Hubbard property lottery was winner’s Money Pit nightmare

Tuesday 04 September 2018

Three years after winning the 2015 Sarnia Property Lottery, the winner has finally been given permission to put her prize house on the market - but only after years of struggling to have work on it finished, and get it declared as habitable.

7 Val Fleury was the grand prize in the 2015 Sarnia Estate Agents Lottery, which sold more than 4,400 tickets at £200 each to raise money for the Cheshire Home and Lord Taverners.

But when the winner - a woman in her 70s who wishes to remain anonymous – took possession of the house, rather than having her dream of retirement fulfilled, she found it to be totally uninhabitable, and also unsellable.

The property itself was built by Qube Holdings Ltd and a number of other businesses owned by Quinten Hubbard, a local businessman. Sarnia, the estate agent running the lottery, was also heavily involved with, and later owned by Mr Hubbard, though it suddenly closed for business late last month, leaving many islanders in the dark and out of pocket.

Pictured: When the winner first started to tackle the problems with the house, she thought she would be protected by Qube's "10 year guarantee"

Unbeknownst to the winner, when she got the keys to her house soon after the draw was made on New Years Eve 2015, she would begin to face a long list of problems, all of which have had to be dealt with out of her own pocket.

Whether it was a poor paint job, badly fitted windows, missing fire doors, a non-commissioned boiler, balcony doors leading to no balcony or having no roof straps to hold the roof on, soon after the property was won, it was deemed unsuitable to be lived in by States Building Control.

Building Control assess every newly built property on the island, and have to approve it before it can be sold. When Express contacted it about 7 Val Fleury, it said all of the information it had regarding the property was not in the public domain.

Pictured: 7 Val Fleury is on the Val Fleury estate in Hauteville, St Peter Port.

Martin Wolfe is a good friend of the winner. He has helped her through the process from the start, and, acting as her spokesperson, said it has been incredibly difficult dealing with Mr Hubbard. 

“The advocates completed the conveyance pretty quickly. They were told that the house wasn’t quite finished yet but just needed the very final touches to the cosmetic work,” he said.

“We went out of our way to get confirmation that it would be finished from Quentin Hubbard, but it took a few weeks for us to actually get any keys from the man.”

Pictured: Differences can be seen between the now-approved 7 Val Fleury and the neighbouring property, which is still being worked on. For example no. 7 has had the Juliette Balcony glass fitted, while the other properties have not. That was the same for no. 7 when the winner first got her prize. Image from Livingroom Estate Agents.

Mr Wolfe said when he first visited the property, the paint job was “appalling”, but it was only as time passed that the real problems came to light. 

“There were even some doors missing from inside, and the doors were not fire doors, which they needed to be. The water and boiler system were not properly commissioned, roof straps needed fitting, some of the windows were loose and steaming up, the Juliet balconies were not fitted, so there were doors that opened out of the building on the second floor, and the list goes on.”

Express was told the fire doors were originally in the property, but Mr Hubbard ordered his workmen to strip them from the house to put into another property elsewhere on the island. They were replaced with standard doors from B&Q.

When Mr Wolfe and the winner raised their concerns with Mr Hubbard, one of the builders was sent back to the property to make the necessary changes – Nathan Dodd. It was during that time it came to light that Building Control would not let the winner put the property on the market because it was not fit for purpose. 

"I just hit a brick wall with Quinten Hubbard, and I don't work with him anymore."

Mr Dodd said he went in in his own time to help the winner, after the work he was officially told to do was done.

“I had to go in in my own time to get it all done, I worked alongside Building Control to get it right. I put roof straps into the roof, there were a good few things wrong with the place,” he said.

“I just hit a brick wall with Quinten Hubbard, and I don’t work with him anymore. I felt so sorry for the woman that won, she had to spend so much of her own money to put things right.”

Pictured: The Val Fleury Estate.

7 Val Fleury went up for sale with Livingroom Estate Agents in the middle of last month – three years after the winner took possession of the property and planned on selling it. It is valued at £525,000.

During the lottery, the house was said to be valued at £600,000.

The property has now been totally approved by Building Control, but only after the winner spent nearly £2,000 of her own money installing a satellite dish and having the compulsory sprinkler system commissioned, alongside all of the other problems.

Of the other 13 properties on the new Val Fleury Estate, eight of them are now owned by a private client and are being completed by Rihoy & Son (not FW Rihoy & Son - they are two separate businesses), because they still need to be brought up to a level acceptable by Building Control. 

The remainder are currently being rented out by another private owner. 

"She was over the moon because she would be able to [...] finally retire. She is still renting that flat, and still hasn't retired."

“When she won this she thought her prayers had been answered,” Mr Wolfe continued.

“She was over the moon because she would be able to sell the house, buy a one bedroom flat to live in and finally retire. She is still renting her expensive, old flat though, and still hasn’t retired.”

In a statement following the event, the Cheshire Home thanked Qube, Le Maison de Champagne and Sarnia Estate Agents, three businesses heavily linked to Mr Hubbard – even more with links to him provided help with the construction, such as FW Rihoy & Son.

All of these businesses are now out of business or up for strike off, and could owe thousands to the public purse and to islanders alike.