We lost £200,000 on our dream Spanish retirement home because of robbers, cowboy builders

A British couple forced to leave Spain after their retirement dream turned into a nightmare have told how they were left more than £200,000 out of pocket by cowboy builders and bureaucracy.

Phil and Anne Bulman, both 71, moved to the Costa Blanca in 2004 when Phil retired after three decades in the Merchant Navy. 

The pair sold up and bought their dream home in Almoradi, and were looking forward to spending their retirement in the sun after years of anticipation. 

But 20 years on, the couple are back in Britain, having lost eye-watering sums of money after falling foul of robbers, fraudulent workers and red tape.

Phil says the couple poured a whopping £374,000 to build their retirement paradise but have only managed to recoup £161,000 – a loss of £213,000.

‘We’ve all had ideas of that idyllic dream – but it just doesn’t turn out like that.

‘For us it was an expensive nightmare,’ he lamented.

Phil and Anne picked out a beautiful plot in orange and lemon groves almost 20 years ago.

They had their dream home built on it at a cost of £230,000.

They then paid £18,500 for a pool and terraces to be built, and added a second property on their plot for their daughter at more cost, who came out to join them.

All the work was done by the same building company and Phil was sure all the paperwork was in order. 

But several years later they needed to get the builders back in to fix a problem with the pool.

Inspectors visiting works on a neighbouring property then came over to see what was going on – and Phil claims they swiftly decided the extra house and pool were illegal.

Phil said the inspectors told him the works would be destroyed unless he paid a hefty fine of £30,000 – and the builders were nowhere to be found. 

‘It was awful. We’d trusted the builder and hadn’t had the solicitor look over all the documents.

‘We showed them all the paperwork from the builder and they said it was all twaddle.

‘Because the money was owed to tax authorities they just emptied our account – £10,000… Then the builder just vanished.

‘He’d built a few houses nearby and left us all with water tanks, no mains connection… We spent loads of money on solicitors trying to get mains-water connected.’

Dismayed, the couple then moved back to the UK as they needed more money, and Phil started work as a vessel inspector.

They let their Spanish home out and rented in the UK – but Phil said that in 2015 their tenant stopped paying and said they had to leave in a hurry.

The couple then returned to Spain to find they had been robbed, Phil claims.

He said: ‘They had stripped our house and our daughter’s house of everything.

‘There was just one small mattress, a few pots and pans, and a few pieces of cutlery left.

‘And it was absolutely filthy. This was before we had mains water and it didn’t look like they’d flushed the loo in the whole two and a half years.’

The couple piled their car high and restocked the houses from the UK – costing another £7,000.

But then in 2018 they found their car gone and the house broken into yet again.

Phil said: ‘They’d pulled the security gates off and smashed all the patio doors – there was glass everywhere.

‘They took everything of value that wasn’t screwed down. It had all been new, including TVs and microwaves.

‘Fortunately the insurance paid out this time but it left us with a very bad feeling.’

This, it turned out, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The Bulman family put their dream home on the market and it finally sold in 2021 for just £160,000. 

But the saga still continues – Phil says they were told they hadn’t paid enough council tax and are still waiting for the bill.

Now back living in the South East of England, Phil summed up the experience in one sentence: ‘It was a dream that turned into a nightmare.’