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We bought off plan in Green Hills upper level in Oct 03. Took perseverence and numerous phone calls to our lawyer and 12 months to eventually get a bank guarantee – dated November 2004! Our lawyer did not seem to appreciate the significance of handing over our money without getting a bank guarantee at the same time rather than 12 months later. Our guarante is with Banco Popular Hipotecario and the maturity date is 31st July 2006. After all that we have been reading here we will be calling the bank first thing tomorrow morning to verify that it is a valid guarantee! Thanks Sofia for your advice about starting the process of enforcing the guarantee before the maturity date, something we are going to do. Has any buyer in Green Hills received money back to date on bank guarantee or direct from the developer, with or without interest ?
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Hi Mary
As you probably know we (and Claire) like you bought on the upper level of Green Hills that has never been built.
Of course your solicitor (like ours!) didn’t ‘appreciate the significance of handing over your money without getting a bank guarantee’ – it wasn’t their money! We didn’t get our BG until May 2005. Our lawyers excuse? “We did try, we telephoned many many times….”. 🙄Our Bank Guarantee matures, like Claires, at the end of September, so ‘officially’ we have longer to wait than you.
However, because of the ‘no build’ situation, we have the right to apply now.
At present, our lawyer is going through all the pussy-footing one has to do initially i.e. ask the bank nicely, they then say no – quoting the maturity date, and the lie that apparently the developers are in the middle of negotiations with us to resolve everything (they are not, we’ve heard nothing from them), now our lawyer can apply to the court.
This bit of pussy-footing has to be gone through, or the court will simply say ‘we are not interested if you havn’t taken all reasonable steps before taking court action’.
In other words you have to technically ‘exhaust’ all the out-of-court procedure first (what I refer to as the pussy-footing bit). We have just done all that part, so now our lawyer is on ‘part 2’ of the procedure of applying to the court.Isn’t this all just dunky dory considering the developer has had over 6 millions pounds of deposits from us on this upper level and havn’t built a brick, and we are having to do all this. If it was government taxes they havn’t paid, THEY WOULD BE IN COURT/PRISON.
We met the lawyer of MVG for the second time in January as a ‘last chance saloon’ effort to get an out-of court settlement.
What he said in a nutshell was that they can’t afford to pay no (money problems !!!!! Bought too many cars, offshore bank accounts???? Financing their new project down the road La Hacienda, Benahavis????).
However, they would be prepared to return our money now if we accepted it with NO interest. We told him *!@*>* off.
We pushed him to tell us if they have paid ANYone and he said they have paid back two purchasers (with no interest) but in ‘very special circumstances’. We pushed him on this, but he refused to say what those circumstances were (gun to his head?????)
As we sold our house for this purchase, and have since been living in temporary accommodation with high costs involved) we asked if our case was not ‘special’. He just smiled.So there we have it. That is where we are at present.
We are taking them to court, suing for damages, and we are taking the Bank Guarantee situation to court to enforce now.
We are also preparing a case against Eralia for misleading advertising as you know, we all believed we were buying from them.
Quote “our most exciting development yet”, “Greenhills will enjoy all the benefits and guarantees people come to edxpect from our company” etc. etc.
Would we have bought from a tin-pot ‘front’ company (MVG) they set up later with a share capital of only 36,000 euros. I DON’T THINK SO.
We believed we were buying from Eralia – the big, well-established company worth millions. But when the doo-doos hit the fan with their ill-gotten building licence, the same directors set up MVG to hide behind and absolve themselves of all responsibility.
Now they say “Green Hills is nothing to do with us. We only promote the development”.
They have just done the same thing with La Hacienda. They were the developers, and when I made a ‘dummy’ call to O. Estates, pretending to be interested in La Hacienda, I asked them specifically who are the developers, whose name is on the contract. The girl said Eralia. I said go and double-check. She came back to me and assured me, having spoken to Eralia, that they were the developers.
Two weeks later, what happens? Suddenly the developer of La Hacienda is Dream Hills SL – who are the directors? You’ve guessed it. The same three directors as Eralia and MVG.
Having met with OMIC (Consumer protection organisation), they confirmed that these people CAN NOT GET AWAY with this game, and that we have a case.We keep being told by others (including another ‘good’ lawyer) that it is not worth it and to just wait until the Bank Guarantee matures!
But why should we? Why should they hold onto our £100,000 for another nine months when they havn’t built anything and are in breach of contract?
Doesn’t the law mean anything to these type of lawyers? (sorry Mark….nothing personal re. your friend).
By this Summer, they will have had our £100,000 for three years, and now want to return it without a penny interest/compensation.
As Drakan says – the law is out there, use it.
We have to use it and take these people to court, otherwise they just get away with absolute immoral, obscene criminality WITHOUT ANY CONSEQUENCES*.
Well, maybe for the first time in their lives…. we want to give them some*.
We may lose, we may get a load of stress in the process.
But we will get our day in court, and at least we will have tried. -
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Thanks Sofia for sharing your experience so comprehensively. We are only realising now what a fraud and cover up has been going on fronted by very pleasant sales and marketing people and ‘reassuring’ lawyers who should know better (but then they aren’t at risk of losing anything and have already got most of their fees for a completion up front!). We intend pursuing immediate activation of the guarantee citing ‘no build’ and we will keep you posted. If we can be of any help to you by giving any details of our case which might support your case please let know.
Regards
Mary -
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from Sofia and Charlie…..
Hi Mary –
Just a quickie this time (promise!).In our Bank Guarantee, they have written a date for when the certificate for ‘end of works’ (certificado de fin de obras) has to be submitted. In our case it is 15th September 2006, must be earlier in your case – sometime mid-July?
By putting this wording in our Bank Guarantee, we are supposed to feel we are not able to enforce it until this date, and the developers have failed to provide ‘the end of works’ certificate.
Ignore it! This is a date they have plucked out of the sky, and no extension was signed/granted by us, and anyway in your case especially with a July date, there is no way they will build and provide this certificate in the time left.
They are already in breach of contract, with completion supposedly end of Sept 2005.The bank, with us, has tried to use the ‘end of works date’ as a reason not to pay. Don’t let this red herring delay you acting now or obscure the fact that
a) There has been no build
b) There never will be a build (to quote the developer themselves to us)
c)The bank guarantee is there for solely one purpose:
If the apartment is not built or finished and made available to the buyer by the completion date of the contract, then it is your legal right, (by the law that this bank guarantee is based on) to receive your monies back plus legal interest.The rest is all *^%$ by the developer, whatever lies they have to say to you. Ignore it, and hopefully you have as good a lawyer as we hope we have, who believes in pursuing the law.
If you would like to send us a pm, maybe we can get in touch directly. Am sure many readers of this forum are bored to bits reading about Green Hills!!
Sofia and Charlie
P.S. Mark, Guest and Marios: really appreciate all your words of encouragement. -
My husband and I have made the decision to instruct our lawyer to request that we wish to pull out of this investment. They are insisting on another payment in June 06, we fell like they have taken the p*** long enough nearly 2 years this september. Their are too many loop holes in these off plan investments!!
We should have agreed to stage payments being payed based on how many bricks have been layed, they probably would have less opportunity to lie/fib about everything when they are making their nail oh I mean sale (nailing the customer)
Good luck to everyone out there who is having to spend time sorting these unneccessary matters out.
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Sofia, I have seen on the website http://www.123propertynews.com that they are advertising your apartments. Check it out, if it is the same developer why are they still selling them, is it a scam to make money??
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