'They wanted to get rid of me'

Sarah Mansuralli believed her new home was assured having reserved it in January and paid a reservation deposit of £1,000.

That was up until the day before she was due to exchange contracts on the £212,500 flat in East Finchley when she was told by the developer, Michael Shanly Homes, that the sale could only go ahead if she paid an extra £27,500.

By then she had already spent £1,200 getting ready to acquire the flat which she cannot now afford.

The reservation document, which is not a binding contract, stated that contracts must be exchanged by the end of February. That was then deferred until March when her solicitor had to write to the developer asking for important documents needed to secure the mortgage.

Without those documents the mortgage lender would not allow contracts to be exchanged on 20 March and the failure to proceed by the deadline was, Mrs Mansuralli claims, the fault of the developer.

Michael Shanly's managing director, Steve Allen, told the Standard that by failing to exchange on time she had invalidated her reservation agreement and "it was all over". Yet Mrs Mansuralli has a fax from the firm's lawyers dated 25 March, asking her solicitors to "proceed to exchange".

Mrs Mansuralli says her solicitor then received a call from the developer's lawyers saying that the vendor would only exchange contracts if the purchase price was increased to the sum of £240,000. The flat was then sold to another purchaser for £259,950.

Mrs Mansuralli said: "I feel they simply wanted to get rid of me and engineered the delays to achieve that. I realise that there is no binding contract until exchange, but I find this reprehensible and dishonest.

"If I can prevent other innocent buyers from getting burnt like me, something positive will have come out of this nasty episode."

Shanly Homes today declined to comment further on the case.