buying off-plan abroad - cancel contract

The_Prince_3

mpsavuk wrote: »

The posters on those forums are nowhere near clever enough to make up a story like this. They are all in theTin foil hat brigade. You know the type:

"Doomed, we're all doomed"

:rotfl:

You mean the posters on those forums are nowhere near stupid enough to do what avicola did.

There will be many more threads like this one in the coming years. Some who tried it abroad, some who tried it here.

The property market has become a pyramid selling scam.

avicola

I don’t know what trolls are, I am not sure I agree that it is pyramid selling – isn’t it just a simple case of manufacturer, retailer, customer? - and I could contend the ‘greed’ issue with various arguments. But I won’t.

What I will do, when this is all over, and whether we win or loose, is to let you have the website of the company we bought the apartments through.

I know most of you will scoff and say, ‘I don’t care what the website says ….’ And obviously you are quite right.

Really, I am not a stupid person. I don’t fall into ridiculous traps easily (normally). I have so far avoided signing up for the Nigerian money laundering scams, giving my bank details to countless people on the internet and thinking that I have actually won something just because the Readers Digest tells me so.

But this clearly was blatant stupidity on the grandest scale for some reason, so there you go.

As I said before though, I don’t think the EA’s did it as a scam. In fact, I am sure they didn’t. It could have just been down to an overzealous salesman who told us things that simply weren’t true. Such as the heavy penalties for late completion. It turns out they did not have any written into the contract, and they legally should have done. When we asked him about this later on and after they should have been completed, he said that the developers would just claim it was out of their hands, that it was down to industrial action or whatever, and that is how they can sometimes get out of the clause. We didn’t take it any further, because we couldn’t sell them anyway, so in fact being delayed was in our favour. That person has now left the company apparently and gone back to Belgium where he is from. (So unfortunately, we don’t even get to lash out at him verbally or otherwise.)

What has most shocked us though, right to the pit of our stomachs, is the realization now that the EA have abandoned us -that they are really prepared to let us loose all the money without lifting a finger to help. You guys are complete strangers, and you have done more than that for us. That makes us think that they have got big problems themselves as of course they are property investors.

I still don’t understand it though, because they have got to know there will be some publicity in this. I am not talking about at GMTV couch moment. That isn’t going to happen. I was thinking more of a name and shame in the Tenerife papers.

And also to warn people that they need to be more vigilant than ever. I think this property crash is bigger and will have greater ramifications than we can imagine.

At the end of the day though, whatever I say about the EA’s or property crash, WE got it wrong big style.

PasturesNew

Unfortunately, the EAs are just commission-based salesmen. Like second hand car salesmen and double glazing salesmen.

Their job is to get you to buy something. They get paid if they get a signature/deposit.

Your agreement was between you and the builder/developer. Whoever was actually owning them.

The EA himself is probably on some beach somewhere trying to sell timeshare to passing tourists as I type.

As a potential purchaser of 7 of these units, he'd have gold spray painted his own grandmother naked and served her up to you with an apple in her mouth if it will have clinched the deal.... and told you she was a 17 year old virgin.

Your efforts should be concentrated on the contract alone. That is the only written thing you have to fight with.

Any other fight you may try to have would be exceedingly expensive and unlikely to ever produce results (in my opinion and I have no legal training or understanding, neither in this country or any other).

avicola

Thank you for your support PasturesNew.

I agree with you re trying to get legal redress with the EA. I can see that would be extremely tenuous as it was all word of mouth. The past couple of days, they have never committed them selves to writing anything down in an email, only speaking on the phone.

And I can see that it would be too expensive, that we couldn’t even launch anything against them. The solicitor wants 3,500 euros to start this case. If we/he wins, he gets around 20,000 from the developer. I didn’t know they got that much for a case!

Obviously, if we loose, we loose that money. But it is well worth it for this shot.

And thank you for believing this is real (though we can’t quite believe it ourselves. There is so much scamming going on, a lot of people are cynical. That is a shame. It is good to be a believer. Except when you get dropped from a height.

tradetime

As a potential purchaser of 7 of these units, he'd have gold spray painted his own grandmother naked and served her up to you with an apple in her mouth if it will have clinched the deal.... and told you she was a 17 year old virgin.

Another priceless jem PN, though I have to say the image cunjured up by that one has made my beer flat.:eek:

clutton_2

i think you should put up a post on https://www.singingpig.co.uk and name this company - you will see on their property - overseas section several companies whose activities have been as appalling as your EAs - you will learn a lot from singingpig and may find other victims come forward and that a class action may be possible

bw

RecoveringAlcoholic

I liked this from GHPC

is that the next port of call for spanish property law advice, is to
MSE - which seems to be a forum full of people with quite a misunderstanding of simple personal finance, let alone anyting more complicated.

PasturesNew

RecoveringAlcoholic wrote: »

I liked this from GHPC

is that the next port of call for spanish property law advice, is to
MSE - which seems to be a forum full of people with quite a misunderstanding of simple personal finance, let alone anyting more complicated

That'll be about me that will ... I'm clueless. But willing.

dsypml

avicola wrote: »

...We paid the 35,000 euros x 7 out of money left to me when my mother died. yes, her hard earned cash that i was hoping would bring me in enough money for my retirement and to leave a significant amount to my children.

Somehow I doubt it was all that hard-earned or you'd have learned a better lesson from her than to fail to provide yourself with a pension and to bet the farm on something you know nothing about. Did she "earn" that money by buying a house dirt cheap in the 70's, having the mortgage inflated away in a few short years and dieing at the top of a house price bubble? That would explain your use of her wealth.

Lakey

Then that must be the ONLY thing you might be clueless about.
Reading all your posts you seem to know a lot about lots of things to me!!!

Having a nice glass of red now as it's good for you so they say!!
cheers me dears:beer: