Problem Question

After years of living on a budget and saving her income, Cindy has enough money to purchase her first flat. She hired a property agent and spent several weeks inspecting many different properties with her property agent. Finally, she inspected a property in the New Territories known as "No.5 Riverside Lane" ("Riverside Lane"). Riverside Lane consists of a three story house with a front yard, back yard where there was a lovely children's treehouse built on a large tree.Inside the house, one of the rooms had been renovated into a home theatre complete with two reclining leather lounge chairs which sat on the floor. It also had theatre equipment including speakers, projectors and a screen that had been built into the walls. She fell in love with Riverside Lane and quickly entered into an agreement with the owner to purchase it.

Prior to completion of the purchase, Cindy inspected Riverside Lane again and to her surprise, she found a number of things that were on the property when she inspected before entering the agreement had since been removed by the owner:

1. All of the cutlery from the kitchen drawers;

1. The matching outdoor dining set which was in the back yard, consisting of a dining table, 4 chairs and a floor lamp;

1. All of the doorknobs from the doors inside the house;

1. The two reclining chairs from the home theatre room;

1. The speakers which had been screwed into the walls in the home theatre room;

1. The children's tree house that had been built to fit the large tree in the back yard had been disassembled and removed;

1. The washing machine and dryer in the laundry room;

1. The custom fitted bed that the owner said was built specifically to fit perfectly inside the small servant's room;

1. A window-type air conditioning unit.

None of these items were expressly mentioned in the sale and purchase agreement. Cindy and the owner are now arguing over whether or not these items were included in the sale.

Discuss