It's life Jim, but not as we know it....

So here we are with a shiny new contract to buy a piece of land with a new house on it. We think all is well as it OK'd by our lawyer and the Real Estate people seem very confident about the developer. We hear lots of good stories about the quality of his work...we failed to check references of previous houses. THAT WAS DUMB. However, we thought we were covered for two reasons:

1. We had a contract with a penalty clause for late delivery;
2. Our 10% deposit of $58,000 was held in trust.

UUUUURRRRPPP. Do not pass go and do not collect $100. Just so you know, a penalty clause ain't worth shit. It is basically unenforceable. If you need to call on it, then it's too late 'cause the cash is gone.

Furthermore, don't trust anyone. A simple lesson is people DO lie. Maybe not straight out lies but it is what they don't say that gets you. In our case, we specifically asked for our deposit to be held in trust and thought that this was the case. We hadn't realised that the agent had slipped a small paragraph into our documents releasing all funds, IMMEDIATELY, to them and the developer. That's right. Within 24 hours of signing, our deposit was gone; mostly to the realtor but some to the developer. Hmmmm, sounds like a conflict of interest here.....We didn't find out any of this for over 2 years when the liquidator thied to find our money. One consolation is that we spent the 2 years of hell completely oblivious to the lost cash merrily believing that we would be able to at least recover our deposit.

Got lots of pictures to follow of the slow and painful process - a sort of Chinese Water torture - as literally nail by nail our house was built. I think we hold the World Record for the slowest house builders ever. I swear that some days they pulled nails out so that they could spend the next week putting them back.......

Oh, just to save my ass from being sued, I repeat my message from a few weeks ago, that nobody broke the law here; they justed acted like dogs and pissed all over common decency. Remember the names, Paul Hewitt and Lombard Finance. Good honest people. Lovely New Zealand companies.

Oh well, better go before the rage takes over......just going to go drown my sorrows with a good ole dependable bottle of German beer. Gotta love that Heiny...