[islesmark]

Prospective purchasers of property in Morocco or Spain might like to be aware of an experience I had with Maroma Homes and Dave Hill, involving 3 years of dashed hopes, wasted time, wasted money and nothing to show for it, culminating in my having to threaten legal action to get my deposit back.

Dave knows his way around the Readers' Digest Guide to the Law as well as anyone, and has issued the blood-curdling threat to 'see me in court' if I defame him, so I must make sure to tell the absolute truth. Here goes!

Jan 2006 - was interested in buying property in Morocco. Found Dave Hill/Maroma Homes on the internet, and he called me to discuss property. Dave Hill owns Maroma Homes, an estate agents/holiday let company in Spain , and Marma Homes in Morocco. He is English and lives in Spain but shuttles between there and Morocco . His websites are moroccan-homesDOTcom and spanish-homesDOTcom

Feb 2006 - went to Morocco and met Dave Hill (and his wife/business partner Hazel). Was shown a couple of places in Marrakesh and Agadir. Agreed in principle to buy a piece of land at Taghazout, near Agadir (subject to legals) so that I could build a holiday home on it. I also agreed to pay him a deposit. Returned to UK and engaged specialist UK solicitors to act for me on this purchase.

June 2006 - after negotiation agreed via email that the deposit would be 3000 Euros. Paid £2100 from my UK bank account to Dave Hill’s UK bank account to cover this deposit and a bit extra for Dave’s expenses (according to the exchange rate at the time, this was approx 87 Euros / £60).

Land purchase never happened. The land turned out to be owned by someone who was trying to claim part of the adjacent National Park as his own, and the Moroccan notaire/surveyor tried to cover this up. The notaire kept avoiding talking to my solicitors, and even sent them plans/sale documents for a completely different piece of land as 'an example' - he was worried they'd find out what was going on. Eventually the surveyor produced a plan and it was clear it had been fraudulently drawn, so the game was up and the purchase had to be aborted. I lost all the £995 I had paid to my solicitors. I have no proof that Dave had any inkling of this, but he wasn't happy about me using my own solicitors - he said at the time he thought it was delaying and complicating matters unnecessarily. I wonder why this was. Dave also said, after seeing the fraudently drawn plans,
that that the implication was that the notaire was acting in collusion with the
surveyor. I was guaranteed to lose either way on this first piece of land
- either legal fees or even more, if I had actually bought it.

We then arrived at a plan for the deposit to be put towards another purchase of land, this time being sold by a friend/colleague of Dave H. However, the purchase of this other plot of land never happened either due to planning issues which I was told were in the process of resolution.

November 2006, I was offered my deposit back. Dave told me they were waiting on the Moroccan equivalent of the Unitary Development Plan from the Planning Ministry which was stalling all land sales in the area because, until it arrived, it was impossible to know what size of plot to buy for building on. I said they could continue to hold on to my deposit.

All through 2007 and well into 2008, I chased Dave H on progress via email every couple of months but the plan never arrived. I did not request the refund of my deposit, and at no point did Dave ever try and interest me in buying land anywhere else in Morocco .

16 May 2008 - I requested the refund of my deposit via email. Dave H responded almost immediately but wasn’t sure whether it was £2100 or £1100, so said he would pay me £1000 immediately (which he did) plus any remaining balance once he was able to clarify from his records.

29 May – Dave confirmed I had indeed paid £2100, but wanted to deduct £250 of ‘costs’ before sending the balance of £850. Only at this point did Dave think to tell me that the circumstances of the above-mentioned friend/colleague had changed and that the original deal was off, but that they would be open to the idea of my financing the building of some properties on her land and splitting the profits.

3 June 2008 - I indicated I was interested in this suggestion, but queried the amount of costs. No response was received to this email or any of the others I sent subsequently on 14 June 2008 , 24 June 2008 or 14 July 2008 and no further money was paid.

18 September - I sent a letter threatening legal action to Dave’s Spanish address.

24 September - Dave responded by email, explaining that he had been tied up dealing with family matters after the beginning of July, but made no attempt to explain the reason for not answering any of my emails for the 4 weeks between 3 June 2008 and the beginning of July. He also made a formal offer to repay the £850 at a rate of £25 per month, secure in his belief that I couldn't pursue him in Spain . I am sure readers will agree that this was meant as an insult, akin to leaving a 1p tip in a restaurant for bad service.

October 2008 – Dave attempted to bind me into this offer by paying £25 into my bank account. Unknown to Dave, I had ascertained the existence of the new European Small Claims Procedure, which is designed to simply cross-border European Small Claims. I reversed the payment back to Dave’s bank account and emailed him on 6 November to tell of this and of my intention to pursue him under the ESCP.

Negotiations ensued between November and December 2008, with Dave still trying to pay the final balance by instalments and to charge me more than £60 of costs. Is it normal for estate agents to be paid by clients for the work they do prior to sale, as opposed to getting paid via commission when the sale goes ahead? Dave also told me, as a final twist in the tale, that the piece of land being sold by his colleague/friend had more than doubled in value and that they had recently organized planning permission, but they were ‘just glad (they) did not have (me) involved’.

December 2008 – Dave finally paid me £1030.

So there you have it. Over 2 years of interest on the deposit, nearly 3 years of dashed hopes, wasted time, wasted money and nothing to show for it.

Thanks a lot, Dave Hill

[Daft Boy]

islesmark, on Jan 11 2009, 04:52 PM, said:

December 2008 – Dave finally paid me £1030.

So there you have it. Over 2 years of interest on the deposit, nearly 3 years of dashed hopes, wasted time, wasted money and nothing to show for it.

Thanks a lot, Dave Hill

So lets get this right. You actually lost about £50 in interest. To even think about buying abroad in 2006 was madness. If the land purchase had gone ahead and you had spent about £100k on land and build you would be nursing a loss of around £50K at the moment with more to come. You should thank your lucky stars and write Dave Hill a thank you letter.

[dubayyy]

Man - you are lucky to be in this position. For every story I hear similiar to yours there are 10 that lost money on such transactions and these losses usually amount to many tens of thousands of pounds.

Count your lucky stars mate and like the pp said write Dave Hill a thank you letter.

[Cole Trickle]

God, there are some ungrateful sods in this world!! You should thank your lucky stars you were so engrossed in getting a measly few quid back over these past few years, you didn't have time to stumble across any villas for sale!!

Then you would really have something to howl about!

[islesmark]

Well, all right - I can see, in retrospect, that the market hasn't done as well as we thought it would have done in 2006.

But it's worthy of note that Dave himself told me that the piece of land belonging to his colleague/friend (which I was supposed to be involved first in buying and then in financing some building on) had more than doubled in value and that they had recently organized planning permission, "which would increase its value very much more" - I appreciate that that last bit wasn't in my OP.

The total cost I was looking to invest was closer to £40K or £50K, not £100K. But even if I had bought a piece of land and even if it had crashed in value, I would have simply held on to it till the market recovers.

You will also appreciate that the whole thing got a bit acrimonious (even while the amounts of money involved were admittedly not that large in the overall scheme of things) and it was a shame I was messed around, ignored, insulted, cut out of the deal and then had to resort to threatening legal action to get my deposit back.

The wasted interest referred to was the interest DH earned on my money, rather than me, while it was sitting in his bank a/c and not mine.

[Nautorius]

islesmark, on Jan 12 2009, 11:58 AM, said:

Well, all right - I can see, in retrospect, that the market hasn't done as well as we thought it would have done in 2006.

But it's worthy of note that Dave himself told me that the piece of land belonging to his colleague/friend (which I was supposed to be involved first in buying and then in financing some building on) had more than doubled in value and that they had recently organized planning permission, "which would increase its value very much more" - I appreciate that that last bit wasn't in my OP.

The total cost I was looking to invest was closer to £40K or £50K, not £100K. But even if I had bought a piece of land and even if it had crashed in value, I would have simply held on to it till the market recovers.

You will also appreciate that the whole thing got a bit acrimonious (even while the amounts of money involved were admittedly not that large in the overall scheme of things) and it was a shame I was messed around, ignored, insulted, cut out of the deal and then had to resort to threatening legal action to get my deposit back.

The wasted interest referred to was the interest DH earned on my money, rather than me, while it was sitting in his bank a/c and not mine.

I agree that you were not treated very well but you did have a lucky escape. In a few more months £50k will buy you a large completed Villa! Morocco is a good place to buy...but only at a very realistic (local) price!

I like Marina Smir and will be looking at it soon!

Paul

[Peter Hun]

I have to agree things didn't go well, but the guy obviously spent time and money on something that was probably beyond his control.

At least you got your many back on a failed property deal in Africa - I'd say thats a result.

[BigLog]

Peter Hun, on Jan 13 2009, 09:59 PM, said:

I have to agree things didn't go well, but the guy obviously spent time and money on something that was probably beyond his control.

At least you got your many back on a failed property deal in Africa - I'd say thats a result.

I say count yourself lucky also (I lived there for 5 years, very hard way of living).

Check out this on YouTube (do a search on the text between the quotes)- I know that this sort of thing happens and is nothing out of the ordinary;

"TRUE STORY/Corruption/Morocco/DemolitionHouseHoliday (English Version)"