Friday, April 15, 2005

Wanna buy a used house?

Our lawyer suggests we put in a new offer as our old contract is only useful for lining the cat box. We are a bit annoyed but decide we have no choice. Maybe they'll be fair and take into account that we have already paid a shed full of cash and sat back for two years whilst Tweedle-Dee and his half-assed brother Tweedle Dummer put up the frame, and put on a roof, and even put some pipes in for the toilets and showers. Maybe, my arse. But wait. Who actually owns the project now? Is it Lombard Finance? Well they put the guy under and are the mortgagee so it must be them?

WRONG.

It is one of the original developers.....What you talkin' about, Willis [cue music].

So let me paint an interesting financial picture for you:
  • Developer and his partner are crap and lose or steal all the money through incompetence or just being crooks;
  • Finance company pull the plug and wipe out all the creditors 'cause they are owed soooooo much money - way in excess of the actual value of the project;
  • We are told that a new company now owns all the land and one of the directors of the new company is......wait for it.......one of the directors from the failed company;
  • It gets better. The same Finance Co that had the original mortgage are the backers to the new company.

So to really make this clear, my dear friends, Lombard get ripped off by apparently lending too much cash without checking the numbers. They then give the same guy some more money to finish the job with a brand new shiny company. Why would they do that? Well, I guess they get a large tax write-off and get to reduce some of their loses by, in my opionion, stealing my half finished house and land that we have a contract to buy and that we funded for the last 2 years. Ouch.

So we now have to go through the expense and hassle of putting together a new agreement to buy the house that we built, with the same guy that we originally bought the house off, and for more money....

This tested our marriage I can assure you. It is only because my wife is the wonderful person that she is that the stress didn't end us....we both cry when our daughter asks us why she can't have Christmas in her new pink bedroom......

2 comments:

  1. what wankers. I always think New Zealand is too small for these things to happen, but I guess not. Tell me something good has come of all this?

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  2. Yup. Sad to say, the story doesn't get much better from here really. We did find another house late last year and moved in this Jan just gone. It has everything we dreamed of; a view of what has to be one of the most beautiful harbours in the world and a nice garden for our girls. It has been an expensive lesson for us, both financially and emotionally. Gonna publish some of the letters from their lawyers shortly. They're a good chuckle.

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