24 Apr 2007 12:37 PM:
Hi - I am purchasing an apartment on phase II Novo Arcos - the experience has been a complete disaster with SUNSET ESTATES. When I agreed to buy the apartment I signed a reservation agreement. I was told by Tim and Peter from Sunset Estates that I would be purchasing direct from the developer, Romanber and that the price included a garage and storage. I was guided on several occassions to use their recommended lawyer Luis Mendez. Fortunately , I decided against this and instead employed a Lawyer based in Spain, with offices in the UK and regulated by The Law Society in England.
My Lawyer was sent the paperwork from Sunset Estates Lawyer, who suprise suprise was Luis Mendez! She discovered that I was not buying from the developer, but in fact the seller was Sunset Estates. (my Lawyer has since discovered that sunset estates bought multiple properties from the developer) The problem with this is that I will now be liable to pay the second transmission tax when I purchase the apartment from Sunset Estates. In addition to this we were later informed that the price was going up by 7,000 euros as the garage and storage was no longer included! In total we were now looking at an inflated price of around 14,000 euros. At this point we made the decision to continue with the purchase regardless, with the view that the increase in capital growth outweighed this additional expense, although we were of course now very unhappy with the underhand dealings of sunset estates.
The problem did not end there, Sunset Estates knew that we intended to take things further at a later date and now point blank refused to sell the apartment to me. My Lawyer attempted to make contact with Luis Mendez in order to complete the Private Contract and hand over our full deposit money. Luis Mendez would now not take any calls from my Lawyer and did not return any of her calls, neither did he reply to her e mails or letters. Finally after weeks of this, Luis Mendez did call her, to say that he no longer worked for Sunset Estates (I suspect that this is not true). She then contacted Sunset Estates direct and members of the staff said they could not deal with the problem and that she would need to speak to Tim. Of course, Tim never got in touch and now she has responded with a Formal Document which in Spain you have 15 days in which to respond and the matter is then referred to the court. The 15 days has expired and my Lawyer has now initiated legal proceedings!!!
This is a huge dissapointment as we were hoping to purchase without complication and looking forward to making use of the apartment in a beautiful part of Spain. It seems that we are not alone in our experience and no doubt there are plenty of others in a similar situation. It may be worth us getting together on this issue and see if we can collectively take action. I believe that Sunset Estates thought it risky to sell to a dissatisfied customer and in refusing to sell, the problem would just go away. How foolish!!!! My Lawyer is extremely confident that the court will resolve the matter in our favour and Sunset Estates will pick up my legal tab. It would seem that we need to be more wary of British Real Estate Agents operating in Spain.
Please feel free to contact me if you require any further info - or if you have any useful info
Thanks, Louisa.
Community thread:
novo arcos - arcos de la frontera
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