February 2, 2012
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Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tomorrow it will be exactly one year that I "signed my life away" as one of my colleagues phrased it so nicely on the morning of 3 February 2010. I became a property owner when at 1 in the afternoon I sat in a notary's office and put my signature under the final document. One year later and I am still very happy that I made the jump to my new place and to actually owning my own place (with a little help from the bank.)
What I hadn't expected then is that there would be some considerable extra expenses for repairs to the building due to the fact that the seller omitted to inform me of urgent maintenance work. When I bought the place, I didn't know (and couldn't know) that the roof was leaking, or that there were issues with some of the window frames. Of course in the course of the past year I found out about that and I did so by having to pay a considerable amount of money, hoping to claim that back from the seller via legal proceedings.
This evening we (the owners of the three floors that were sold at the time) had a two hour meeting with a lawyer to see which options there are for us to claim the expenses (or at least part of it) back. The lawyer's offices were in Noord, which is the part of Amsterdam north of the Ij, north of Central Station, which for pedestrians and cyclists such as myself is best reached by ferry. The meeting was interesting for it gave me some insight in what will be possible... but unfortunately also in what will not be possible.
To be honest, in my mind I had already written the € 5,000 off that I had paid so far, and I think I was right about that (a bit pessimistic maybe... or a bit realistic.) The fact that, to claim back € 20,000 from the seller we would have to pay up to € 10,000 lawyer's fees (at € 200 per hour his fees are uncannily close to mine) and other legal costs is already outrageous, and that is of course still without the chance of victory. There are options still, and we could even consider claiming for emotional damages... but I'm not so sure. I still wonder whether the best option simply would not be to repair the house and forget about legal proceedings. That's of course what the seller is hoping for (for he is a true bastard) but it would give this whole episode some closure as well, which would be good. We'll see how this develops. The picture of the boat was taken just outside the lawyer's offices. I will charge you € 200 euros per hour for reading this blog.
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