Here is the plain text without any HTML code:
Prospective buyers say they feel “lied to” and “angry” after losing thousands of pounds reserving unfinished flats.
People paid up to £5,000 as a “reservation deposit” for apartments in Tollesbury House, Ipswich, with some being told it was expected to be finished in November 2022.
The development remains uninhabited and, after losing the fee when she pulled out, one buyer has been left asking “how long do you wait for something to be built?”
The JaeVee group, the developer, denied any misconduct and said “buyers were required to exchange contracts within an agreed timeframe”, adding they lost their non-refundable reservation deposits because they did not comply with contractual deadlines as was normal in the industry.
The group has ongoing plans for more than 500 properties – mostly flats – across Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and London.
But some sites have faced years of delay, including Tollesbury House, a 16-apartment development in Ipswich’s Duke Street, near the waterfront and university.
In 2022 – and with the flats still not completed – Janeane Slinn paid a £5,000 reservation deposit for an apartment.
Retired engineer Paul Sigston, 65, was looking for a home after moving back to the UK from the Netherlands in 2022. He also paid £5,000 as a “reservation deposit” and was given the same anticipated completion date in his reservation agreement.
Catherine Bullough paid £2,500 – a half-price discount for first-time buyers – in March 2024 to take a flat “off the market”.
The BBC has spoken to an investor who – tempted by these sorts of returns – invested more than £84,000 combined in JaeVee’s Ferry Boat Inn project in Norwich and Eastern Escape in north London in the summer of 2019.
More than five years on, one of the JaeVee subsidiary companies developing the sites is in administration and the other is in receivership.
The JaeVee group has said it is in the process of buying back both the Eastern Escape and the Ferry Boat Inn sites using a bridging loan and that the interests of investors in these projects were being protected.
Director of JaeVee Mr Smith said the “situation highlights a broader issue within the unregulated property development finance sector” and claimed lenders can exert pressure on put development companies “to extract additional fees and penalties from borrowers”.
Source link
