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Nearly 400 people – including 300 Britons – have allegedly lost an estimated £34 million after paying deposits for non-existent holiday homes in the Costa del Sol.
By Ed Owen, and Caroline Gammell 7:38PM GMT 13 Dec 2010
Investors bought off-the-plan apartments in a proposed development called Estepona Beach and Country Club, 30km west of Marbella.
In some cases, the prospective owners – many of whom were from Northern Ireland – put down an £85,000 deposit for their Spanish homes
However, the land still belonged to its original owner and the complex was never built.
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@mark wrote:
Nearly 400 people – including 300 Britons – have allegedly lost an estimated £34 million after paying deposits for non-existent holiday homes in the Costa del Sol.
By Ed Owen, and Caroline Gammell 7:38PM GMT 13 Dec 2010
Investors bought off-the-plan apartments in a proposed development called Estepona Beach and Country Club, 30km west of Marbella.
In some cases, the prospective owners – many of whom were from Northern Ireland – put down an £85,000 deposit for their Spanish homes
However, the land still belonged to its original owner and the complex was never built.
It’s difficult to establish exactly what those crooks have done in the quoted example. Corruption doesn’t seem to fit the bill, theft is difficult to prove, which leaves the fraud aspect, requiring proof that there never was any intention to complete the project on which deposits had been taken. No wonder it has taken the Spanish authorities so long to catch up with the villains. The proof is sometimes only available once the crooks have fled the country.
Stolen deposits seems to be a speciality in the Malaga province of Andalucia, the adjoining province of Almeria is subtly different, the houses are built and sold, but they are illegal. The speciality in Valencia is slightly different again, the houses that are illegal can be legalised by payment of a fine, a hefty one.
You would think that the exposures over the past three years or more, especially in the British media, would have stopped people falling for such dubious schemes, but foreigners are still buying in Spain – the numbers may have gone down, depending on where you get your statistics from – but they’re still coming to Spain.
It may be a cruel thing to say, but a lot of people in colder countries suffer from SAD, that awful disease where people need the sun to cure it. I find it all very sad.
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Mark and Rocker, this is probably a silly question, but seeing as the amounts lost are huge, do you think there’s any possibility that they will get any or all of their money back even with the slow Spanish legal system? Will the Spanish Gov’t help bail these people out?
If not, then credibility in Spain’s property industry is lost for good methinks 🙄
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