When did it all go wrong for some

And, oddly enough, all I was saying in my earlier post what that people should be cautious and prudent in their transactions.  Of course there are pitfalls, and some things could be a lot better with the system, and yes, there are people who have had bad experiences.  All the more reason to advise and suggest to people to take adequate care.

Patricia

Sadly Campana, adequate care, homework, ,etc aren't enough to prevent people from suffering abuse. Under normal circumstances you could fall back on a system of justice to protect you, but not in Spain as things stand now.

So I say respectfully to El Alamillo who started this thread, and whose story was heartening and yes really pleasant to read (since no abuse had been encountered), the answer to your question from the outset, “When did it all change or have I missed something “ is, the missing “something” is a system of justice that protects its citizens and enforces the rule of law. That’s all I was trying to say.

Campana's comments below are 100% on the mark & make comprehensive sense.

PLEASE keep up the good work,

Thanks,

Jon

PLEASE PLEASE don't let this thread degenerate into another mudslinging match!

Can't we all accept that there were problems buying Spanish property? Can't we all accept that the legal system is ONE of the problems?

Campana said we should operate just as we would here in the UK. Well, that's the problem because in the UK there is a well established & effective legal system which will fairly quickly supply recourse. If the lawyer muicks up there is a compensation scheme, the Police will investigate if the developer steals the money & action is taken very quickly & people do go to prison.

In Spain, this doesent happen. Also in Spain, retrospective planning laws means that your legal property can be declared illegal years later & no chance of any compensation.

i speak as a very happy buyer of an appartment, but I know, because of these problems that I'm lucky in that I bought successfully & LUCK shouldn't play a part in this process.

From a selfish point of view, until Spain sorts out & regulates the property market & starts applying the laws that already exist my chances of selling (which I'm not thinking of doing) are pretty low.

Again, from my entirely objective perspective, Campana's comments make comprehensive sense & could not be more clear in the challenging context of Spain.

Cheers,

Jon

Jon: Yes, of course people should take care & check everything, campana is right. The problem however, In Spain, is that sometimes that doesn't matter.

There are are 13,000 homes in the Almanzuria valley that have been declared illegal. The majority of the owners did check & did do everything they could & many have lived in their property for years, but due a political dispute between the different levals of local government a retrospective planning decision has blighted them & there is no chance of them EVER seeing a penny of compensation.

There are 2900 buyers at Trampolin Hills in Murcia (mostly from the UK) who will never get their property or see their deposits again due to fraud. 60,000,000 euros in deposits have gone!

Were ALL these people stupid? Did they ALL decide NOT to use a lawyer?

Fraud happens all over the World, & it happens in the UK, the difference however between Spain & the UK is that the legal system is on the side of the buyer & there is a compensation scheme. This doesn't exist in Spain.

Of couse, the numbers affected are a small proportion of the number who have bought successfully but please realise that this damages all of us, I can't tell you how many people here in the Uk have told me how mad I am to own a place in Spain.

I didn't buy as an 'investment', I bought a holiday home to use & enjoy, which I do, but as fewer people come over, there is less money being spent, facilities are not looked after, amenities close & that affects me.

The most depressing thing in all this is that most (not all) of the lairs & fraudsters were either British or had British staff.

I love my place, I love Spain, but these affect all of us.

"But there is a degree of luck in being in the right place at the right time (like you getting out of the USA in time), but I am not so sure there is such an element of luck in the actual purchase of a property."  ..... followed by a list of where you all went wrong - and why it couldn't have happened to Patricia.

To those affected, that was a red rag to a bull.  I found it pompous and patronising - and I have not been a victim of Spanish Property Disease.  And it is simply wrong.  If you have purchased off plan with no problems, then I am very happy for you.  But I hope that you appreciate that fortune smiled on you.

And Patricia, what's with this JEK thing?

Dennis

Give it a rest, Jek.  I am not interested in your delirious second-guessing and wanderings.  And, and, what you are doing is known as cyber-stalking.  So please stop stalking  me, and I would ask the moderator to take a hand in this matter.

Who said I bought off plan?  How do you know how I bought?  It is none of your business.

Patricia

Thank you Jon!

"Campana's comments below are 100% on the mark & make comprehensive sense.

PLEASE keep up the good work,

Thanks,

Jon"

 Jon:

You get a troublemaker or two on every forum.  They are known as trolls. 

Patricia

Rob:

Of course the court system in Spain could do with some overhauling.  No one would deny that.  It is slow and cumbersome and any Spanish person will fully agree with that.  Is there corruption?  Yes, there is indeed.  Corruption exists everywhere, even in the U.K., in my own country and anywhere else you care to name.  And that is not good!  There is considerable room for improvement.  There are people who have been ripped off, and and my hope would be that these people do get compensated.

  As you say yourself Rob:

"The most depressing thing in all this is that most (not all) of the lairs & fraudsters were either British or had British staff."

That is very telling, Rob.

Patricia

This piece is from the EOS blog "Real Estate" on this website.

"Over 18,000 Spanish homes were sold to overseas property investors last year, a new survey has revealed.

According to the annual report from the College of Registrars, homes sold to foreigners accounted for 4.45% of the total Spanish property market in 2010.

While the market is not anywhere near the levels of its pre-recession heyday, the availability of relatively cheap homes means that it has remained flat year on year, with both economic migrants and retirees flocking to popular destinations like the Costa del Sol.

Nearly a quarter of the properties were brought by British property hunters. The French accounted for 8.2% of the total sales while the Germans (7.7%), Russians (6.9%) and Italians (5.6%) made up the rest of the top five."

rob6578/ads

you are both smack on with what you are saying. Very balanced and so so true. Anyone who has experienced the terrible injustice of the Spanish system will be very much of your opinions, and will be pleased to read the words of truth and fact spoken with humanity and a very real grasp of the reality. Those good souls doing the most to raise petitions, writing to those MEP's who are willing to fight for justice, and those offering support and sympathy etc to those so badly wronged, share your opinions. That is clear when reading through all the consumer protection forums.

You are right and stand up for those in the right, well done you!!

 I have thought long and hard about whether or not to continue with this discussion, because I really do sympathise with those who have been left out of pocket through corruption - but I just wanted to say that where it all started to go wrong in Spanish housing construction, was when the hundreds of thousands of northern European buyers started flooding in with the demand for cheap property.   While house price inflation was raging, there was no one shouting about the corruption of builders or anyone else.  Black money changed hands regularly  - people from the UK were happy to pay thinking it saved them a fist full of Euros - not a thought to the implicit tax evasion.   Then we had the crash.    Now, my builder, for example - probably fairly typical - is not corrupt.  I actually think he had a good vision and of course he was going to make money out of it.  The fact that the crash meant there was no demand to continue building, thereby leaving chunks of land undeveloped, or communities without promised facilities -(in our case a commercial centre) is not entirely his fault.  Then, my other 'red rag'.  Someone on here suggested I think, that empty facilities were effecting us all (yes, agree), and that this is somehow linked to corruption.   I believe firmly that the number of empty properties on FINISHED developments, with overgrown gardens and a sad look about them, belong to people who never had a dream of a home in Spain, but a dream of a quick profit by flipping the property, without even paying a mortgage payment.  Add to these the number of people who bought MULTIPLE properties - yes, it seems incredible now, but there were plenty who did that 'to pay off one and sell on the others'.  Well, in my book, that is property speculation, and certainly in the immediate area I have my house this is a much bigger problem than corrupt builders or illegal builds.  It has resulted in unpaid community fees leading to huge increases for those honest souls who pay.  And of course along with that it has led to even greater shortfalls in the funds of the town halls.  The number of people walking away from their properties has crippled the banks even further, and this is likely to get worse.  And a lot of those people have walked away because they know they are not going to get a profit and choose not to pay their dues, rather than cannot pay their dues.   OK - now I will stand back!!!

Bri:, I think I said that the empty facilities were a problem for us all but I didn't say it was due to corruption.

My point is that the fraud & corruption that has taken place, whilst only directly involving a fairly small number of people compared to the numbers who have bought successfully has contributed to the other problems.

Because of the publicity around Spanish property few people are prepared to buy, there are fewer visitors, due to the increased costs. I've noticed how many places have put their prices due to falling numbers.

I agree with you about the multiple property buyers. Yes, they were greedy & yes, they were conned by the salesman at a UK property exhibition.

I remember visiting a Parador exhibition where they were pushing the Almanzuia Country club, & I was told to buy 4,all on mortgages,  sell 3, & the profit would pay off the mortgage on the one I kept. I did, as they say, make my excuses & left. Others didn't & they are caught which contributes to the run down look of too many developments.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that until the legal system works in the way Spanish law says it should the market will remain in deckline. Bank guarantees have to be honoured, lawyers who didn't do their job should be punished & crooked developers should be made to pay.

The Spanish government says all the right words but there is no action.

The failure also lies with the Spanish Government who failed (and continue to fail) to ensure that adequate regulation is in place to prevent unscrupulous behaviour by the various offending parties (whether this be a lawyer, developer , agent or Bank etc). The lack of regulatory bodies within the various professions who could penalise offenders and make them accountable from within, only accentuates the problems. There are far too few disincentives to prevent the "offenders" continuing with their malpractice in Spain. For instance developers renaguing on their community charge contributons and responsibilities to existing infrastructure etc, placing their own "people" in positions of responsibility within the communities (we all know now what goes on!), in full knowledge that without adequate protection from within the law, this can lead to yet more abusive pratice with little or no accountability.... and Banks that continue to fail to address their responsibilities to recognise guarantees, etc,  all add to a sense of understandable vulnerability and reticence to reinvest in Spain.

The delays that  impact  the enforcement of justice and also the misuse of these indefinite delays by "playing the system of appeals", in full knowledge that this will compromise those seeking justice, has only magnified the problem, and accentuated to the buying public just how vulnerable they are without protection from within the law.

I tend to believe that the only time that this will improve is when the Government face up to their responsibilities and ensure that they better manage the consumer protection issues, by firstly ensuring that justice prevails in a timely manner, by ensuring that regulatory bodies are empowered and monitored to tackle abuse, and they implement reforms necessary to convince the buying public that, should the need arise, they are protected by a fair and workable system of justice in Spain.

Brian says:

" I just wanted to say that where it all started to go wrong in Spanish housing construction, was when the hundreds of thousands of northern European buyers started flooding in with the demand for cheap property.   While house price inflation was raging, there was no one shouting about the corruption of builders or anyone else.  Black money changed hands regularly  - people from the UK were happy to pay thinking it saved them a fist full of Euros - not a thought to the implicit tax evasion."

Now you're talking, Bri!

Patricia

 Campana...ads...thanks for the really explicit and detailed answeres. I don't have anything to add to this discussio,n as I am only  just starting to think about coming to live in Spain, but I'm learning so much from your posts...Yourselves and many other  posters who already 'know the score' there.

 Rob6578 - a lot of what you say is level and reasonable, but the overall impression is still that ALL builders in Spain are corrupt, ALL town halls have been taking bribes etc etc.  And yet people were only conned by ONE salesman.  Well, I am sorry, but I think that the expansion in construction on the Costas was driven to hysterical overbuild by the demand of northern European purchasers wanting cheap property, often multiple, which could be flipped before completion.   There  was no thought to the destruction of the environment, or the squeezing of    young Spaniards out of being able to afford a property, and if the builders could get away with building smaller and smaller poorly built 'units' then I am afraid that is what they will do.  Anywhere.  And I think it is naive in the extreme to think that people are not investing in Spain because of the 'corruption'.  Houses are not moving in Spain for the same reason they are moving so slowly here - and you can take your pick of reasons for that.  When we finally get out of the fall out from the economic crisis we will find that people once again will return to property - where ever they think they can get it cheap.  Corruption, unstable ruling families or whatever, have not deterred Northern Europeans   from speculating on houses any where they can.  The problem in  Spain was it became a game for 'everyman'.  It was taken away from people who wanted to live or retire there, and turned into a speculators playground.  And for those who think investors have always been so well treated in the UK, can I remind you of Equitable life?   I think you will find that the fight for justice continues today. 

Bri:

I take your point to a degree although I don't understand the part about 'one salesman'.

Yes, of course demand fuelled the building boom but that demand itself was fuelled by all the tv shows in the Uk & all the property exhibitions every weekend across the Uk, several in the same town at the same time.

Yes, some people were very silly & greedy & are now paying the price for that.

I think there is a combination of problems which are giving Spain a poor reputation, from the unfinished developments falling into ruin, from the illegal developments & from the failure of the authorities to implement their own laws.

When a bank can ignore the instructions of a court to pay out on a bank guarantee, when there is no effective governance of the legal profession, when compensation is ordered there is no way to actually enforce that, that's the problem.

Of course, corruption, lies by estate agents & salesmen happen in the uk, & yes, in some cases they will lose their investment.

In the world of property however,if I go to see a newly bult place in the uk, I can be sure that the developer owns the land, that planning permission has been obtained & I have the re-assurance that if this is wrong & my solicitor misses that I will be compensated.

I won't of course be compensated if the estate agent has lied about potential returns, & why should I be? It is up to me to check what rental returns are for example.

I'm not really concerned by people who have over-extended themselves whether through greed or frankly stupidity, I'm sorry for them but they do at least have legal properties. The real losers, & there are thousands of them are the ones who have been conned into buying illegal properties, despite doing every check they could, employing lawyers, in many cases getting mortgages, so the bank will have/should have checked the property was ok. In many cases it was AT THAT TIME, only several years later it's declared illegal & there's a demolition order on it.

There are many reasons why people are not buying at the moment, obviously the current financial situation doesn't help, but the appalling reputation that Spanish property has isn't going to help.

Again, Brian, so true.

"It was taken away from people who wanted to live or retire there, and turned into a speculators playground.  And for those who think investors have always been so well treated in the UK, can I remind you of Equitable life?  "

Houses are not moving in Spain for the same reason they are moving so slowly here - and you can take your pick of reasons for that.  When we finally get out of the fall out from the economic crisis we will find that people once again will return to property "