Only A Fool Would Buy A Condo In Barbados – Canadian In 17th Year Of Barbados Condo Hell

UPDATED: September 26, 2011

Subject of story asks us to remove our post 4 years later

Dear Barbados Free Press,

A friend just pointed out that this article continues to be posted on the internet but the issue has long been resolved.  The condo was sold and money received at a profit.

Would you please remove this link and the associated comments as to have them on this site distorts the issue at this stage and only harms Barbados.

Yours truly,

John Desanti

BFP Replies:

Dear Mr. Desanti,

We are pleased that you were finally able to settle your lawsuit and extricate yourself from almost 20 years of condo hell. As to BFP now removing the article because your personal situation has been resolved favourably… Not a chance.

Please allow us to explain. If you care to write us privately or for public consumption (your choice), we’re still happy to listen and consider your thoughts. For now, here’s how we see it…

You solved your problem in part because you went public with the local papers and blogs to pressure the government, and also because you threatened to take your battle for justice to the internet.

Now that you’ve personally been successful after 18 or 19 years, you’d like us to remove the truth from the internet – probably because you truly like Barbados and wish to put the lawsuit behind you. You’d like to visit Barbados without having that bad aftertaste hanging around on the internet, You don’t want Bajans blaming you for the Barbados Free Press story that, unlike other news media stories of the injustice against you, hasn’t been deleted.

We appreciate that, and we appreciate that you still love Barbados after almost 20 years of heartache – but if we change history at your request, if we become like the rest of the lapdog Barbados news media and assist in a cover-up, we do no good for Barbados and we dishonour ourselves.

If we delete the truth, if we delete history, nothing will change for Bajans and it sure won’t change for the foreign investors who still get burned with condos and timeshare units. In the short term hiding the truth helps with the cashflow, but that’s a bad strategy for the long run. When we conceal the truth, there is no pressure to change our laws or to right the injustices – and our standards and products continue their downward spiral to the detriment of every citizen, investor and visitor.

The circumstances that resulted in your Barbados condo buyer’s horror story still exist.

Nothing has changed, nor will anything change if we delete the history of your battle for justice. Our Condominium Act still lacks the protections for purchasers and owners that you so well described in your letters to the Barbados Government and in your press interview as published in the Sunday Sun on June 10, 2007.

As well, we still have chaos with Land Titles to the point where one of your fellow Canadians has been unable to obtain their title deed for 37 years. Then there is the fact that our courts are so slow and unresponsive that it is normal for civil litigation to carry on for 10 or 20 years.

None of this will change if we delete history. You’ve been successful in obtaining some justice after almost two decades, but Barbados Free Press would betray everything we believe in, and everything we stand for, if we agree to your request.

For the record, you’ve asked us to delete the story and we’ve respectfully refused. No blame on you for that Mr. Desanti.

Much respect,

Marcus, Shona, Cliverton, Robert, Nevermind Kurt, George & Auntie Moses.

Original article first published July 15, 2007, re-published July 2008…

Many Have Learned The Hard Way That Barbados Is A Country Without Laws To Protect Condo Buyers

When you give your money to a condominium developer in Barbados, you place yourself entirely at the mercy of the developer’s integrity (or lack thereof), his financial stability and the whims of his personal family situation. You also give the developer a free hand in doing what he wants with your money – because Barbados lacks any laws that realistically prevent a developer from spending your money as he pleases and leaving you high and dry without your condo.

In Barbados, You Only THINK That You Own A Condo – In Law, You May Own Nothing At All

Canadian John DeSanti purchased a condominium in Barbados in 1990 and has been living a legal nightmare ever since.

That, my friends, is 17 years of Barbados Condo Hell where neither the courts nor the government have been able to provide justice for Mr. DeSanti and other condominium owners.

After reading Mr. DeSanti’s story, we can’t imagine why any thinking person would even bother to look at Barbados condominiums – because the banana-republic laws that resulted in his nightmare are still in place after all these years. Even if the government were to put new laws into place tomorrow, the laws would be new and untested – with no existing higher-court decisions to guide lawyers, judges, buyers and developers.

Want to be on the cutting edge of developing new Barbados condominium laws? Then slap down your money and hope for the best!

You Won’t Read About John DeSanti’s Barbados Condo Hell On The Internet – The Story Has Been Censored

John DeSanti’s story was recently covered in a June 10, 2007 major two-page article in the dead-tree (paper) edition of the Nation News. The Nation News deliberately left this major story out of its web edition. As we have learned in the past, the Barbados media will often self-censor stories from the internet so as not to incur the wrath of the Government. We can’t have those prospective foreign customers (read “suckers”) learning about the traps that await them on this island.

Here are scans of the Nation News article as it appeared in the June 10, 2007 paper edition. Click on the photo to read the story – at about 200k each…

CLICK EACH IMAGE FOR LARGE…

(Sometimes once the image appears in a new window you can further zoom in larger.)