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A mix of fraud and bankrupt builders is shattering the dreams of Britons who bought homes abroad
When Maryla Guzinska, a housewife from the Isle of Wight, read an article in a national newspaper extolling the virtues of property on the Estonian riviera, it seemed like a sound investment. In June 2005, she put down a deposit of £10,500 on a two-bedroom villa in Parnu, the seaside “summer capital” of the Baltic state, and was told her new holiday home would be ready by the end of the next year, when the remainder of the £42,500 sale price would be due.
Churchill Properties Overseas, which was building and selling the villas, assured Guzinska that her home would double in price in the 18 months or so it would take to build, thanks to the property boom under way in the former Soviet republic. Guzinska, 49, believed them – not least because the company was based near her on the Isle of Wight. When she went to the office, the salesman was “professional and well spoken” (even if, in retrospect, she recalls that he never looked her in the eye).
The completion date came and went, however, and in the months that followed, Guzinska was repeatedly told that her home on the Churchill Village development had been delayed.
Then, last July, she received a letter from Churchill Innovative Solutions – as the company appeared to have renamed itself – saying that it had been put into “voluntary liquidation”. Guzinska began to doubt that she would ever see her £10,500 again. “I was hoping to buy something that would be an investment and a holiday home,” she says. “Now I’m on a debt management programme.”
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When Maryla Guzinska, a housewife from the Isle of Wight, read an article in a national newspaper extolling the virtues of property on the Estonian riviera, it seemed like a sound investment. In June 2005, she put down a deposit of £10,500 on a two-bedroom villa in Parnu, the seaside “summer capital” of the Baltic state, and was told her new holiday home would be ready by the end of the next year, when the remainder of the £42,500 sale price would be due.
Churchill Properties Overseas, which was building and selling the villas, assured Guzinska that her home would double in price in the 18 months or so it would take to build, thanks to the property boom under way in the former Soviet republic. Guzinska, 49, believed them – not least because the company was based near her on the Isle of Wight. When she went to the office, the salesman was “professional and well spoken” (even if, in retrospect, she recalls that he never looked her in the eye).
The completion date came and went, however, and in the months that followed, Guzinska was repeatedly told that her home on the Churchill Village development had been delayed.
Then, last July, she received a letter from Churchill Innovative Solutions – as the company appeared to have renamed itself – saying that it had been put into “voluntary liquidation”. Guzinska began to doubt that she would ever see her £10,500 again. “I was hoping to buy something that would be an investment and a holiday home,” she says. “Now I’m on a debt management programme.”
read more...
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