[Petor2]

I was a prospective buyer of a lot at Las Olas. I sent a 10,000 dollar escrow deposit per the reservation agreement to Latin America Title. We booked travel, and the Las Olas staff was supposed to have booked accomodations and airport transfers for us. When we arrived, no one was at the airport to meet us. I was finally able to contact the sales person on his cell phone. He told me he had been abruptly fired and was sorry to hear that I was stranded but gave me the phone number of David Aven, a principal at Las Olas. I was able to contact Mr. Aven after several tries. He told us to arrange for our own transportation and accomodations. We had been approved by the sales person to stay at Los Suenos, but Mr. Aven wanted us to stay someplace cheaper.
We met Mr. Aven the following day at our hotel and he gave us a showing of the property. He gave us all the information and a P& S agreement. After a brief deliberation that evening we decided against purchase.
1) The site is near a wet area
2) we asked locals (Ticos) about the project and they weren’t very happy about the conditions
3) we didn’t think it was a good value (the prices have since dropped by 50% however)
Meanwhile, Latin America Title was attempting to contact me. The contract was expiring when we were in Cosat Rica but I couldn’t access an email attachment from them so waited until my return in a few days to the States. I contacted Latin America and they told me the contract had expired and that they had given the escrow deposit to Mr. Aven. I had been told previously over the phone by the sales person that the contract period would be extended.
That was over a year ago. I retained a law firm in Costa Rica to retrieve the funds and expenses. Initially they were encouraging, but later indicated it would be high risk and discouraged me from pursuing this.
To date, the escrow funds, airport transfers expenses, and accomodations for 2 nights that were in the reservations agreement have not been recovered. I don’t expect they will be either. I have tried to stick with facts that I can document here. Hope this helps

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