Hi guys,
My cousin signed a contract for a home and land package for a later stage in Keysborough Vic through an agent who is acting on behalf of a developer. (I am not naming the stage, agent and developer for obvious reasons).
After 8 months, the agent called and said the contracts are void because the land owner couldn't get council approval for the original sub-divided land and have since purchased an adjacent piece of land and re-subdivided the whole area.
The failure to get council approval was the excuse they verbally provided to cancel the contracts and gave 2 options:
(1) get your 5% deposit back and go away (apparently there is a huge waiting list to buy land there anyway)
(2) choose a new subdivided block of land and go through a new purchase with the revised land price with a provision of 5% discount (do note that land prices have increased up to $100,000 or more in the past 8 months, depending on which block you've purchased, size, orientation, etc) - agent was also putting pressure that there is a huge waiting list willing to grab any available blocks of land in the area.
Our whole family is dumbfounded. My cousin spoke to our builder, whom he had paid some deposit as well. We were advised that more than 20 blocks of land were affected. All affected parties think that the additional $100,000 (average or similar magnitude), for each block, which is $2,000,000 (over $2 million) as a rough estimate of additional profit, is very likely the key reason for this action by the developer.
We also suspect that the developer would likely have had legal advice to confirm their ability to cancel the contracts.
If you put yourself in our shoes, you'd understand that this is causing a lot of grieve to all our families who have been saving up for the house. The contract was signed in February, the house was supposed to be completed around June next year. We have been collectively saving and progressively paying the deposits as required. However, the developer conveniently cancelled the contract in October and asked us to fork out up to 20% more to sign new contracts if we are still interested in a house there.
Do you know of any such precedence? Any advice? Or are any of you also an affected individual?
Is there a way to get in touch with the other buyers?
This has been very hard for us so any advice would help.
We are still waiting for a written statement from the developer.
Would really value your views. Thanks.
James