€6000 extra for 2 weeks late?

NewFrockTuesday

Someone was telling me last week that he was 2 weeks late in signing the contract for his house (due to terminally ill child) and he was fined €6000 by the builder. His solicitor advised him to pay it or lose the house. So he did.
Can builders do this?
Thanks.

wyndham

Yes. Contract.

sandyg

Yep. On the contract that he signed with his solicitor it would have mentioned that if the the money is not signed over by a certain date that interest would occur each day after. We just signed our side of contracts and that was the first thing that our solicitor said to us. Theres not much he can do about it.

The_Conductor

Yup. Builders are unfortunately a law unto themselves.....
A clause for late payments is considered pretty normal. The fact that they were not willing to waive the charge in light of personal circumstances merely highlights their moral behaviour more than anything else. They were perfectly entitled to act on the clause though.

Diaspora

Yes 10 years after this type of practice became common nothing has been done to protect purchasers from 'Subject to Contract'type clauses. Put simply if you buy from the plans you have placed a one way bet where the builder can at any time raise the price because the particulars of the deal are deemed to be subject to future agreement and not concluded until a contract is reached.

Morally reprehensible but unfortunately legally ok