Spanish legal reforms to boost property industry

Published 07th Feb 2011

An oversupply of properties on the Spanish market may be providing foreign investors with great bargains, but on the home front, the economy continues to suffer. As a result, housing minister Beatriz Corredor launched a full-scale PR initiative on the weekend to lure British buyers back to sunny Spain, with new legal changes to ensure planning permission horror stories among foreign home owners are stamped out.

According to government figures, around 100,000 homes built in the last decade face unresolved planning problems, and instances of permissions being revoked retrospectively after purchase are rife amongst owners. "Here it is like Alice in Wonderland", Charles Svoboda, a Valencia property owner whose home has been under legal dispute for the past eight years, told the Daily Telegraph. "The housing rules may look the same, but actually everything is totally backwards."

The new laws to be brought before Spanish parliament this month will oblige local councils to provide any potential buyer with a document stating the boundaries, land category, utilities access and planning permissions of a property. "If there is no mention of legal proceedings within the document, the person who buys the property through the correct channels will then know there is judicial support", said Ms Corredor.

The changes are the latest in a trend of tightening legal restrictions in the Spanish property market, following a court decision last week which upheld investors' rights to have their deposits returned to them if an off-the-plan development falls through. These positive steps should hopefully begin to reduce the large oversupply still prevalent in the market - there are currently 700,000 unsold homes nationwide, 400,000 of which are near the coast.

Source: ' TMC '

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