has any body any news of your development?

I bought a place with aifos in a development in torrox  in 2004. which has never even started . today i have had a letter from aifos saying that they have made an agreement with the bank  Cajasur/bbkbank. to finish Cortijo de Torreblanca in the town of fuengirola, Malaga . As i have a contract in another development, would this be of interest to me , any comments would be of interest? I feel most people don't seem to care or have given up or are to embarrassed to talk about  what this company has done to us  all? I can not get any response on the puerto  golf las colininas page perhaps some one else cares? or perhaps some one who has accepted a deal from aifos could reply with their experiences? peter

Peter

I apologise if you have already looked into this but have you considered whether you have a negligence claim against your UK solicitors if you used any. I am a UK based solicitor and act for about 60 clients who have lost money in Estepona and Manilva due to the negligence of their solicitors; these claims look promising and we are likely to make a recovery with some of them. I would be very interested to know whether you used a lawyer in the UK. If you did I would be happy to look at the advice that he gave for no charge. The fact that the purchase was over 6 years ago need not be a problem

Regards

Jonathan Kenwright

Thank you Jonathon for your reply.  Originally we engaged a Spanish Solicitor in Nerja , but in November 2006 we contacted english Solicitors in  Devon to translate and look over the contract, whereby they contacted our Spanish Solicitors and requested the paperwork to enable them to carry out a property report. they checked with the local  hall to check progress etc

Regards

Peter 

Dear Peter

Thanks for your reply. The pattern that I am interested in is where your UK solicitor advises you on the contract and you then pay your money over in reliance of that advice. I note your solicitor was in Devon; it was not Jonathan Ogley by any chance?  Our approach has been that had you had the correct advice then you would not have paid and lost your monies. I would be happy to speak wth you if you wish.

Regards

Jonathan

tel 01242 285855 (UK) Maitland Walker LLP Solicitors

hi jonathon , Sorry for delay in answering you. well the english solicitors in devon , came back with  exactly what i had already told them which to be honest  was a total waste of money. I am afraid I have little hope of getting any of my money back . Aifos has sent me 3 options just this week 1 to support their offer to the administrators which is a 5500 euro to be paid back in 10 years time and for the next 5 years if you are on the courts list of creditors which from my understanding I cannot be sure if I or many other our ? 2 .buy a property in fuengirola at a very  high price which they will give me a discount  leaving me with a high mortgage ,I  could in fact go over with about 10,0000 euros less and buy a place exactly the same according to prices on the internet. 3 do not agree to either and let aifos go into administration which i am likely not to get anything. not really anything more than can be exspected from aifos and the spanish courts. so thats the latest.      peter

Peter

Thanks for your message reply. It does sound like a bit of a mess. What I am looking at is whether your UK solicitor advised you before you parted with your money. If he did then we need to look at that advice as if it is negligent he may be responsible for your losses. This approach is simpler than invloving the Spanish courts and going after the developer as the claim is dealt with in the UK and your solicitor's insurers pay. I have already had some success in this area for clients.

If your solicitor did not advise you before you parted with your money then it may be more difficult to claim. I am acting for a number of clients on a no win no fee basis and woulb be very interested to hear from anyone else who has a similar problem; is there a list of creditors anywere?

Regards

Jonathan

Aventura,

I didn't notice that your thread was relevant to the one i just started.

I bought from Aifos on the Cortijo de Torreblanca development back in 2003. They have contacted me this week to offer me the chance to complete on the original property that i paid a deposit for. They are proposing to finish off 2 blocks (out of 8, i think) and mine just happens to be in one of them.

The 'offer', if you can call it that, is to buy the property on the original terms of the contract, which, in my case was 121,000€. If i were to go ahead and accept the 'offer', i would instantly be in negative equity by about 15-25k. So, ive told them to shove it.

The man i spoke to said they had 104 people accepting the offer. I think the two blocks house approx 200 apartments, so they need 170 people to accept and the bank will finance the build.

They're just trying it on, hoping that we will accept virtually any price as we are desperate. I've been inside the apartments and they are nearly complete. The ones i went into were painted (inside and out), flooring down, windows fitted, kitchens fitted (except white goods of course). In fact, the only thing missing in most of them was light switches and plug sockets (wiring was in of course). They are pretty nice though, to be fair, and pretty spacious and the terraces are amazing. However, these blocks face the rest of the building site - which consists of 6 more 5-6 storey blocks, with underground parking. What will they do with these? They would obviously need to demolish them. What about the underground CP? How would that be filled in? How will they finish off the rest of the site?

They told me that the build would take 18 months. It wouldn't take anywhere near that long to finish whats left off, but it might take that long to remove the rest of the 8 blocks. Also, what about the planning permission on the site? There wasnt any last time i checked. In fact, we were told that that was a major reason why they stopped building on the other 8 blocks.

Why would you throw (in my case) another 70k at it when i could buy something for a little more that is completed and fully legal? I could understand if you have paid virtually all of the amount requested as a previous deposit, at least seem to have the chance to get something  for your money.

Many, many questions need answering of this development before i would even consider it.

hi Fazarelli

                    Thanks very much for your reply, I am sure you are doing the right thing by turning down their offer as firstly you will be in negative equity.  If you look at the prices of other new places being sold they are exceedingly cheaper. also can you trust a company that changes its mine so often and could sell property without planning permission and even sell properties when they didnt even own the land that they said they own and where the local planners told them that they would not beable

 sorry dont know what happened went to alter be able and message got sent.  be able to build a block above two levels on the land at torrox. They didn't bother to inform us about any problem they were having ,but still kept taking our money. as you say they are trying to get other buyers to take on these properties at higher prices then their own original contracts.  Why should people let these people get away drawing their salaries while they cheat the next generation. Unless they agreed to finish the property and the whole complex I personally would not believe any thing  AIFOS ever said , without physically checking it before I agreed to anything.      aventura.

Yeah, too true.

I only just realised what they had done after i read your first reply. They actually offered my property to other people first!

I thought it was a bit strange that they even contacted me because i have cancelled the contract between myself and Aifos in the courts.

The funny thing is, if they had offered this to me maybe 3 years ago, i might have accepted, depending upon what i was asked to sign.

Do you know of anyone else who has been offered, or even accepted, one of these flats?

Hi again thanks for your reply, I wish there were more people who would come forward about what AIFOS is up too and perhaps we could get some way of altering things. It would be great if any body else out there could tell us their experiences with AIFOS and if they have found ways around our problems that would help? I personally have  lost a lot of money which was for my retirement , I loved the part of spain that torrox offered ,loved the town of nerja and the very friendly people so we thought we would liked to have spent some of our retirement there but not to live there permanently. We did all we could to make sure we were doing everything properly,we hired a local solicitor she checked all the contracts and told us about how the banks could not let the developer get hold of any money by law without completing each stage before getting the next lot of money. we came back to england I spent another month checking out AIFOS on the internet and everything seemed fine. so we went back to Nerja and signed the contract check again about the bank gaurantees and was assured and Quoted me the reference number of the spanish law which she showed me on the computer(LEY 57 1968) completely satisfied we signed all the paperwork . we then kept sending our money over. after about a year we realised things were not right tried to pull out but was advised it would be OK my solicitor said she had been to AIFOS'S office and had been assured that everything was on track and it was typical for spain. After that there seemed to be silence from everybody  and even to get any information from anybody unless you sat outside their offices was impossible . my solicitor has said there is nothing more she can do. Haven't heard from her for 3 or more years. I tried an english solicitor here more money with still no answer except put more money in to try and get my money back with no gaurantees. so thats my story the shortened version.