THE HOUSING and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) has suspended the license to sell of the developers of a condominium building in Manila due to an ownership claim of another real estate firm.
In a five-page decision, HLURB arbiter Raymundo Foronda temporarily barred Central Realty and Development Corp. and Federal Land Inc. from selling units of the Four Seasons Riviera Condominiums pending the resolution of a civil case filed by Solar Resources Inc. in the Manila Regional Trial Court.
“(A)s a precautionary measure for the protection of the buying public, there is a need to suspend the license to sell pending resolution of the issue of ownership over the (property),” Foronda said in a resolution dated July 26.
“(Central Realty and Federal Land) are enjoined from continuing the development of the said project and from selling units therein,” he added.
Solar Resources sought the intervention of the HLURB after accusing Central Realty of getting its license to sell “under the false claim” that it was the lawful owner of the property which the late Dolores Molina purchased from Central Realty in 1993.
Records showed that Solar Resources bought the land from Molina for P124 million in December 2013.
When she died six months later, the realty firm substituted her as plaintiff in the civil case she had filed against Central Realty and Federal Land.
Molina bought the property from Central Realty in September 1993, but opted to let the land title remain under the name of the real estate firm after it promised to settle the huge taxes it owed the government.
But in 2010, Molina discovered that Central Realty mortgaged the land for P257 million and that it agreed to a joint-venture agreement with Federal Land to develop a residential building on the property.
In their defense, the two real estate developers dismissed the accusations of Solar Resources as “mere rehash” of a case it previously brought against them.
Central Resources and Federal Land also pointed out that the National Bureau of Investigation and the Land Registration Authority had declared as spurious the documents presented by Molina to support her ownership claim.
However, Foronda said the right of Solar Resources as Molina’s consignee of the contested property “cannot be simply ignored or disregarded” after the court upheld Molina’s adverse claim over the land.
“With the continued annotation of adverse claim on (the land title)… it cannot be said that the land… is free from all liens and encumbrances (under the law),” he said.