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As Suzie says, the link is to a petition not a forum !!! (I looked at it, Suzie  )
www.spanishpropertyscandalpetition.co.uk
People need to be allowed to read all they want to about buying in Spain, its problems too, & to weigh it up for themselves. We didn't all have the good fortune of a great experience as some say they did. Isn't all this info meant to make things better for those who want to purchase after us ?
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Hi Laury
i've copied the main part of my post from the 'Angel de Miraflores' thread, to put you in the picture. If you need any more evidence have a look at the other development threads mentioned from other people on that thread or on Suzie's site mentioned in her last post.
my development was to be Angel de Miraflores in Mijas. For those not familiar with it, nice location, poor build quality, over 4 year build time instead of promised 18 months! reported local stream problem, sewage problem, drainage problem. Never had a BG from developer. More appartments crammed in to same area, so looks nothing like our original plans etc etc.
I think some problems above are, or have been sorted, but just to cap it all, our appartment size in our contract was 100m2. After nearly 4 years the developer said they had made a mistake and sold our appartment, but we could have a replacement one in another block, not much more than half the size, with no discount!!!!!!
Many have completed on this site, and some i understand are happy, and i assume got the specification in their contract? Others were ''advised'' to complete on the threat, that if they don't they may lose their deposit and apartment, as the developer may go bust while trying to sort it out. Others, due to the almost unbelievable build time, stress, strain, sleepless nights, worry, have completed out of desperation, and are 'making the best of it'
From our point it's just a bloody big con, from the start, by a bunch of sharks, and judging by the PM's i've had, it's a similar story in many areas of the CDS.
Anyone wanting a balanced opinion, needs to include the above, we are not alone!!!
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morerosado
your post is smack on, we need to help each and help make sure new buyers don't get caught in the same traps that we did. Having said that, it's great to hear good news stories as well that we would all like to be able to tell, so people can make their own mind up. Those of us who have been deceived and lied to and could still lose our lives savings, probably can't help coming over a bit 'doom and gloom', but if our court case turns out good, i shall be the first to transmit 'happy' vibes! along with the warnings.
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I can see why you are so irate Goodstich.
You have had a really raw deal. Nasty.
Surely it's a minority though? There must be decent developers out there and now that people are more aware of the pitfalls, they can take more measures to protect themselves rather than just quitting?
Laury
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Laury
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Laury
yes, i'm sure there are many good developers as there are agents and lawyers, and yes people are much better informed than they were 5 years ago. We may be a minority, but quite a big one. As for quitting, it has cost us £9000 so far to fight for what is rightfully ours, on top of the £35000 deposit, we are fighting for, plus all the lost interest, as well as 5 years of hassle and worry which can't help effecting me and my family in several ways, not least sleepless nights and anger. Not everyone could deal with this, so quitting or 'making the best of it' was the only way for some. For many of us it has been tough, and we still have no justice yet, but we now have a good lawyer, so what with that and the support from good people on this, and the other main website, we are on the right track. Now it's up to the courts. We wont give up.
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I'm sorry Goodstich. A slight misunderstanding. I meant quitting before people even got started. Like you, I wouldn't quit. I would fight tooth and nail for what was rightfully mine.
It's because of forums like this that I discovered it was a bit iffy buying a new build villa in Catral. We did look and were assured of legality. Funny how all the houses were on builder's electricity and water then.  A dead giveaway.
Good luck with your fight. I hope you're successful.
Laury
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Laury
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Laury,
no problem, glad to hear you didn't get caught on the new build, as you say, forums like these really can save many problems and potential disasters. Anything we can do to expose the bad guys will hopefully help someone make the right decisions..
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God, I really do feel for those who have been caught up in so many bad experiences concerning their purchase in Spain, or indeed, anywhere else.
There is one member in EOS who keeps saying how great everything was with Atlas from initial inspection trip to Arca furniture. Good for them !
We had endless problems with Atlas on our inspection trip & ended up not buying with them, thankfully, although we had planned to. The couple who took us around were far from conversant with what they were selling &, on a few occasions, we ended up advising them of what they should've been telling us !!! They told such stupid endless "porkies" as they basically bluffed their way through our trip. (OK, no way did we find them remotely pushy but they were far from helpful & we were waving our 3000€ deposit under their noses.) I do think it does have a lot to do with who takes you around but when prospective purchasers, who want basic information, ask questions & it's plainly obvious that if these questions are answered the clients will buy, surely the agents only need to make a call to their counterparts to help them out. In the evenings we were all in the hotel's dining room with agents so there really was no excuse.
As I said we opted not to purchase with Atlas after finding out for ourselves that the property we had chosen was actually on the edge of the builders newest phase &, although Atlas told us our property would be in the centre of this phase, the builder had actually sold off half of this phase to another builder so we didn't know, at that time, what we'd be looking at. We found this gem out & told Atlas we knew. They just said as it concerned us that much, don't buy.
We asked them to tell us as soon as the builder released the next two streets on this phase (he was releasing two streets at a time) so we could proceed with same design house but on that subphase where we knew for a fact we'd be looking at the front of a similar style house but they didn't bother. On our return to the UK we saw a magazine with an advert for the properties about to be built opposite the house Atlas were more than happy for us to buy after their incorrect information. We would've been facing the backs of a long line of three storey properties without any windows too so we are so relieved we opted out.
Goodstitch, I appreciate your comments. I wish you well.
Perhaps I should post this in the Atlas thread too.
Regards, Rosemary
This message was last edited by morerosado on 6/7/2007.
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Hi Morerosado,
If you waved €3000 under my nose i would talk about the area and houses till the cows come home!
Glad you found your little piece of spain in the end.
By the way if you are ever passing the office bring your purse
Kind Regards
Georgia
Glad you found
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www.taylorlandandpropertygroup.co.uk
still here after all these years!
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morerosado
good for you for seing through the lies! Our agent was very professional sounding and came up with viable answers? mind you he didn't have to try very hard, 5 years ago appartments were going up thousands per month!........how could we go wrong? 4 years down the line and the agent had not only washed their hands of the developer, but sued them for fraud as well!!, so we were never going to get much help. The uk lawyer they advised us to use is now under investigation. And this is without all the trouble i mentioned earlier. It all went very wrong. I think if a play was made about it all, people would say it's to far fetched to be true? Perphaps a comedy farce?, but it's still hard to see the funny side at the moment.
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Very sorry to hear that people have had issues with atlas we are buying our property with them and although we aren't due to complete til december so far they have been absolutely fantastic
I have a v busy job so don't really have the time to keep an eye on what's going on and can only really communicate via email but I have received many calls from both spanish and uk offices I even had a call today and was chatting for twenty five mins
We probably paid more for our property but its worth having the peace of mind knowing that its all going smoothly
We had a great rep there was just one guy called sam and it was just myself and my hubby so we felt like we were getting a lot of attention and he was only worrying abt what we wanted and not another couples requirements as well
He researched our requirements well and we ended up with one of our favourite properties that we had seen before the trip and he didn't have any knowledge as we wanted to test them out
We have friends that recommended atlas to us as well who had bought
I know there are other agents who have ither tactics of selling which I don't like for example the sales woman at a recent spanish exhibition in london on the mri stand that was tripping people up to get their attention to go on their stand for example
Its a shame you had a bad experience with them cos the after service has been fab
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Saznaz
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I have had my own say about the Trev McD program elsewhere (yes, that's what this thread was about originally!) and others have added just about all there is to say. However, reading through all these posts, I still feel that many of these doom & gloom stories relate to large new urbanizations being built on previously undeveloped land, without any existing infrastrucure to speak of. Please correct me if I'm wrong, anyone. I've made this point many times before on this forum, under various topics of discussion, so those that follow my postings will know what I'm on about.
I understand that everyone has their own idea of what their ideal property in Spain should be, and of course everyone's circumstances are different. Whether you are after a permanent residence, holiday home, or rental investment will of course affect your buying decision, as well as a whole raft of other factors no doubt.
The reason for this post (I'm getting there, honest!) is just to add my own suggestion (I won't say "advice" as it's not qualified in any way) for anybody who is thinking of buying, has not yet committed, and is feeling unsure which way to turn as a result of all this debate.
Personally, I would stay away from the big agents who specialise in selling mainly off-plan to non-Spanish. I would also stay away from the large new developments that they are promoting. This is not meant as an advert for my neck of the woods (Torremolinos), but I think some people are for some reason turned off by the idea of some of the old, established Spanish resort towns. I actually believe that they have far more to offer than new urbanizations, in just about every way - infrastructure (my favourite all-encompassing word!), shops, bars, cafes, restaurants.....banks, schools, medical facilities etc etc etc - which is probably why you'll find plenty of Spaniards living in them - yes, even in those places you thought were over-run with Brits!
I appreciate that many people prefer the idea of a new property. I do too, which is why my home is only 3 years old (I bought it new). But even slap bang in the middle of "old" towns like Torrie, where my home is, there are new builds available. The big advantage in my opinion, is that there's no danger of any land grab BS, and very unlikely to be any problem with licences to build, since all the new properties are being built on previous urban plots. You also know what will be in front of your new property, because it's already there!
What I'm trying (in a rather long winded way) to get across here, is that I believe if you follow the Spanish and stick to the well tried and tested, you're less likely to run into problems. I bought a delightful little penthouse, off-plans, just under 2 years ago, right in the centre of town, from a small, family run developer, in a block of 21 apartments. I sold it on, a year ago, for a satisfactory profit, to a Spanish gentleman, who saw the finished apartment for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and is over the moon with it. He will have to wait for the keys another couple of months, because this developer will not allow anyone to complete before the town hall has issued the LFO, because they believe in doing things right. It's frustrating for me, because I've bought a trastero (storage room) there for myself, and they won't even let me get into that before the LFO, and I've got so much junk I want to put in it! But I respect their policy.
There are still a couple of apartments available in the building. They have a 2 bed 1 bath with fully fitted kitchen and a garage space going for €215000, which I think is quite reasonable for this area. You could get something bigger & better elsewhere perhaps for the same price or less, but for my money, I'd far rather invest right in the heart of a well established area with everything you could ever need right on your doorstep, than take a chance on some new urbanization in the middle of nowhere, no matter how glossy the views in the brochure appear! In the long run, it's bound to be a safer investment financially, too.
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"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please"
Mark Twain
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I began this thread several days ago so as I promised here is an update. I have repeated the original posting, slightly modified at the end if anyone wants to know what all the fuss is about.
I made my complaint to OFCOM who replied instantly to let me know they will investigate my complaint. Surprisingly, the same day I e-mailed ITV, I received an unbelievably lengthy reply from the programme researcher, who was clearly rattled by my comments. I accept some of the points he made but my main gripe was that the programme broadcast to millions of people an interview with a failed estate agent who pointed to a row of villas and said,. 'Behind there, they are still building all the brand new ones and they are not selling. They are stood empty.'
Here is the researcher's explanation: This reflects that these new buildings, which were either under construction and yet to be sold in the new phase of the development, were about to come onto the market. In the context of oversupply in the housing market this implies it's even harder to sell the re-sell properties on the same urbanisation when there are more about to come on the market. Some of the homes in the urbanisation were "new" and had had not sold, I'e they were re-sells which had never been lived in.
That seems like nonsensical autobabble to me. I don't understand it but the statement seems like a pretty poor attempt to justify a lie. Remember, the houses the estate agent referred to were all sold 14 months ago. If you read my original comments you will see I am a newspaper journalist and if I had published such inaccuracies I would have been severly reprimanded. I have a feeling Mr McDonald is going to have egg on his face when OFCOM discover how ineptly researched and bigoted the programme was. Watch this space.
ORIGINAL POSTING
Trevor McDonald's appalling report on the state of the property market was a disgrace to journalism. It was bigoted, biased, inaccurate and full of lies as it set out on its pre-determined plan to sensationalise the situation without any regard to the facts.
I'm not disputing that the property market in Spain has cooled but there were many things about the programme that iritated me. I'll start with the interview with an estate agent in Murcia called Heather Ward, who claimed, through misty eyes, that she had sold only one property in the last six months, a fact that is hardly surprising considering her apparent total lack of knowledge of the area she was filmed in.
The lady in question was pictured near an awesome town called Calasparra on a development where I bought a villa 15 months ago. The builder is one of the best in Spain and this is a small, unique development which releases just 20 properties a year. Here is a list of the laughable errors she managed to spectacularly make in her 45-second interview.
'Here we see a new property that has never been sold' - WRONG: The villa she referred to was almost certainly on Phase one of the development and the builders have a policy that they would not begin building the next phase until all the villas have been sold. They are on phase six now, but more of that later.
'Behind there, they are still building all the brand new ones and they are not selling. They are stood empty.' WRONG: She is referring to phase five, where I bought a property in 2006. If memory serves that phase sold out in eight weeks. Yes, most of them are empty because they have only been completed (on time) within the last four weeks.
'The minute somebody seems to get in these properties, within months, they are selling and wanting to be out.' WRONG: I have spent several weeks on the development and have made many friends there, perhaps from a dozen different properties and they are all blissfully happy with their villas which are built to the highest specication. I can specifically recall one lady, who has lived there for more than a year, who described the way of life, the development and the town of Calsaparra as 'magical.' Yes, there are properties for sale but not in particularly high numbers.
You should know that all the information I have given is not hearsay or gossip. I learned everything directly from the builder.
It is ironic that the 'expert' estate agent made all these pathetic and inaccurate claims, standing on a piece of high ground which is within 20 yards of the site office which contains, as well as helpful and knowledgeable staff, a large map of the development with coloured sections depicting properties that have been sold. Perhaps the reporter Jonathan Maitlin could not spare the time to bother to check the facts.
One final example of the bigoted, biased journalism was the shot of the development the viewers saw as the commentator droned on about bad investments. The villas do not include the erection of swimming pools and most owners are installing their own using the services of local builders. Many of the purchasers of villas from the early phases are now fully installed with pools with the avenues completed and looking picturesque, showing the quality craftsmanshift of the builders but, of course, this would not help the programme makers who were determind to depict the development in its worst light. So what did they do? They obviously scoured the development for the latest phase where several pools are being installed, giving the viewer the false impression that the site was unfinished and the builders nowhere to be seen. Yes, buiding is going on but the development is very beautiful and surrounded by a forest and wonderful mountains.
Your choice of this development as an example of the property crash was ridiculous. Did you know that Phase Six, which is just 20 villas, went on sale off-plan in April, 2007 and now every property has been sold. They won't be ready for another year but I guess you wouldn't report that as it would undermine your pre-determined plan for negative, over-the-top sensationalism.
I have made an official complaint to OFCOM who regulate television programmes and await their reponse. I am sending my comments to the builder, too, and, more importantly, to the progamme makers though I am not anticipating a response from the latter. I will keep you informed of any developments.
This message was last edited by letissier123 on 6/8/2007.
This message was last edited by letissier123 on 6/8/2007.
This message was last edited by letissier123 on 6/8/2007.This message was last edited by letissier123 on 6/8/2007.
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Good for you letissier,
it would be interesting to see how this develops and if there is any retraction(i doubt it)
power to the people
Regards
Georgia
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www.taylorlandandpropertygroup.co.uk
still here after all these years!
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European Countries 'Still Popular Among Investors"
Property investors are increasingly choosing to invest in established European markets such as Spain, according to new research.
Figures from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) showed that confidence in the European market was continuing to grow, with popular countries increasingly competing for the attention of potential investors.
However, the research highlighted a group of investors who were becoming increasingly willing to invest in less established European countries, such as new EU member states on the east of the continent.
This could be due to perceived problems in the Spanish property market among some investors, although these concerns have been dismissed by a number of experts.
Website Span**********.com recently stated that any supposed problems have been exaggerated as it is currently a good time to buy in Spain.
A balance to trevor and his cronies babble of last week!
Next week on "Tonight with trevor mcdonald"
"don't live anywhere,it's bad for you" source; A bloke in the pub
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www.taylorlandandpropertygroup.co.uk
still here after all these years!
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We love Spain - the new emerging market! Reckon we can market it as such guys??
Just back from lunch - sorry 
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Quite frankly m'dear, I don't give a damn!
www.herbalmarbella.com
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I have watched Justins video of Mr. McDonald and his ( ? ) programme.
So much has already been said and I have no idea if the dizzy estate agents comments were true AND I have heartfelt sympathy for anyone caught up in the land grab saga.......however is the operative word not...........HOME ? That's what I bought in Spain.............in fact, that's what I bought in England.
Whenever I have bought property.....not many times....................I have bought it for a home, not that I am saying it is wrong to but property for investment, of course it isn't. BUT there is always a RISK where ever in the world you buy a property.................there is no guarentee that prices will rise and you will make your fortune and just because that has happened in the past it is not necessarily so of the present or the future. And yes, if you have invested your all and come unstuck because the property market is in decline it is a problem. But surely it is a problem you've thought about prior to investing ??????????
I know the home that I have bought may not increase in value, in fact may decrease and I knew that prior to buying. I listened to the sales patter and did my research and then I made my mind up ( well both my husband and myself did ! ) And that was that ! No moaning now, no recriminations....my decision...............my consequences !!
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 ' Do unto others as you would be done by'
Now a non-smoker !
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