Inspection weekends take place every weekend throughout the year. They are the main tool overseas property firms use to sell new homes. Buyers pay about £200 a head to come on a subsidised three-day property viewing trip. Neaves describes the Ocean Estates viewing weekends she organised as “controlled, concentrated, hard sell”. She never told buyers where they would be staying until they arrived because she did not want them making arrangements to meet other agents. To be doubly safe, she always chose a hotel “in the middle of nowhere, so that they could not walk anywhere on their own and see other agents”.

Few of those who went on inspection tours had viewed property in Spain before and Neaves exploited their ignorance. “I bombarded them with positive propaganda all day every day. I told them I had ‘cherry-picked’ the best new developments where they could buy off-plan and ‘get in early’ before prices started rising. In fact, I just chose to show them the new developments because they are easiest to sell and because I made a tidy commission.”

Neaves assured buyers that any money they invested would be risk-free. They could expect capital growth of 25%-40% a year, she had a 95% success rate at selling on homes before completion, and rental values would cover any mortgage. These figures are widely repeated by Ocean staff, and the capital growth claim is printed on company literature. In fact, Neaves’s experience was that the financial predictions were vastly overoptimistic. She says the real rate of return was about 10% per annum, the correct resale rate was a meagre 20% because there was an oversupply of new property with huge new developments coming on the market each year, and the rental market was so weak buyers would be lucky to get tenants at all, let alone cover their mortgage repayments. However, with no way of independently checking the facts and figures, many buyers put down £2,000-£4,000 deposits during inspection weekends.

Unknowingly, Ocean’s customers were also paying Neaves a hefty commission. Unlike in Britain, where the vendor typically pays the estate agent 1%-2% of the sales price after completion, Ocean Estates sales people, like many other agents in Spain, earn between 8%-12% commission on an off-plan property sale — hidden in the sales price.

If buyers asked tricky financial questions, in particular about capital-gains tax — a hefty 35% in Spain — Neaves tried to change the subject. If she couldn’t distract the buyer, she assured them that they could register the sale at a lower price than they had agreed and accept the balance from the buyer in cash, thereby minimising capital-gains tax. The practice is illegal — but commonplace — in Spain.

Once a buyer had reserved or bought a property, Neaves admits her breezy, helpful attitude was replaced by a “do next-to-nothing” approach. Despite assuring buyers that she and Ocean Estates’ “dedicated after-sales team” would take care of all their needs, including marketing properties for sale, she reneged on her commitments because she was too busy selling fresh off-plan developments to new buyers.

“Once punters had bought, they were on their own as far as we were concerned,” she says. “It was always easier to sell new property off-plan to new buyers than flog existing stock.”

Neaves insists all Ocean Estates sales executives used the same sales techniques as her and that such methods were sanctioned and enforced by company bosses. “I know that I sound like a real sod. I was. But the truth is that was what the company wanted me and all their staff to be. They trained us to act like that.”

To most observers, Neaves’s story sounds implausible. Surely buyers would not fall for sales patter that promised staggering capital growth of up to 40%? She says it worked because “I was trained to be good at misleading people — but also when people come out here to buy, they tend to leave their brains behind. They really want to believe in something that is too good to be true”.

But if she was so disgusted by what she was doing, why did she work for them for two years before quitting? “Ocean are very good at keeping staff hooked in by paying commission three to six months after a sale. I was always owed lots of money, so I carried on until I couldn’t take it any more.”

The last straw was when she was told “to do a hands-free” on an 80-year-old woman who couldn’t afford to invest and had asked her not to call her again. “My manager simply said: ‘Put her on hands-free and let’s close her.’ I felt like I was robbing her of her life savings. I felt physically sick.”

Standing outside Malaga airport on a muggy Saturday morning, Neaves says she still feels sick when she sees so many innocent investors heading off with Ocean Estates’ representatives “to live your dream!” “I’m ashamed at what I did and I don’t want any other buyers to suffer. That is why I am talking to The Sunday Times. I worked for Ocean but there are plenty of other firms who pull the same tricks. If anyone is thinking of investing in property in southern Spain, my advice is: be very cautious, don’t go on inspection weekends, go and explore the area on your own first, talk to a number of agents but don’t sign anything until you are 100% happy with your purchase, and get independent legal and financial advice.” That way, she smiles, “you might just find your place in the sun.”

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