Completely false rental figures, Where do we stand?

[Elmay]

Myself and my partner put a deposit on a property in a new development in France with one of the top UK based French Property agents. We were looking purely for an investment property which provided decent rental income. We had no interest in a holiday home.

When we first contacted the agent about the property we explained our criteria for buying. They promptly provided us with a table of rental figures they had compiled for the development showing income of €32k per annum before management fees. I have this table on email from them. Based on these figures we put down our booking deposit.

It has since come to light that these figures are completely unrealistic and that we'd be lucky to get €14k to €16k per annum, before management fees. We promptly contacted the agent and demanded that our deposit of €14500 be returned. They admitted that we would be very unlikely to achieve the rents flagged to us before we put down our deposit.

It has been 3 months since we contacted them with no sign of our deposit being returned. We are being constantly told that the complaint is being looked into.

Do we have a case against them or is it our fault to have accepted their rental claims without further investigation. Do they any liability for the information they provided to us?, is this false advertising. We feel we were very misled and believed we were dealing with a very reputable agent with a lot of experience in the french property market.

All opinions on this matter welcomed

[brian]

Sorry to hear about your experience - my initial thought is that this is something you may want to report to Trading Standards.

However, if you could email the rental list they sent you, along with contact details of the property company, I'll see if I can investigate this for you.

My contact information is here:
http://www.homemove.co.uk/about/#contact