[Anonymous]

[caption id="attachment_232056" align="alignnone" width="768"] Torre Lugano, Benidorm. Photo credit By Pixelat – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20888904%5B/caption%5D

Today’s El Pais reports on the problems experienced by people who bought flats in the recently built Torre Lugano skyscraper – the 2nd highest in Benidorm with 148 metres, 48 floors, and 204 flats (it was marketed as the highest residential building in Spain, but has since been overtaken by the Gran Hotel Bali in Benidorm at 186m).

There are so many construction faults, and the finish is reported to be so far below spec that a group of owners are taking the developer, builder, architect and technical architects to court demanding compensation of 28 million Euros.

Flats were delivered in June 2008, a year and a half late. The developer was a JV between Acciona – one of Spain’s biggest developers and constructors – and the Valencian savings bank Bancaja.

The owners complain that:
– The building standards are shoddy, and corners were cut.
– The developer cut costs using inferior materials to those promised in the spec. For example, chip board or cardboard was used in place of wood.
– The stairs to the offices have been sealed off in danger of collapse.
– The fire alarm never worked properly (towering inferno anyone?). Sometime it goes off up to 50 times a day.
– Construction faults in the foundations cause regular flooding of the garage, including floods involving waste water (sewage).
– Owners have had to spend 600,000 Euros dealing with these and other problems.

Vicente Villalba, the vice-president of the community of owners says he feels “swindled”. “I was promised a luxury flat but it has ended up a disaster because almost nothing is up to scratch,” he told El Pais.

As a protest, the majority of owners have hung a for sale sign outside their flats.

Prices range from €160,000 for small lower floor flats, to €710,000 for the penthouses. The symbolic protest aside, 50 flats, or 25% of the building, are for sale, and that’s before you count those never sold and still on offer from the developer.

The owners are also suing the developer for building 5 floors more than urban planning laws permit.

I remember thinking when this project first came on the market that you would have to be mad to buy there. Benidorm is not Manhattan.

[petej]

I could never imagine wanting to buy somewhere like that, I can understand someone wanting to buy in Benidorm though its not for me (open year round, lots to do, theme parks, some nice countryside not far away) but not in these huge tower blocks.

We used to go to a place called la cala de finestrat, a small beach next to benidorm, first went there around 25 years ago, nothing there, went back 15 or so years later and returned once a year for around 8 years after that, What a change now, it was the talk of high rise blocks that made me think, around 2003 they were selling/building some 3 tower blocks with sea views ect, 2 years latter more blocks in front with sea views, bye bye sea views for the first lot! 🙄

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