Buying country properties

[PeterC]

I posted the below message in reply to a message on another group, I thought some members here maybe interested in this subject.

Quote:
In this area it is now vitually impossible to find a old country property (cheap or not cheap), that does not have problems. The most common are:

The escritura has not been registered and cannot be, because ownership
details are vague.

Land and property has been illegally split.
Local councils have granted planning permission for building works and land splits, small print at the bottom says although they have granted permission, final approval must be given by the Junta de Andalucia, who rarely approve.

Numerous Brits around here, encouraged by Brit agents have accepted a piece of paper with escritura written on the top, have assumed that this is the deed and the house and land is theirs, only to find latter that the property is not registered, an illegal land split has been made, etc.
As I said, it is now virtually impossible to find a property in this area, that is free of these problems. So if buying be aware.
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A reply to this said:
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You are absolutely right Peter. The south of Spain is a housing disaster at the moment and the Junta de Andulcia is an even greater disaster. The lawyer I mentioned in pevious postings is inundated with work from clients who go to him clutching pieces of paper with Escritura written somewhere on it and which they believe gave someone the right to convert a goat shed into 300 apartments in the National Park. He reckons that many Brits and others are quite happily sat at home blissfully unaware that they spent everything on an illegal property which is quite likely to be knocked down sometime in the future.

Many others have asked for builders to find them land upon which to build houses and at the end demanded their fully legal escritura and proudly display it for all of their friends to see to show how smart they have been. Unfortunately, in many cases the escritura is for the land only with the house having been illegally constructed.
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[Ben]

Thanks Peter . Wow, the situation really is bad. It is incredible that the lawyers who are in charge of overseeing these sales are not held accountable for making sure everything is done legally.

[PeterC]

Thanks Peter . Wow, the situation really is bad. It is incredible that the lawyers who are in charge of overseeing these sales are not held accountable for making sure everything is done legally.

The reason being, that in many cases the lawyers are in league with the agents.

I was lucky, I sold my Marbella flat and brought my current house in six weeks flat. Although the mill & house is well over 200 years old, it had had one sole owner for the previous 54 years and was registered in her name. A land split had been made before the sale, but this had been done legally and a nota simple informativa made registered and attached to the escritura.

But the average first time Brit owner does no know what to look for and does not understand the documentation. They have heard of the magic word escritura and and when they see escritura de compraventa the top of the paper, they are happy. They trust the agent and the lawyer to see everything is in order.

Nearly all the local agents are foreigners and some don't under understand the documentation either. They become real estate agents when they arrive in Spain, the same applies to a lot of "builders".

The moral being don't trust / hire foreigners.

[Culebronchris]

I work for some people who sell furniture, do up houses and who recently have gone back into selling properties. I do things like take the photos, maintain the websites etc. I probably fall into the list of people not to be trusted!! Mind you they weren't foreigners in Marbella or Catral or Cienpozos or .....

It is very hard sometimes when I go to someone who wants to sell their house and ask to see the escritura. Half of them (literally) are bodge ups. Not the sort of thing where someone has built an extension or a garage without getting proper permission, but where the whole house is dodgy. Even those with straight escrituras don't have proper catastro details.

Then there is the profit taking. Forty thousand euros "commission" on a house of less than 200,000 is not unusual.

The Spanish do it, the Brits do it, I suppose the Armenians do it.

[landlady]

Read this today on another site.

Monday, January 08, 2007
Catral Mayor, Developers Charged in Homes Scam
VALENCIA — The mayor and four developers have been charged with perverting the course of justice in connection with an illegal building homes scandal which threatens the homes of hundreds of expats.

The socialist mayor of Catral, near Alicante, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Leal and the promoters, were charged by a judge with building 1,270 villas without any planning permission.

The charges come after regional government officials sent shockwaves through the expat community of Catral near Alicante after stripping the town hall of its housing powers and threatening to dissolve the local council over the scandal.

Hundreds of the homes have been built inside a nature reserve, with many of them sold to expats seeking a new life in the sun or a holiday home.

The rest have gone up on green belt land next to farms and orchards to the south of Catral, whose foreign population has rocketed in the past five years following a construction boom in the area.

Last October, the regional director of housing threatened to demolish all illegal housing built on protected land.

Esteban Gonzalez Pons, director of housing for the Generalitat Valenciana regional government body, said: “The homes built on protected land inside El Hondo Nature Reserve will all be demolished. The future of the remaining homes will be studied on an individual basis. We’ve already taken away the housing powers of the local council and will take away its town planning powers and seek its dissolution as a local authority unless it recognises more than 1,200 houses have been built illegally and proposes solutions.”

He added: “We will not hesitate in acting against other town halls that break the law, whichever political party holds power.”

Expats affected by the shock move were consulting lawyers to try to save their homes.

Many have invested their life savings – paying an average of EUR 200,000 for three-bedroom homes with swimming pools they thought were legal.

In the wake of the original scandal, British expat Dennis Archer, who has bought a home near Catral with wife Pat, said: “Our house was finished on time and was very nicely built. The problem our solicitors failed to notice was neither our home or the others on the complex had planning permission. Our dreams of a new life in the sun have turned into a nightmare.”

Another expat, who asked not to be named, added: “I moved out to Spain with my wife and two young children and wanted to do everything by the book. The estate agents put us in touch with a local solicitor who assured us everything was fine. Now we discover we’re living in a house that has been built illegally and is likely to be demolished. I invested most of my life savings emigrating. We face financial ruin.”

Thousands of expats have set up home inland from the Costa Blanca around Alicante in the past five years.

Across Spain, thousands of foreign buyers have fallen foul of cowboy builders who build without permission and dodgy estate agents suspected of buying the silence of corrupt town hall officials.

Story from expatica.com

[PeterC]

[quote=Culebronchris;15079]I work for some people who sell furniture, do up houses and who recently have gone back into selling properties. I do things like take the photos, maintain the websites etc. I probably fall into the list of people not to be trusted!!

You could well be:) , as I mentioned in my message, I am referring to the people who step of planes at Malaga, drive an hour into the county, buy/rent a house and set themselves up as house agents, builders etc. In this case of house agents, 90% of them in this area fall into this category. They know little or nothing about the laws / regulations concerning property.