“I want to get rid of the house no matter what.”

She assures that at the beginning she was “serious”; that he entered the house to live with his mother and paid the rent religiously, “but after a year they argued and he left”. Then she shared the apartment with a friend and exactly the same thing happened, “because she argues with everyone,” she adds. And he explains that it was at that moment that he stopped paying his rent, claiming that he had lost his job, and that his “ordeal” began.

Since then, Esther, who even offered her delinquent tenant a job, has been trying to get her home back through civil and not-so-civil means, using the services of a famous eviction company – “they took 4,000 euros from me and they did nothing, it was a scam”, she says – and by calling on the services of a private detective, who has gathered evidence proving that her tenant I worked as a cleaner or took care of the children, but I was paid “in the brig”. In addition, Esther claims to have also discovered that Leydi Lorena He sublet the rooms in the apartment.

Expulsion

But none of that helped his curious squatter vacate the property. For almost a year, Esther has also had legal proceedings open to evict her tenant, but after all this time, she is still waiting for an oral trial, having gone through a cumbersome bureaucratic procedure in which her tenant did not even show up for the mediation process.

At this point, Leidy Lorena owes Esther around 17,000 euros, assures the owner. “It costs you money, it costs you your physical and mental health and it’s horrible. What I want is to get rid of the house no matter what. It is for all these reasons that Esther is selling her property today, even with the defaulting tenant inside. The price? Around 60,000 euros, four times less than what he says is his real market value, around 260,000 euros, “because “When I rented it, it had been recently renovated.”he says.

Esther’s case is no longer an isolated case. Since the government approved in 2020, as part of the social shield, the moratorium on evictions for non-payment of rent for vulnerable groups, sales of apartments with “insects inside”, as they are called in the real estate sector, have multiplied. So much so that today they represent 3% of the market, with more than 23,000 units on sale throughout Spain, according to data from Idealistic.

In provinces like Barcelonathe second most populous in the country, the percentage of houses with squatters for sale out of the total is 7.9% and follows in descending order Seville (6.6%), Toledo (5.3%), Huelva (5.1%) and Almeria (5.1%). In Madridthe main market of the country’s residential sector, also represent 2.7% of the total properties for sale.

Sources from the largest Spanish real estate portal emphasize that they do not have measures linking the moratorium on evictions to this growing phenomenon, but they assure that they have been observing for some time how more and more houses appeared in the comments of which they recognized that they were “squatted”, so they even decided to generate a new search filter for this type of property. “This was generating ‘noise’ for people who were looking for accommodation to move into, which is why we decided to create a new filter that would allow them to be removed from the searches of users who were not interested, or to make their search easier for those who were looking for them,” they emphasize.

The growth of this type of operations reflects Carlos Alonso, director of Tecnocasa in Aragon and Valenciawhich explains that the two houses are sold with delinquent tenants inside and with illegal squatters, but assures that there are more cases of the former. Regarding the profile of the sellers, he emphasizes that they are generally “normal people, from the street”, people who have had an apartment “all their life” and who bought another to rent it out and obtain additional income. “These are problems that really overwhelm them and make them feel a certain helplessness, so many times for them the floor becomes more of a problem than anything else», says the professional, who claims to have seen “real tragedies” due to squatting.

For example, he recounts the case of a man from Valencia who, the second time he went with the police to recover his house by court order, found that the squatter who had to be evicted was no longer there and that the house was squatted by another family. “He was 70 years old and almost had a heart attack. “We had to call the ambulance,” he said.

Buyer Profile

Regarding the party interested in purchasing the house, the professional says that in most cases they are people who want the house to be an investment and not a home, although in the case of Tecnocasa he denies that they are funds that approach their premises to be interested in it. “These are people who They have money saved and pay in cash“, account.

However, these are operations which carry additional risks because the apartments are bought blindly, which also explains the significant discounts for which they are signed. Alonso emphasizes that buyers of this type of house are aware that they are buying a property that probably left destroyed by the occupants. “The buyer can know the surface area he is purchasing or the characteristics of the property thanks to the land registry, but not the condition in which the accommodation will be located. “The majority assumes that they will find it in poor condition,” he explains.

Even with this certainty, the real estate expert assures that this type of assets arouses a lot of interest when there are significant discounts of between 40 and 60%. “If the price is attractive, it sells immediately.”

Contract clauses

Another important point in these operations is the signing of the purchase and sale contract. The Tecnocasa professional emphasizes that it is essential to clarify that possession of the home is not delivered, but only the property, “because possession cannot be delivered given that it is a property in a state of occupation.”

Once the operation is closed, the ball returns to the buyer’s court, who is the one who inherits the battle to evict the squatter or inquiokupa. Santiago Thomas de Carranzamanaging partner and founder of the firm Thomas de Carranza Lawyersstates that in many cases the dispute is resolved through extrajudicial agreements. But if the legal route is chosen, the new owner can formulate a new claim or subrogate himself to the file opened by the former owner of the accommodation if it exists.

The lawyer points out that an attempt is usually made to evict a squatter through criminal usurpation proceedings, the process of which can take time to resolve. more than a year. In the case of delinquent tenants, he assures that they could even be subject to criminal prosecution for fraud, since there could have been a deliberate intention to access housing through a rental contract and then stop paying for it. “But this process takes much longer,” emphasizes Thomás de Carranza.

Regarding the clauses of the contract, the lawyer highlights the importance of declaring in the deed both that possession of an occupied property is being transferred, as well as verifying that the buyer waives any claim derived from the state of conservation of the house. In his case, the lawyer assures that They are opportunistic investors those who are interested in this type of assets. “They are looking for significant savings and They have the financial capacity to withstand the legal process“If it already exists, and if it doesn’t exist, start it or hire a mediation company to talk to the squatters and try to reach an agreement, often with money up front,” he explains.

On the sales side, it also specifies that behind the sale of large portfolios of squatted properties are financial entities that have chosen to get rid of the houses due to their difficulties in being able to manage them or due to the social repercussions that carrying out the evictions has for them.

Extension of the moratorium

In the near future, there may even be more homes with “insider bugs” hitting the market. Because the Government’s partners are now pushing for the moratorium on evictions to be extended until 2026, or even made permanent, as they have since requested. United we can. They are around 60,000 launches of inquiokupas those who are blocked by the rule in force since the pandemic, – even if the Asval association lowers this figure to 30,000 – whose fate could be decided this month.

From the Platform for People Affected by Occupation (PAO) For some time, they have been insistently calling for an end to this measure and they called for it again on November 24 in the Senate. “98% of our affected members have a single home, either owned or rented. We are victims, we are working families, we are citizens and we have rights. We need some kind of measure and believe me, it’s too hard to suffer from squatting, unrest or living in a building belonging to squatting mafias,” defended the PAO spokesperson. Ricardo Bravoin the Upper House.