Olympic village condo buyers are suing the developers because they took too long to give them their homes. This is called a holdup.

A group of people who bought condos to be turned into condos for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics have taken the developers to court, saying that they will have to pay more because the developers may not be able to give them the condos for a year.

It was filed with the Tokyo District Court on Friday by 29 people who want Mitsui Fudosan Co. and other developers of the condominiums to give them their homes by March 2023, or pay them a total of $700,000.

People who live there are part of the Harumi Flag complex, which is being built on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. 13 hectares of land that was reclaimed will become a new town with a population of 12,000. There will be more than 20 apartment buildings, a shopping centre, and schools there.

It was in 2019 when 940 condominiums were put on the market. They planned to move into their new homes in March 2023 after the 2020 Tokyo Games. Developers had finished re-painting the athletes village by then.

Games were put on hold for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The developers then decided to hold off on giving the units over, maybe for a whole year. The buyers would have to pay more rent if they didn’t move in right away.

I have been looking forward to moving into my new home. That’s what one of the plaintiffs, a man in his 50s, said at a press conference after filing a lawsuit. In order to speed things up, even by a month, I want the developers to do their best.

Mitsui Fudosan didn’t say anything about the lawsuit because the big real estate developer had not yet been sued and couldn’t check the facts.

To get to Harumi Flag, you have to go 2.5 kilometres from Ginza and 3.3 kilometres from Tokyo Station. With 631 units on the market in November, more than 5,500 people applied for them.