18 Apr 2007 10:36 AM:

Latest is: I have contact Maria de Castro but as yet have not had a reply so still waiting on that.

Also heard from the ADH and they suggested that they are willing to transfer the deposit into one off-plan so that we do not loose the deposit. They just playing games as ADH said they have paid deposit to developer. We did email the developer but they not responding.
ADH called again saying we will honour the deposit and hold it until we are ready to buy property, this is all verbal so I emailed them asking them to confirm whether we can transfer this deposit to any property e.g resale but no response to this.

Will keep trying.
Thread: Andalucian dream homes? have you used them?

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03 Apr 2007 2:24 PM:

Suddenly I don't feel so isolated and down anymore, its a blessing I came across this forum and across such helpful souls, thankyou all.

We did contact our credit card company, they said we were half a day late as the funds had already been transferred.
We will get in touch with Maria on her return from her vacation. Persevere we will.

I have also emailed the developer (http://www.hinojosacarnerero.com) requesting for a refund (worth a try) had to get the letter translated to Spainish as when I called them no one could speak a word of English. I'm still trying to learn the lingo.

Once again thankyou all and will keep you posted of further development.


Thread: Andalucian dream homes? have you used them?

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02 Apr 2007 3:58 PM:

Thankyou Janice, Noe & Wilma for your response. We do feel really stupid about the whole thing, its an expensive lesson for us but it could I guess it could become worse if we ended up borrowing more monies without any guarantee that we can sell these units before completion at a profit. ADH called this the stepping stone investment, we were so ill prepared for this. We do want to move to Spain within 2 years or so and this was our 1st trip to really just evaluate the areas, find out about schools, etc

Once the agent knows you have equatity in your UK property and they also asked if we have our credit cards that we will need to secure any property, the whole angle was off-plan is a great way to make money and when we are ready to move to spain we have enough to put down on a place where we actually want to settle down.

We realise that there is a lot more homework that needs to be done. We are not going to let this experience put us off Spain as thats how we felt.

I will contact Maria and see what she advices, its worth a try and I am also going to get in touch with the developer and see what they say (probably the same as the agents).
Thread: Andalucian dream homes? have you used them?

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02 Apr 2007 1:02 PM:

Individual experiences will vary but me and my wife did not have a good inspection trip, we admit we fell for the hard sale tactics on an off-plan (2 units) in Alcaucin area, high projected figures that we will make monies prior to completion and the sales chap can sell these easily. These units prices under the 200K euro mark and are easy to shift. We felt so pressured to sign and hand over the 6000euros reservation deposit to secure these 2 units as we were told these are going like hot cakes and these are the last remaining units.  There were other clients who had come to view and sales chap said they want to buy and are interested but since we were here 1st we should go for them before its too late.

WE came to our senses too late, our intention was not to buy on this trip just to get feel for the areas etc but these sales consultants are good at what they do (more like timeshare sales), they have targets to meet ..etc

I think we can not get our deposit back as they make you sign this form which has about 10 items on it which you have to inital and sign at he bottom. You don't see this form until the next day after to have signed your deposit via credit card (Make sure you leave these at home). And you also do not get to meet their independant financial advisor & solicitors after you have paid up the deposit. It was after we had meet up with the advisor that it started to sawn that we cannot easily release our UK property equatity as we are tied in for 2 yrs so only way would be to get loan to pay for the 1st instalement on the off-plan units.

On our return to UK we soon realised we could not afford to go ahead so immediately contacted the agents but forget about your deposit. Manger says its with developer, assitance manager said they will hold it and transfer it to one unit, this is to stop us going to another agent. They don't seem to want to know that we genuiely cannot not afford to go ahead and what I don't understand is where will they use this 6000euros. We signed on Sat, we were back in UK on Mon evening. Tues midday we emailed them saying we cannot go ahead, I can't see how have the agents/developer lost out.

We are still trying to get deposit back but I don't see how this is possible. We made a mistake. These big agents are not forgiving, 6000 euros is a big sum for us but maybe not for them, its easy money.



Thread: Andalucian dream homes? have you used them?

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