BC Supreme Court judge Austin Cullin has awarded Bosa Properties (Edgemont) Inc. $157,336 in damages after two homebuyers failed to pay the final purchase price for a Coquitlam condominium.
Cullin’s January 24 decision was watched by many home buyers who claimed that their pre-sale agreements were not valid because the developer either did not build their home exactly as expected, exactly on time or because marketers did not strictly follow proper protocol by showing all amendments to disclosure documents. (See “Economic downturn spurs new kind of lawsuit” – issue 1045; November 3-9, 2009.)
Seung Ban and Jung Rim Lee claimed their contract was invalid because Bosa breached the Real Estate Development Marketing Act by not ensuring that the homebuyers had received an up-to-date copy of a disclosure statement prior to signing the pre-sale contract.
Ban and Lee also claimed that their contract was not valid because Bosa accelerated building the project and that they would not have signed the contract had they known that the project would be complete in March 2009. That’s because their son was set to complete Grade 12 in June, and they did not want to disrupt his education.
March 2009, coincidentally, was also a time when the global economic downturn had dampened local real estate prices.
“Where a completion date is accelerated, nothing is irrevocably or inevitably lost,” Cullin wrote in his judgment.
“The longer a purchaser has to live in, or rent out a unit, the more value it has.”
Glen Korstrom
@GlenKorstrom