Hallo

I read that as Peninsula will give you finance for the 20% rather than pay the 20% deposit.  So you can get a 100% mortgage and pay it with the guaranteed rental.  Sounds too good to be true!

Quite right Cardifflan, it does say they are only financing the 20% deposit.  I was so caught up with all the other "promises" that I missed that.  The rental guarantee sounds really great!  As does the rest of the development...pity they can't deliver.

Hi PL,

do you have a link for the solvency report on Peninsula PM?  I bought in Medina Golf and I am in the process of claiming on the bank guarantee because the developer, Nadalsol, is nearly 2 years late in delivering the apartment, and has gone into administration.  Do you know if a similiar report can be sourced for Nadalsol?

Thanks,

D

Hi Donal79

I've used www.einforma.com to check solvency status in the past. You can find out about any company's status, filing of their accounts etc. Basically what you would get from Companies House.  As I must still be on their database, I regularly receive notification of any changes affecting these companies.  I have received a few notifications in the last few weeks regarding Peninsula, but as I am not a subscriber any longer I haven't seen the full reports.

Hi Donal79, I received the report by email from my lawyers so I don't have a link, but it is from einforma as Sabber has already noted. 

Hi PL and Sabber,

Thanks for the info in relation to Einforma.  Unfortunately not a lot of good news to be found, but useful to know.

Regards,

Donal79

Hello everyone,

Last weekend I visited Medina Elvira with another client.  We met Steve Hindley and took plenty of photos of most of the developments.

I wasn't able to download the photos here so they are on this page:

http://cid-7f7a8054051f6525.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Medina%20Golf%20Mar%202010

News from the site then:

• As a Medina Golf purchaser I was very disappointed.  There doesn't seem to have been much progress in the last 6 months.
• The finish standards were quite poor and at the moment I would say that without a huge workforce the Habitation Licience is at least 6 months away.
• Some piping has been delivered which Steve said would be to take the sewerage away from the site although works on this has not yet started.
• We found no sign of your riding school Jetdog (I was looking forward to some good photos).  Steve Hindley didn't even know where it was but said it was built years ago.
• The club house is quite impressive and everything seems to work.
• The landscaping is terrible everywhere.  I would be shocked if I were a tourist.  Much of this has been delayed by such a wet winter.
• The electric pilon is an eyesore.  Steve said it would be moved but a Spanish employee on site said that would be extremely unlikely as there isn't any money for it.
• There is very little security at the moment.
• The 12 villas will not be built.
• ME23 looked OK.  Paint had been damaged by the rain, lifts definately didn't work but in general it looked fine.  What Peninsula really need is for other clients to move here and complete.
• If enough clients complete here then perhaps the new rental program will be able to operate.  Steve said this will operate at 4% guaranteed rental and give access to your own apartment for 2 weeks a year for 50 euro a week.
• Peninsula can and have been offerering ME23 apartments at a discount due to people losing deposits and not completing after the licence of occupation has been issued.
• Although Peninsula are not aparently related to Nadasol (the builders in administration for Medina Golf) they can still cancel your PPC with them and move you to ME23 or another development.

Sorry if this is a bit harsh in places but I think being direct is best.  The site with the pictures is public so anyone can coment I think.  A lot of people on this forum seem to be in the dark with things so I recomment that you also take the trip.  Don't expect lunch or even a coffee though.  Steve Hindley was very good to meet us and seems to be the only person genuinely interested in making progress here but I dont think he exactly has the cash to splash.

I stayed at Fuengirola and have to say that talking to the locals the Costas are certainly suffering.  I met an estate agent who was closing his business and cleaning out the shop.  He stated that although clearly no one was buying, very few people were willing or able to sell at lower prices hence he sold up before going bust.  Steve said that prices in Granada were holding up and that good valuations wouldn't be a problem on our properties.  I think people there are living in a dream and that by the end of 2010 things will be in a desperate state in Spain but we will see.  At least Granada should be more protected than the costas from any further downturn anyway as building has been more limited.

I agree with Steve that the most important thing for the development is the commercial centre.  Without this there is no future to the development.  I wish the developers would also realise this and concentrate their efforts in that area.  Perhaps then the site may come alive and people could realistically live there.

The site still has the potential that I saw in 2006.  Perhaps less residential properties and more care over what is there now should be going on to realise this though.

I'll sign off before you all fall asleep now and get back to my ironing LOL.

Brilliant report and excellent photos - exactly what the forum needed. Very well done!

Some of it is looking great (ME23 and the club house for instance), but it's eye opening to see the bad stuff like the road damage and crumbling areas on Medina Golf. You can see that if development ever gets finished, and rentals ever start, more money is gonna be needed to sort out weather damage to surfaces that have been left unfinished and not weatherproofed

Anybody who hasn't looked at these photos really should take a good look. Will be well worth your time

MedinaGolfBuyer - are you sure Steve told you 4% for the rental service? If so this means the guaranteed rental has been downgraded from 5% to 4%. That's €2,000 a year less on a €200,000 apartment or about 2.5 months mortgage repayments that have to be met by the purchaser as a swap for 2 weeks usage which you have to pay €100 for. This is significantly LESS than was advertised to us

Whilst on the subject of advertising it's worth noting that the variable rentals were advertised at a totally unrealistic 10% to 15%, and air con was advertised as fully fitted but recently we have been given price estimates of up to €2,000 for the purchase of missing air con units in ME23. There is no sign of rentals commencing any time soon and clearly the current build and financial problems make rentals impossible for the forseeable future. These are not minor problems but very significant ommisions from the package advertised to us. So significant that it could be argued in court that under the influence of the advertising we were unable to make a rational and reasonable decision about our purchases

I suggest everybody take a look at Maria de Castro's recent post HERE regarding misleading advertising:
http://www.eyeonspain.com/community-forum/19241/newest-regulations-on-comsumers-protection-i.aspx

If there are any forum users who have purchase contracts for ME23 and have not yet completed, I would be interested to hear from you via PMs to discuss options and if its worth pursuing legal action. I would like to find another 4 purchasers in the same position as me (you have not completed, in ME23, and your purchase contract has NOT been cancelled). I have a pretty clear picture of the legal options and a lawyer who will discount their fees for a group action

Thank you MedinaGolfBuyer for such a comprehensive report.

I am gutted about the Riding School.

Hello Lurker,

You are right in saying Peninsula's proposal for the new rental guarantee would be 4%.  Steve said this would be released last week.

In fairness to them, after Margarets failure to secure any rentals they probably realise that the sight is not exactly placed where it was marketed at and in it's current state I think actual payments of 4% would be a huge boost to those clients paying mortgages and not receiving a penny rent.  I fairness to Margaret - the development was hardly rentable though.

Steve H also mentioned that due to changes in tax laws we would only have to pay a set fee of 300 euro a year against our income which again is another clear bonus in these muddled times.

After the build up on this forum I too was disappointed about the stables.  Perhaps someone who has seen them and I cant remember who could give us a tiop to their location so that the next visitor can get us a snap or too LOL.

I don't blame Margaret about the rentals either, OK she was bad at keeping in touch and keeping track of things, but her job was impossible, didn't generate any realistic income for her and Peninsula didn't allow her to be honest with people. Towards the end of her position she opened up completely and told me a lot of things/problems that have since been 'officially' recognised by Peninsula or uncovered by other people. She was pissed at Peninsula for a long time for not finishing ME23 properly and giving her something she could sell

The tax law changes are good news, at that sort of price it looks like income tax is dropped completely and only a wealth tax on the property is due

I am not surprised about the reduction to 4% and can totally understand why it's necessary. It's just another kick though isn't it? building delays for years, collapse of the property market, no rentals, no water system, no lifts or air con units, shops won't be open for years, Nadasol in administration, Peninsula's on the brink, occupation licenses on Fairways denied by the council for essential supply work that nobody can afford to complete, now if we do get rentals they will be less money, and so on. When does it end? When do you choose to pull the plug? The only reason any of us are still here is because we put so much money into this we don't want to walk away from it, but surely this is just another warning signal of a ticking time bomb. If this was a dog you would put it down

If the rent is GUARANTEED, then Peninsula should have been paying it upon completion whether it was rented or not. If they couldn't rent the apartments for whatever reason then that should be their problem. And if they couldn't get enough rent for them then that is their problem. Peninsula should take the 1% loss if they advertised the GUARANTEED Rent as 5%.

This is not a GUARANTEED rental scheme, as it is not guaranteed.

The whole scenario is a complete joke. The directors of Peninsula would have been locked up by now if they were making the same claims in the UK (along with the solicitors that have allowed this to happen). Does 'GUARANTEED' have some other translation in Spanish? Apparently so, according to the Spanish legal system. Especially if you're British!

I agree completely. It would be against trading standards in the UK to advertise a service like this guaranteed rental scheme without the necessary insurances in place to make sure it paid out regardless of what happened. Peninsula may have no money but the banks and insurance companies have plenty. In the UK the 5% would have been paying out the whole time direct from the insurance company and this would just be another one of those 'bad debts' that the banks have to write down

Completions would be UP as I'm sure many of us would have completed believing 5 years of guaranted insurance money was enough for the resort to get finished and rentable regardless of the economic downturn. Lawsuits would be DOWN for the same reason and Peninsula would have significantly more money and most likely we wouldn't all be in this mess

We were of course told in the advertising that the necessary insurances WERE in place. And it was our lawyer's jobs to do the due diligence in making sure they were there. Not just Peninsula and Nadalsol that's in the doghouse here here but every single Spanish lawyer who didn't pick up on this and warn his client

Hi Medinagolfbuyer,

many thanks for your comprehensive update and photos.  Unfortunately it only serves to confirm that Medina Elvira and in particular, Medina Golf are in big trouble.  It is hard to see how the development can become financially viable given the administration of Nadalsol and their apparent inability to bring the development to completion. 

Does anybody have any news in relation to Nadalsol and their administration process?  Are they still trading, or are they a 'zombie' company that will never be able to complete this development?  Any update on their financial condition and the administration process would be welcome.

Thanks and regards,

D

Lurker - nice to see you back on the forum.

If your lawyers are anything like as incompetant as Criado & Kraus have been with me then there is no chance that they would have checked any of the insurances, received bank guarantees or anything else to protect your deposit let alone check the financial status of the developers and wether they even had the funds to complete this giant mess we're all in.

They even wanted more cash to register us as creditors in court 2 years after we had paid up and a tidy sum of 350 euro from each client had to be paid to get our names down when they were already registered!

I could start a whole new debate on this but the stable girl thing was far more relaxing.

All I can say is that luckily for us Spain is still in Europe and when I have won my deposit back I may just go after the rip off lawyers who failed to protect me in the first place.

Rant over.

Hi Looney

I have only recently started to properly distrust my lawyer who now appears to be acting in Peninsula's interests and not my own. I had been OK with him before but had some fallings out with him in the last couple of months

It does appear that almost NO lawyers in Spain actually bother to perform the sort of due diligence we would take for granted in the UK. Wow if I knew 3 years ago what I know now about the Spanish legal system and their normal business practices I wouldn't have touched their property market with a bargepole... Could have bought a nice house or flat somewhere in the UK and had it rented out nicely and the mortgage getting slowly paid off with the profits

The Licence of First Occupation has just been granted by Atarfe Town Hall for Fairways.

I thought it was a joke but then I remembered we're in Spain.

Obviously it must cost less money to pay off the officials than connect the sewerage system.

Just when you thought they were all washed up and headed for the scrap-heap, Peninsula strikes back!

So hands up all you Fairways purchasers who are happy about this turn of events? You can now complete on your purchase and take on a new mortgage with no guarantee of ever having a proper water or electricity supply, recieving any rental income, or being able to sell on your property. The rest of the development may never get finished, there may never be proper facilities to make the place truly livable in and Peninsula might still go bust in 3 months...

On the other hand, Peninsula would have *definately* gone under if it wasn't granted and they couldn't get any new completions through, forever dooming the site and every single purchaser involved in it. Everyone with a mortgage on ME23 would be screwed with no hope of redemption. All that would be left for us is throwing more money down the drain on most likely futile legal action...

There is of course that slim chance that this is the start of the recovery. Peninsula will get enough completions through to finish the water connections, sort out any remaining site problems and finally get in a tour operator to rent out our properties. Within a couple of years it could be the vibrant holiday resort we all hoped it would be!

It's all balanced on a knife edge. Only you lot can determine which direction it's gonna fall. Who's gonna put their money and peace of mind on the line to help save the day by completing? Quite a large number of people have to or the whole place is fooked...

There's a newsletter on the PeninsulaPM site that confirms that the Licence has been issued for Fairways.  They'll also be contacting buyers soon asking them about what rental method they want to use.  There are no details of the options on the site though!

Well said Lurker.  It is a travesty that they have the licence given all the issues that have been raised on this forum.  The local officials probably went through the same arguments and decided that a decaying failed white elephant in their region would not be good for business, and the best bet was to give Peninsula the chance to complete what they set out to do. 

I note from the Peninsula update that the rentals at ME23 have been going very well over Easter with full occupancy and repeat bookings.  And that there is a guaranteed rental programme in place.  So all those people complaining on this forum that they have not had any income and that the site is not completed must be mistaken ;).  Could some of those happy owners please post with the good news and set everyone at ease?  Seriously, how can Pensinsula say these things and expect people to beleive them after everything?