It's taken us nearly 2 years but we have finally recieved payment of arrears from the bank which owns a number of repossessed properties in our development. They are also now paying on a monthly basis. It's been hard work and there are more properties due for repossession which we are keeping a watch on.
The court officials have to contact our concierge for access when they bring notifications for repossession so we are at least able to track them from first notice to change of locks, this does help us. Unfortunately there seems to be a delay between the locks being changed and the bank's ownership being registered at the land registry, but eventually we are able to get a nota simple which shows the date the bank became the owner. Our adminstrators/lawyers assure us that this delay is just part of the reposession process.
We had to go to court to reclaim approx €34.000 in arrears. After voting to authorise our president to reclaim the debt at our AGM, our lawyers took the case to court under what I understand to be a debt monitoring process, we asked for X amount, the bank disagreed with the amount but the judge told the bank to make settlement within 15 days or face a court trial. With these first debts there was some doubt about the date of transfer of a few properties before our current president took over, so we settled on a mutually acceptable figure and the bank did pay up.
I think it is vital that administrators monitor these properties/debts and that the president is making sure that checks are made regularly at the land registry. We also voted in a representative of the bank as vice president and hope that this will help things run more smoothly in future. However we are under no illusions about the way the banks operate and will keep a close eye on future repossessions. The bank's ownership does have to be registered at the land registry so it should always be possible to reclaim the debt in court.
Certainly in our case the bank did advertise some of their properties before the debts were paid, although fortunately none were sold. It's incredible that they would sell properties which have debts attached, but of course the prospective buyer should be asking for the debt certificate from the community administrator. I doubt any Spaniard would buy without doing this.
I hope you can make some progress with this. The bank will certainly ask that all outstanding debts are paid (including IBI) before agreeing dacion en pago, it's a pity that they aren't as prompt with paying their own way.