“But why didn’t we?”
“Well it seemed alright and the agent said the developer had been building in Costa del Sol for years.”
“How could he say that when it was their first development?”
“Well the developer had been working as a driver on sites in the Costa for all that time so I suppose it wasn’t really wrong”
“Who is the developer anyway?
“I’ve never met him and now that his English speaking secretary has left I can’t understand what they say when I call”
“And the agent seemed such a nice man”
“That’s only because he kissed you when we met and you liked his aftershave! Come to think of it, we never saw the agent’s office. I think that he may have been a one-man-band just waiting for people like us”
“Well, you seemed pally enough with him all that weekend, inviting him to every meal, even breakfast on the Sunday”
“I didn’t invite him. He was just there ALL the time. And he never paid for anything after that first evening. We didn’t have a chance to see anything else or talk to anyone.”
“Yes we did, we talked to the lawyer’s secretary. Well she said he was a lawyer, but how do we know?”
“We didn’t see his office did we? We only met him that once in the bar when we were to meet the developer, but he didn’t show up.”
“Yes. The agent and the secretary seemed very friendly”
“It was a good night wasn’t it? How do they keep going all night? She talked of having had a ‘siesta’ that afternoon. What is that? Maybe it’s a drug like ecstasy or something like that? I was knackered the next day, but the agent said that we had to look at more properties. ”
“Yes, they were terrible, weren’t they? They really put me off so that the only one that seemed OK was the one we bought. And I didn’t like it that much”
“What! I only signed that paper because I thought that you liked it. I wasn’t keen on it at all”
“No, I was so tired that I just wanted to get back on the plane. They had bought us a meal and arranged the flight and the hotel so I felt that we had to buy something”
“I paid for the hotel and flight and am still waiting on the promised refund! I wonder what that paper I signed is for. It was all in Spanish and the price was right. I hope that we can change things if we want to”
“I don’t know if we can, because I remember somebody said ‘if it’s not written in the contract it isn’t in the deal.'”
“Now you tell me”
“But who could have helped us?”
“Back home we would have had the property surveyed. The surveyor can help with all these things”
“Oh yes, he was so good when we bought our house there. And John – remember he was the guy we met in the plane going back home – he said that he had all sorts of help from his surveyor in Marbella. He had told him which were the best areas to look at and which developments to avoid because of problems.”
“John was very quiet when we said where we had bought”
“Maybe he knew that it didn’t have permissions. Or it could have been that the surveyor had also told him that the houses all had problems.”
“His surveyor really seemed to have helped. John said that the lawyer he introduced him to was so efficient with a large office and others to help if the lawyer was away at the notary. They do seem to spend a lot of time ‘at the notary’. I wonder what that is”
“Yes, John was surprised that we had paid all our money for the house and hadn’t been to a notary. I didn’t like to ask.”
“I think that we should have asked a lot more questions when we were there”
“Yes, John said that his surveyor had asked everybody lots of questions and kept asking until he got a proper answer. He really worked hard for John. Must have cost a fortune”
“No, John said that with his questions and the faults that he had found, it meant that the seller had reduced his price, so the surveyor actually cost him nothing”
“Oh, why didn’t we have a surveyor working for us?”
“Yes, as soon as we get home we’ll check with www.surveyspain.com “