Michael and Yvonne From South London

Michael and I bought a flat in Paphos in May 2006.  We were delighted and so looking forward to moving abroad and living the dream.  We actually bought the flat off the plans and it was meant to be ready in May and we were going to move straight in.  Unfortunately when we arrived here in Paphos the flat wasn’t finished and we had to rent somewhere instead.

It’s January 2007 now and our flat still isn’t finished.  The flat not being ready in May was a real let down, but believe me it was only the start of our problems.  The building of the flat itself was not right.  Some of the rooms weren’t square and the tiles of the floor were crooked.  When we asked the builder to fix this they actually just extended the walls and our rooms ended up being nearly 12cm smaller than they should have been.

Our dream was turning into a nightmare and we were paying rent on top of that.  My husband kept a close eye on the building once we arrived in Paphos.  One day he went to check on the flat and found the door locked and water rushing out onto the street.  When he eventually managed to get into the flat the place was soaked.  The kitchen and bedrooms were flooded and the floors were damaged too.  The builders didn’t even want to fix the floors and we had to insist on this.

Our problems are still not sorted and we are still renting.  Michael is keeping a very close eye on these builders and like he keeps saying if we had this problem back in England we would have been on to a solicitor by now.  We have been guaranteed a finish date of April 30th so let’s hope these cowboy builders actually stick to it this time.  It’ll be a year late then but we don’t have any other choice, we can’t go back to England as we sold our house and we desperately want to make a go of things here.  If it weren’t for the crap builders everything would be perfect.