Noah Real Estate denies unilateral contract terminations as Addis homebuyers seek court injunctions
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Ethiopian developer Noah Real Estate says it has received no court summons, responding to homebuyer petitions over price adjustments and apartment size variations that have triggered temporary injunction applications.
In the past decade, Noah Real Estate has built a strong reputation in Ethiopia's property market — a sector long marred by delivery delays and buyer disputes since the infamous Access Real Estate saga. Uniquely positioning itself by constructing before selling, Noah was widely viewed as an exception.
Recently, however, growing buyer dissatisfaction over price adjustments, ambiguous contractual clause interpretations, exchange rate shifts and area size variations has led to formal court petitions and requests for temporary injunctions against the developer.
In an interview with The Reporter, Yosef Desta, Legal Counsel for Noah Real Estate, said the company has not received any court summons to date, nor has it been called to court. He described the filings as applications by certain clients seeking a temporary injunction on the claim that Noah Real Estate might sell their housing units to a third party before a formal suit is lodged.
"The company has taken no steps to unilaterally terminate contracts or sell those units to third parties, nor have we issued any warnings to that effect," Desta said, adding that the primary cause of the dispute stems from the variance between the estimated square-metre area in the initial contract and the actual floor area determined during title deed preparation, with contracts including a tolerance provision.