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Retirement village plan goes bust?

It's back to square one for a planned retirement village somewhere in the uplands of Alburquerque.

This we got from a reliable source after the ambitious project was believed busted when the men charged to handle the land acquisition bungled in their assigned task.

Had the project not encounter any hitch from the beginning, nearby Alburquerque would have been host to a retirement village financed mostly by Filipino expatriates in the United States.

With a target area of 100 hectares, the project will straddle a wide area in the Baclayon-Alburquerque boundary. The landmark enroute to the project site is the vast residential area of German philanthropist Hans Schoof in Laya, Baclayon.

To begin with, the land acquisition process was off to a good start. Until maybe some members of the buying team started telegraphing their punches about the big project.

People who know the nuances of lot buying especially those involving vast landholdings are of the opinion that transactions of this nature are always shrouded in secrecy. You don't announce to the whole world that you are buying lots in blocks because of a big project. Because if you allow your big mouth to do the talking, chances are you cannot buy the desired area because nobody is selling unless on their (owners) own terms.

That's exactly what happened in Albur when the buying started. Just when brokers started haggling for the targeted lots, when to their surprise, the lot owners pegged the prices not to the buyers' expectation. It turned out later, that the property owners would only part with their lots, if the price is right. And there goes the glory of a bungled project, which would have seen the first retirement village ever built in Bohol .

The culprit? There's a leak somewhere between the buyers and the lot owners, which explained why the lot prices became prohibitive by Alburquerque standards.

Meanwhile, there are plans to prosecute the project in some other places and this time the brokers will have to keep their cards close to their chests or it will suffer the same predicament as the Albur experience.