A mother has been reduced to begging friends for favours and, together with her 17-year-old son, living in a single room in someone else’s home because of contractors who have failed to honour deadlines.

The woman, who did not wish to be named, told The Malta Independent on Sunday that contractors had made her feel homeless and says she has been living a nightmare for the past three months.

The story started last year, when she entered into a promise of sale agreement (konvenju) with a contractor to purchase a finished apartment in a central locality.

At the same time she had entered a promise of sale agreement to sell her old house by the end of September. But the new apartment was nowhere near finished when the time came for her to move out of her old home.

The woman managed to get a one-time two-month extension from the buyers, but on 29 November she had to vacate her old home. Since the new residence was still unfinished, she had nowhere to stay.

“The contractor told me the property would be ready to move into by 9 January. That deadline was also missed.” Worse still, she was not told this by the contractor. “I only found out about the second delay when my application for an electricity meter was rejected. They told me the sub-contractor had failed a health and safety test, which had resulted in a six-week suspension of work. When I confronted the contractor he said this was not his problem and told me to speak to the sub-contractor. Work was halted for some six weeks and it is only in the past couple of days that things have started moving again.”

The contractor has now told her that the house will be finished by 31 March.

 

Moving from flat to flat

Since the end of November, the single mother and her teenage son have been moving from one apartment to another. She says she has no choice but to rent – her mother is too ill to take her in and her sisters do not have the space. “Our life for the past three months has been a living hell,” she explains. “We have already moved three times.” Because of the uncertainty in which she is living, she cannot book any place for more than a month, which has its own complications. “It is practically impossible to extend the stay after the month is up because the owners will have already found another tenant to move in after me.”

Also, because she cannot commit to a long let, she has to rent at higher prices. “Landlords tell me that I should book for six months with the risk of losing the deposit if I move out earlier. It’s as if they think money grows on trees. They just do not care about people in difficult situations.”

 

Separated from her beloved dog

After the second extension, the contractor agreed to give her €400 a month in compensation for the rental fees. (The mother is paying the monthly fees herself and the contractor has agreed to deduct the amount from the final price of the property.) “With €400 a month I can only afford a single room, which I have to share with my 17-year-old son, in someone else’s home. When the contractor extended for the third time I asked him to raise the compensation amount so that we could afford somewhere decent, but he flatly refused.”

Moving out of her house and into rental accommodation has also forced the woman to part with her beloved dog, which she describes as her ‘baby,’ since practically no landlord allows pets nowadays. “I am paying someone €10 a day to keep my dog. Originally they asked for €15 but they lowered the price seeing that this is a bit of a long-term agreement. This expense does not cover food or anything else. So I am paying €70 a week for the dog-sitter alone.”

She is also facing an embarrassing situation because the people who bought her Pembroke house had agreed to let her store some possessions in the garage but have now asked her to empty it by mid-February. “This is my biggest nightmare. I have no idea where I am going to put everything because the new property (the entire block) does not even have a front door yet.”

 

Exiting from agreement ‘not an option’

A friend has offered to store her sofa in a garage while the company from which she bought her kitchen and other furniture, which arrived in Malta from abroad in November, has fortunately not charged her for storage. “I feel like a beggar asking for help. It feels as if I am out on the street.”

The contractor has now promised her that her garage (at the new property) will be finished soon but, passing through the area this week, the woman noticed that the block is still far from finished. “There are no doors, no windows, no lights, no lift and no intercom. The entire block is a massive construction site.”

A lawyer has pointed out that the property is not even registered in her name. “I cannot even pull out of the deal and get the deposit back because I’d still lose the €15,000 I have spent on tailor-made furniture, which cannot be used anywhere else.”

Asked if she is afraid that the new March deadline will also be missed she says she cannot really tell, especially since the contractor has stopped communicating with her altogether.

“I have always been an independent person, having lived on my own for quite some time. I thought I was taking this new step, moving into a new home and have ended up where I am instead. Some contractors are very quick to take your money and make promises to secure the sale but then fail to honour their pledges. All I expect is to be told the truth, nothing more. The contractor should have told me that he needed more time and then I would have either delayed the sale of my old house or at least gone into a long lease agreement, which would have saved me time, energy and money. I never expected to end up in this situation. We are truly living a nightmare.”