baby car seats

There seems to be alot of talk about some purchasers getting compensation for failings by Interlaken but no mention of a precident being set.

Without anyone mentioning their individual case can someone not please just state what type of problem has been successfully resolved by the courts in favour of the purchaser. I dont think anyone would wish to compromise anothers success but at least it would help us to establish what is likely and not likely to succeed.

If an individual wishes to remain anonymous then just create a new unused name.

Surely we are all together on this ???

Who does the 'we' refer to in your last sentence?  I know some would feel the time for standing together has passed.  But perhaps better late than never. 

I am having such a struggle to get to the facts from this forum, and my attempts have led to quite strong criticsm from the sunshine enthusiasts, who give the impression that they will gladly suffer any shortcoming just to complete here. I am now beginning to become suspicious.

No one has come forward to say that they qualified their completion in any way, yet they still have grievances which they suggest they intend to take action over. Though there does not appear to be any professional report on any shortcomings in existence, or none is admitted.

Generally there appears to be a "shush, the developer/possible purchaser might hear" attitude, and I have been personally warned that the developer monitors this forum.

However I am wondering whether the attempts to quiet my critiicsms do not have a base in some form of non-disclosure agreement. Sometimes when compensation in any form is offered it is subject to such agreements. Have there been any settlements of any kind, price reductions etc. perhaps?

It is of course in the developer's interest to divide and rule.

Any information please?

 

Norman

If anyone has taken legal action and suceeded, I think they probably do have had some sort of secrecy clause as part of the deal. Whilst taking action is really low on my list of priorities, it has also occurred to me that no-one has really come forward and given any details of a successful claim. I usually put most of the talk of legal action down to "hot air" and talk, with no action.

IF I was in your position, I would go across for a few days, stay on site, make a prior arrangement to see a lawyer whilst there with your contract, sales documentation, etc, and do your own leg work. Again IF I was in the position of wanting to go this route, the first lawyer I would contact would be Maria de Castro, as she seems to specialise in helping naive Brits. But don't expect freebies if you want real advice, you should be prepared to pay for a few hours of her time. Constructive and positive action may be more beneficial to you than waiting for someone on here to tell you something useful.  She may or may not give you the answers you are looking for, but at least it will be fact instead of hearsay, gossip, assumptions and guessing.

Whilst I appreciate the position you are in and some of your posts have irritated people, me included, I think a lot on the forum are getting quite fed up with the negativity of your posts, and whilst I now totally understand that you do not intend to irritate or personally criticise anyone, you are not making it easy for anyone to help you!

I post this as constructive assistance, not criticism!

Emma

This message was last edited by ef on 6/4/2007.

This message was last edited by ef on 6/4/2007.

Hi Emma

I hope you don't mind me saying but some of your points make little sense.  On one hand you suggest that there is an element of secrecy with settled cases.  You're correct that if a large developer settles cases then it is likely to impose a non-disclosure clause.  Therefore, would you expect to hear anything if cases have been settled?  But you proceed to say that as you have heard nothing about successful cases you put most of the talk of legal challenges down to 'hot air'.    

Secondly, we have been told on a number of occassions on this message board that court cases are being taken against Interlaken.  

Thirdly, from my perspective people are attempting to ask constructive questions.  If the questions relate to what's wrong with the development then some people are judging the posters as being negative.  I feel that some members of this forum are aware that future buyers/renters may look at this message board and hence feel threathened by those pointing out the downsides of the development.     

This message was last edited by houseclearou on 6/4/2007.

Houseclearou

We have different viewpoints and I respect that.

My post to Norman was made as constructive assistance at a time when Norman is being criticized. I have had enough lengthy pms with Norman to believe he will take my post exactly as it is meant, and if not, then no doubt he and I will have another pm conversation about it!

Fair enough ... but my post wasn't defending Norman but those taking legal action.  These people aren't "talk, with no action".

It seems that Interlaken had another arm  that has also been taken under the umbrella of this new company! I have not been informed of anything personally, and I was supposed to have completed last November..............does anyone smell a rat....I cannot see Casares del Sol on the new website...I wonder why!!!!!!!

Hello again and thank you all for your posts, as Emma knows I am an old geezer with little in the way of ego, or perhaps even sensitivity.

I am afraid I have little understanding of people's need to avoid reality, just because they have committed to something which may  not be the wisest thing they have ever done.

It is most unfortunate that the market here has totally crashed to such an extent that our Justin cannot even bear to watch the TV. Agents turn your property away and auction investors are only interested in a few properties and wont offer more than 75% of 85%. All this in a market which has yet to fully accept the doom laden and totally dreadful LICENCE TO LET threat. There is surely worse to come, if that is not too negative for you.

However, on the positive side, there is always inflation which will come to the rescue in the very long term.

Also the sunshine has cheered everyone up, as they watched their walls slowly drying out and were able to turn their dehumidifiers off for a while. With the right weather who needs more than one thin scratch coat of render on their wall blocks?

Who needs a proper kitchen when you are going to eat out and barbecue most of the time?

Who needs proper size rooms when you are out all the time, in the pool, on the beach, on the golf course etc. and you certainly don't need a lot of wardrobe space, do you?

Who needs the other facilities, the other pool and extra garden space? Even if the extra block and extra people mean extra pennies in the community pot.

Well I am afraid I do, I need everything I was sold, all complete, otherwise I wont complete.

Thanks for your thoughts Emma, I need little encouragement to employ Maria, I am a great fan from her input to this forum. However it is your "etc" that bothers me, I like to gather, understand and pass on the evidence. The facts that I have been seeking from the beginning. There is a lot of rumour of evidence but no one seems willing to share it with me, real evidence preferable from an engineer with a specialist knowledge of this type of construction. Ian's measurements are helpful but more are needed with proper certification. Did not the snaggers and valuers measure the apartments? Why is it all being kept secret?

The lawyer needs to be fed as well as paid, I think.

Enjoy the sun everyone, but be ready for when the rain returns.

Regards to all.

Norman

 

 

 

This message was last edited by normansands on 6/5/2007.

AT the risk of opening up another lively debate.  I thought I would just post here to ask if someone can give me the contact details for Maria de Castro that someone mentioned in this thread and who is supposed to be very good.

We unfortunately were stupid enough to be bullied into completing in March, as our lawyer, (even though we changed lawyers twice at much expense), told us we had to otherwise we would lose the deposit and now we are still trying to get the snagging completed, no suprise there I know, but of course everyone just walks away with a very fat wallet apart from us.

Norman if we are successful, you will know believe me, NDA or no NDA, where there's a will there's a way.

Cheers
Myne

Dear Myne,

thank you very much for the encouragement, it is much appreciated. I am feeling a little isolated and out of my depth on this forum where I am clearly swimming with some big fish. I am fighting for my life's savings and others behave as though it is only small change with plenty more to spare for funding their own improvements and finishing.

However we now know the truth about the street values, thanks to Justin's two interviews, one with the auctioneer where prices were so low that even Justin was tempted to bid, though not enough for the distressed vendor, the other with the highly successful dream merchant. We learned that no one should buy off-plan in the Costa del Sol unless they can buy for cash or have spare income to fund a mortgage without letting. There is no investment potential here and no reliable letting potential, the message was plain, only buy what you can afford for your own use.

I trust your own position is secure, my own prospect was to risk losing 30% of an unrealistic inflated value or to carry on and pay another 70% of this inflated value plus high costs to saddle myself with a mortgage I could not afford to repay without substantial letting income, all to buy an unsatisfactory property with an actual street cash value of barely 50%.

Fortunately the dreadful LICENCE TO LET THREAT is hopefully not to be exercised in this area for the immediate future but it is necessary to be mindful of how bad the authorities in Spain have proved to be with their treatment of others.

Best Regards

Norman

If you go to the main EOS forums and look under the "Owning a property" section, there are posts from Maria with her webiste details, from whihc you can email her or pm, of course.

If you go to the main EOS forums and look under the "Owning a Property" section, there are posts from Maria with her website details, from which you can email her, or pm, of course.


This message was last edited by ef on 7/3/2007.

Thanks ef, I will check that section out.

Norman, unfortunately we are in the same position as you, but stupidly we were bullied into completing and now we have a mortgage which we really can't afford and an apartment that isn't even finished.  I agree completly with you, others may have gone into this with much more money than we have and have the money to put things right themselves.  Now I found out that the pool in front of our apartment is closed due to health and safety, with no date for re-opening and that the building work on the CDS Suites has stopped so it's just a big eye-sore that may not go away for some time.  We have been told that there is no chance of any short term lets this year and that the only chance we have of letting it out is a long term let which would not even cover the cost of the mortgage.  Great just what we wanted, to support some chavs living in an apartment in Sunny Spain, which we have to part-fund, whilst we can't afford to go on holiday at all. 

The worst part of all this, is that we really feel like it's our own fault and there is no where to go for support.  In fact I spoke to our solicitors again yesterday to ask them to help us get the snagging completed and they just say that it's nothing to do with them, we have to discuss with the developer.  So many people have made so much money out of us it's incredible what a scam the whole thing is.

It's all such a nightmare, we wish that we had never been to Spain and if we ever manage to sell the bloody thing, I don't think we will ever be able to stomach tapas ever again.

Myne

I know there is active consideration of legal action against Interlaken for misselling but i would like to add my view on this. Previously I had been feeling reasonably patient and optimistic about delivery of the promised commercial and sports centres. However, rumour of the cessation of work on CDS suites suggests these things are either not going to happen or are going to be so far off as to constitute failure to deliver on contractual obligations. My apartment is right opposite the aparthotel and will be blighted badly by an unfinished building. I was attracted to this development by these other facilities and despite me having fulfilled my part of the contract the developers have not fulfilled theirs. I await with interest the outcome of the discussions on legal action but want to add my voice to those who feel this is now an urgent issue.

Thanks Silk,  Obviously I am not glad you are in the same situation but it helps to know we are not alone in how we feel.  We are now planning on going out there again in the next few weeks and camping out in our own apartment as we have no furniture yet, so we can get a real feel for the amount of snagging outstanding, although the re-snag we had done on Monday turned out a massive list of over a hundred outstanding items.  Although, I don't like to be all doom and gloom and as we are in the proverbial poo now we may as well try and make the best of it.  So we are thinking that we can maybe fix some of the smaller things ourselves and at least get it to the rental stage.  We will make an appointment with Marina too and let people know the outcome of that conversation.

That won't fix the bigger problem of CDS Suites, the aparthotel, the commercial centre or the sports complex, but I can only imagine that there will be pressure applied by the CDS Suites buyers which may at least fix that problem in the long term, which would help the whole site enormously.  But I think we can honestly plan for that not being completed until 2009, at the earliest.

Have you completed?  Did you also want to rent out your apartment?  We looked into the famous holiday lettings website and it is horrendously expensive to advertise there and there are thousands of apartments for rent so I don't feel like handing out more money, for something which is so random.  As we both work in IT we are thinking of creating our own website to advertise to specific markets where we can see an opening, but we would advertise the apartments on a free basis for owners, where you would only pay something to us to cover administration every time we got a real booking.  That way people wouldn't have to pay anything more before getting results, as I think we are all sick of paying without results.

Would you or anyone else be interested in that?  We would really need about 10 apartments to start us off.  Of course we have one ourselves so only another 9 or so.  PM me if you think it's a good idea, or if you can see any obvious pitfalls which we haven't thought about. It's just an idea, but we already have the website started so it could be finished in a few weeks if we have the take up.  I wish that I could say that our apartment would be ready that quick in order to get that on there too.

Cheers
Myne

I've been following the various "isn't it a nightmare" threads on the forum and thought I'd have my two-pennyworth.

 We're about to complete in PM1. We did our snagging a couple of weeks ago and we returned from Spain much happier than when we went. Happier because the snagging had been done (it's taken us a year), happier because the site is starting to look more like it should and happier because we believe CDS is in a brilliant location with lots to recommend it to every type of potential rental prospect.

We're not happy that the property market's taken a dive, but that's the risk you take if you're trying to make a fast buck and we're not. We were always in it for the long term and bought purely as an investment. It will come good over time as the market eventually recovers and also as the locale develops and gains the reputation it will surely deserve ( how many other places outside Dubai do you know of with a 6-star resort hotel? Hyatt must be building here for a reason.) If you did buy hoping to flip your property for a quick profit, then the current situation is unfortunate, but the market would be the same regardless of whether the tropical gardens and commercial centre existed. They exist on lots of other developments where owners can't sell either.

If you bought thinking you could cover the majority of your costs with holiday lets and now find this very difficult, you have also fallen victim to the laws of supply and demand and the vagaries of the UK and German package holiday markets. How many of us took fully independent advice on potential holiday/long term lets before we purchased? How many of us were fully aware of the onerous tax burden facing non-residents who let their properties?

When we're in that off plan, this property lark is easy, buying frenzy mode it's my opinion that we hear what we want to hear and believe what we want to believe in order to justify the purchase and attainment of our dreams. In the U.K. we have to sign reams and reams of documents to say we fully understand that the value of our investments may go up and down, that we might lose our home if we don't keep up the payments on our mortgages, that we've got enough cash to cover us if interest rates go up etc but it doesn't stop millions of people taking the plunge in the property market, particularly buy-to-let. Buy in haste, repent at leisure on your balcony , perhaps.

I believe there is a market for holiday lets. We just have to work hard to market the resort properly, to the right audiences. If we can do it together, as Myne has kindly offered (please count me in, I'd had the same idea), our chances of success will be greatly enhanced. For example, why not market to families or groups who want to travel together and offer apartments that are adjacent or close by to each other. Why don't we offer to arrange ancilliary services such as car hire, excursions, groceries, golf etc? There's plenty we can do. I am convinced that whan people have been once they'll want to come again. People take great comfort in familiar surroundings where quality is consistent and guaranteed and I think repeat business is the key to long term success. In the short term we may have to be more realistic in what we expect to get in revenue. Perhaps introductory/taster offers would tempt people to try CDS.

The commercial centre/sports complex is on its way. Has anyone else heard this?Mandy told us so it must be true! She said it will be where Interlaken's site office is now and was due for completion in April 08. I'm sceptical about the year though. She said that they were really pushing on with the aparthotel (CDS Suites) so that they could move on to the commercial centre, and there was certainly a lot of work going on while we were there.

I understand that there are definite quality of build and finish issues for many owners and that many of us believe the developers have not kept some of their contractual obligations. I hope everyone gets satisfactory resolutions to their particular issues but it seems a lot of money in legal fees will need to be spent to pursue compensation, and I (and my lawyer) , do not have  much conviction that a positive or speedy result would be forthcoming. Why has no-one admitted taking any legal action? There isn't even any hearsay or gossip about it that I'm aware of . Even with a non-disclosure agreement you'd expect to hear something. You'd also expect to hear about failed legal action, not least from the developer! So, is anything happening or are we all inwardly either admitting we haven't got a case or waiting for someone else to cough up. Normansands, have you started legal proceedings yet? You seem to be utterly convinced that the developers have absolutely no grounds for cancelling your contract and retaining your deposit for non-completion.

Apologies if answers to my points have been given elsewhere on the forum. I look forward to a torrent of rebuke.

I wish I was at CDS now. Friday night, roof terrace, barbecue, San Miguel, sunset, other half........... 

 

Good summary, Kinabalu. I also think there is a market for holiday rentals. the difficulty is finding good, pro-active housekeepers with high standards. Having stayed in several apartments on site, I haven't yet been in one that is a high enough level of quality and cleanliness for my standards. (We own / mange several UK holiday lets).

You need to be careful about offering additonal services such as car rental, excursions, etc because you then fall into the package holiday rules, need to be ABTA bonded, etc.

i think the last two posts are spot on. i initially bought to sell, knowing thet because we love the location, play golf and have visited costa del sol over 20 times in the last 8 years, we wouldnt mind owning our own property away from the uk.i have posted myne saying i would be interested but we will make every effort to use our apartment as much as possible.

kinabulu is spot on with all comments, we enter with eyes wide open and make our own judgements both lifestyle and financial and in the long term i am sure there will be many happy owners spending many happy holidays.

noddy

I too agree with the last two postings. Mayn regarding your snagging. We have been having the snagging done on our property since we signd from last November. After being told by the CDS office that all the snagging had been completed we decided to order our funiture and go over and take delivery of it. When we arrived we found that the snagging had not been done, so you can imagine how we both felt.  After a lot of messing about backwards and forwards to the CDS office it was time for us to come back to the UK. We then came back 3 weeks later and after all the banging on this would give them enough time to sort out  and finish of the snagging, how wrong we were!

I was onto the office the very first day and made sure i had a workman round the apartment every day putting right the problems this went on for 5 days from 8 in the morning until 6 at night and i didn't let them out of my sight as i worked out from the first day that if they wonderd of to another apartment you i would not see them for a few hours so i became an absalute pain and made sure he would tell me where he was going and how long he would be.

I must say that this seemed to do the trick but we still have a couple of small things to put right and i will be doing these myself although in principle i dont see why i should as with yourself have paid a lot of money for what was sold to me as a "Luxury apartment" but at least i know the job has all been finished.

What i'm realy trying to say is that you do need to be there and kick ass or nothing will get done!  good luck with your snagging.

Your idea of the web site is a good one and i would be interested too, maybe you could start a new thread with the idea that way people will go stright to it with interest. Just a thought.

Kinabalu:  Well summed up, my attitude to this situation is lets all move forward on this. I think the site will become very popular if we can all pull together and promote it in a more positive way.