sometimes I think we have a good chance to get the money back. Other times, I think we have no chance.

I should probably just leave it to the solicitor to sort out. But I left the EA to sell the apartments, and that, it transpires, was the wrong thing to do. So that is why I keep delving myself.