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Hello,
I would like to get a legal advice regarding a property that i bought recently. I will just summarize the gist of the situation here as not to make the story too long.
The property is a very old/broken house that is not livable at all. The deal was that that the house will be sold at a total price of 5.5M that is payable in 15 years, considering only P500,000 as downpayment. The deal of course included the buyer in renovating the place with a promise of delivering the renovated house after 4 months of giving the down payment (which was supposedly on February 2013). Around December 2012, the seller asked us to pay an advanced payment of 4 months to add to the renovation. We gave in to that request since it's just giving the seller our monthly payment of 4 months in advance. On the date of agreed turnover on Feb though, the seller again "demanded" for us to give the rest of the year's advance payment as according to him, some unfortunate incident happened to his other projects (a person died and he had to take care of the payments, etc.) and because of this, he had no money to continue the renovation. Since we were able to come to an agreement on the term that would be lesser interest and monthly amortization for us, we agreed and got to sign a new contract stipulating a change in downpayment and monthly payments. Now the adjusted turnover was supposedly yesterday however, again, the seller could not deliver. Our meeting became very heated that there were some shouting, etc. that occurred. We have finalized though during this meeting that we will give them until April 15 to complete the renovation and turn over the house to us. Now, i just suddenly got a letter stating a lot of demands from the seller the worse of it includes another payment of ~P400,000 as according to him, our downpayment is not even 1/4 of the selling price - that it is just legally right that we give him that amount for him to turn over the house to us - a house that is big and has a zonal value greater than his selling price. He also mentioned that he only wants to speak to certain people ELSE he will cancel the contract.
My questions are:
1. Is there any law that states that we actually have to pay 1/4 of the amount? From my understanding, it does not matter how much the zonal value of the property is or how much DP is paid as long as it is agreed between the signing parties that the amount indicated in the contract to sell is the ONLY DP that needs to be paid.
2. Is there a basis for him to "cancel" the contract just because he is the owner of the house that we are buying even if we have not breached any part of the contract? If you think about it, he is the one who had not delivered on any of the commitments stated in the contract but given that we have invested a lot of money and time already, we would just want to get the house as rightfully ours instead of us giving up and saying due to breach, we would want to cancel.
3. If the seller would still not turn over the house to us on April 15, what actions could we take? Is there a chance that we still get the house as promised (fully renovated)? Are there any other damages claim we can demand?
I hope to get some help on this matter. Thank you in advance for your time in reading my concern.
I would like to get a legal advice regarding a property that i bought recently. I will just summarize the gist of the situation here as not to make the story too long.
The property is a very old/broken house that is not livable at all. The deal was that that the house will be sold at a total price of 5.5M that is payable in 15 years, considering only P500,000 as downpayment. The deal of course included the buyer in renovating the place with a promise of delivering the renovated house after 4 months of giving the down payment (which was supposedly on February 2013). Around December 2012, the seller asked us to pay an advanced payment of 4 months to add to the renovation. We gave in to that request since it's just giving the seller our monthly payment of 4 months in advance. On the date of agreed turnover on Feb though, the seller again "demanded" for us to give the rest of the year's advance payment as according to him, some unfortunate incident happened to his other projects (a person died and he had to take care of the payments, etc.) and because of this, he had no money to continue the renovation. Since we were able to come to an agreement on the term that would be lesser interest and monthly amortization for us, we agreed and got to sign a new contract stipulating a change in downpayment and monthly payments. Now the adjusted turnover was supposedly yesterday however, again, the seller could not deliver. Our meeting became very heated that there were some shouting, etc. that occurred. We have finalized though during this meeting that we will give them until April 15 to complete the renovation and turn over the house to us. Now, i just suddenly got a letter stating a lot of demands from the seller the worse of it includes another payment of ~P400,000 as according to him, our downpayment is not even 1/4 of the selling price - that it is just legally right that we give him that amount for him to turn over the house to us - a house that is big and has a zonal value greater than his selling price. He also mentioned that he only wants to speak to certain people ELSE he will cancel the contract.
My questions are:
1. Is there any law that states that we actually have to pay 1/4 of the amount? From my understanding, it does not matter how much the zonal value of the property is or how much DP is paid as long as it is agreed between the signing parties that the amount indicated in the contract to sell is the ONLY DP that needs to be paid.
2. Is there a basis for him to "cancel" the contract just because he is the owner of the house that we are buying even if we have not breached any part of the contract? If you think about it, he is the one who had not delivered on any of the commitments stated in the contract but given that we have invested a lot of money and time already, we would just want to get the house as rightfully ours instead of us giving up and saying due to breach, we would want to cancel.
3. If the seller would still not turn over the house to us on April 15, what actions could we take? Is there a chance that we still get the house as promised (fully renovated)? Are there any other damages claim we can demand?
I hope to get some help on this matter. Thank you in advance for your time in reading my concern.
