“All our saved money has gone up in smoke”: the anger of owners in Eure, victims of unfinished houses

When the dream of becoming an owner turns into a nightmare. In 2021, the Benahmed family called on the company Maison France Design (MFD), in Évreux, to build their new house in Aigleville, in Eure. She paid the sum of 120,000 euros and took out a loan of 250,000 euros, to be repaid in addition to her current rent. But since then, only concrete block walls have come out of the ground.

“We signed the contract three years ago, and as a result, it will be two years that we only have walls instead of having a house“, deplores Sonia (photo below) in the TF1 1 p.m. report to be found at the top of this article. The construction company tells him that the orders for materials have been placed, that he must be patient.

Except that the site has been abandoned for months. “I was hoping to live here with my husband and children. In the end, we still can't because of two people who wanted to be very greedy and who ultimately defrauded us“, continues the young woman, who filed a complaint against Maison France Design. The work should be resumed by another builder.

Delphine and Cyril Langlois, on the other hand, know that their site, even less advanced, will not be taken over, because their guarantee is not valid. For this project, they made a loan of 324,000 euros and have already paid half of it to the builder. The foundations of their future house, located in Saint-Sébastien-de-Morsent (Eure), are barely visible. “We were supposed to be in the house in July“, explains the couple, who must now start repaying their loan.”There are the lawyer's fees, the bailiff… All the money we had saved, today, they went up in smoke“, they lament.

“We had to hurry, we had to pay funds because otherwise we wouldn't have our tiles, otherwise we wouldn't have our frame“, Cyril continues in this other report from 8 p.m. on TF1 below. “When we ask when the construction site is not progressing, it is a person who climbs the towers very quickly“, assures his companion.

Like them, several owners, grouped together within a collective, are still waiting for their new house to finally be delivered to them. Payments of money for this type of construction are strictly regulated by law. How is it that families paid for almost all of the work from the start? The operating procedure is always the same, as explained to our camera by Maître Quentin André, who defended the interests of nine individuals from Eure: “Certain reasons or pretexts based on the war in Ukraine and the increase in prices are cited to convince the client to pay funds early, which is illegal.“.

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In addition to aggrieved owners, craftsmen are still waiting to be paid, like this plasterer met by our team. “We built a first pavilion which we paid for,” says Jonathan Fuentes. As a result, we were asked to make a second pavilion with supplies and installation, which we also did. And this one, we never saw the color“. That's 7,000 euros of work still unpaid.

Contacted by the TF1 editorial staff, the company manager places the blame on her partner, who did not respond to requests. To date, 15 complaints for breach of trust, forgery and misuse of corporate assets have been filed with the Évreux public prosecutor's office. The investigation is ongoing.