On Tuesday we closed the book on the final chapter to the whole Flat saga.
The year before my mum died in 1996 she put a deposit on a flat here in Cyprus, with the intention of coming back the year after to pay most of it off and to move back out here, her homeland. Unfortunately, less than a year later she died and never got to live out her dream.
In her will, she left the flat to my daughter who was 6 years old at the time, so it was left in trust to me until she was 21. The remainder of the mortgage was down to me to pay if I wanted to respect my Mum’s wishes.
Being a single parent in rented accommodation, with no financial help from my ex husband, it was a daunting task, but, I thought it would be a good investment for my daughters future if I could manage it somehow.
After a year or so I decided to rent it out so that the mortgage would be covered at least. So I came back to put it in the Estate Agents etc, then one of the relo’s brought a Cypriot guy he knew, so we signed contracts and he paid me one months rent and one months retainer. My uncle was going to collect the rent and pay the mortgage with it, however, he never collected any rent and after a year of me ringing constantly the guy left and took most of my things with him. A really expensive Chinese rug that my mum bought me, all my Crystal ware that had been gifts over the years on birthdays etc from a family friend plus various other things. My family did nothing! In spite of said uncle working in the court offices!!
This was just the start of nearly 20 years of renters and family from HELL!
Some of you may remember the video I posted earlier this year of the latest atrocity, the flat trashed ‘AGAIN’ I might add. That was the final straw, they left owing 3,500eu in unpaid bills which is now at 4,000 with other stuff I had to pay for too. The police did nothing!
So my daughter decided to sell the flat as neither of us could afford to fix the damages. To be honest I didn’t think anyone would buy it in the state it was in, not just the damages but it was disgustingly dirty, I cleaned it up a bit but without water and electric I couldn’t do it properly, it needed a lot of deep cleaning.
Before lock down she had a young couple interested, the guy was a builder so wasn’t phased by the damage. All was going well, they just needed a bank loan for 5,000 they had the rest. Then lock down happened and the banks stopped all loans. So it fell through.
When we came out of lock down, we were advised to drop the price even further as we were heading for recession. I wasn’t happy about that as it was going below what I spent on it as it was, but my daughter agreed and found a buyer within a couple of weeks.
So, on Tuesday the deeds were transferred and that ended the nightmare, finally!
In spite of the huge loss and excessive pay outs to estate agents, tax offices, etc, I hope that what is left will at least go some way to making my daughters life a little easier. That is after all, all a parent wishes for, for their children, an easier, stress free life than ours.
With every ending starts a new beginning.….
Maria Wind Talker 