Statement from the Developer ‘First Leisure’

Some of you may have read some adverse comments recently published on internet forums about our Company who owns the “Regency” brand and its CEO Mr. Andrew Harris and in particular about so called ‘double-selling’. Although we do not normally respond to ‘gossip’ on forums we have taken the view that for the benefit of our Buyers, on this occasion it is appropriate because of the serious nature of the allegations.
We should first like to say that it is important that Buyers appreciate that contributions to forum’s are mostly made by well intentioned people with a genuine concerns or a wish to pass on good tips, however, forums are also frequently misused by developer/Agent competitors or people with an axe to grind. In addition, sometimes (not always) the information provided by some people can often be one-sided, confused or misguided or occasionally vindictive. The reason why people do this is because they believe they can do so with complete anonymity or comeback. This sense of security is misplaced however because their postings on the websites can be traced and we together with the Egyptian Authorities are presently trying to track down those responsible and commence proceedings against them.
We accept that when dealing with hundreds of Buyers (as we do) there will always be a small number of justified complaints from Buyers and we make every effort to deal with those to the satisfaction of the Buyers - but as you will appreciate you can never satisfy everyone all the time.
We now turn to the issue of double-selling. We understand the practice of double-selling is to sell a property to more than 1 Buyer at the same time.
We believe the Purchase Contracts we use are fair to both the Buyers and the Sellers achieving a good compromise between both parties’ interests. As with the UK property market, our Purchase Contract for Egyptian property provides that the Seller commits to sell and the Buyer commits to buy on exchange of contracts. The Buyer pays an exchange deposit and promises to pay the due amount on completion. On completion we notify the Buyer the property is ready for handover and request the completion monies.
On just 4 occasions, despite doing all we could to assist, the Buyer has either refused or has been unable, through their own financial circumstances, to pay the completion balance. Under the terms of the Purchase Contract (as in the UK) if the Buyer fails to pay the completion monies on completion then the Seller is entitled to revoke the Contract and retain a percentage of the deposit monies already paid and the Buyers are refunded the balance. In this event the Seller is by law entitled to re-market and re-sell the property to another Buyer but only because of the Buyer’s default not ours. This is not double-selling.
We can assure our Buyers that we have never double-sold a property on any of our developments. Indeed to do so would invoke the Egyptian Criminal Code and the Developer can be sent to prison.
If any of our Buyers have any concerns about what they read on the forums or other internet sites we would be grateful to them if they could contacted us directly and we shall answer or clarify any issues they are concerned about including making any enquiries of the Egyptian Authorities. Anyone wishing to clarify the situation is welcome to telephone our office on 002 065 345 0452 or 0044 121 711 3319 or visit our offices to discuss the matter.
Finally, our offices have received literally hundreds of phone calls expressing their disgust at what they have read and offering their support and to all of them we would like to express our sincere thanks and appreciation.
Best wishes,

Andy Harris
Group CEO