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Six out of every 10 evictions in the Spanish capital are taking place in public housing units that have been sold over recent years by the Madrid regional government and City madrid 300x200 - 60% of Madrid evictions are from public flats sold to investment fundsHall to investment funds, according to data included in a report from the Treasury Ministry.

According to the data in the ministry report, of the 111 eviction cases registered between February and June of this year, 65 were in houses that had been sold by Madrid administrations.

Between February and June, the report states, there were 50 evictions that took place in properties sold by the Municipal Company for Housing and Land (EMVS) to an investment fund. Another five evictions took place in flats sold by the Madrid Housing Institute (Ivima) to another fund; and 10 more were related to housing from the EMVS and Ivima. In total, 65 of 111.

In terms of evictions carried out by banks, the report registers 17, which works out at 15%, while another 29 evictions were brought about by private landlords. There were also 73 evictions from illegally occupied properties.
...continue reading "60% of Madrid evictions are from public flats sold to investment funds"

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Spain’s Constitutional Court has suspended - provisionally - the law passed by the Junta de Andalucía in October to prevent families with limited financial resources being evicted from their homes.

46353 1251686 foto 1 300x225 - Andalucía’s Anti-eviction Law Suspended by CourtThe law, described as a measure to ensure the social function of a property, allowed the authority to temporarily expropriate the use of a property repossessed by a bank so that its original owners could still live in it.

The Constitutional Court has admitted the central government appeal against the law designed by the Junta de Andalucía to ease home evictions by temporarily expropriating the use of houses seized by banks and allowing their owners to continue living in them.

The Andalusian law was passed on October 1st and revoked a previous decree on the same matter which had been passed in April and was also the subject of an appeal on grounds of it being unconstitutional.
...continue reading "Andalucía’s Anti-eviction Law Suspended by Court"

The European Court of Justice have ruled that Spain’s mortgage law is incompatible with a European directive on abusive practices in consumer contracts, opening the door to more legal protection for households facing eviction from their family home.

mortgage news 300x219 - European Court rules Spanish mortgage law is abusiveThe ruling comes in response to a question posed by a Barcelona court in connection with the eviction of Moroccan immigrant Mohammed Aziz from his home in January 2011, after he failed to meet mortgage payments on a 138,000-euro loan granted to him by savings bank CatalunyaCaixa in July 2007.

The ruling will apply to all eviction cases now being processed across Europe but might not be applied retroactively, as pressure groups have been calling for. Amendments to the mortgage law, which is more than a century old, are now going through parliament, and it appeared as if the government was waiting for the Luxembourg-based court’s judgment before proceeding with the passage of the draft law.
...continue reading "European Court rules Spanish mortgage law is abusive"

The number of home loans granted by banks in November of last year fell for the 31st month in a row, with the pace of the decline accelerating, according to figures released Monday by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

773829 1317272 1 300x225 - Mortgage market still languishing in the doldrumsThe INE said the number of mortgages awarded dropped 31.6 percent in the penultimate month of last year to only 19,115. That was just above the lowest figure ever recorded, which was the previous month when they declined 14.4 percent to 19,105.

The average mortgage granted in November dropped 4 percent from a year earlier to 105,216 euros.

In the first 11 months of the year, the number of home loans awarded by banks fell 33.1 percent from the same period a year earlier, while the total amount of credit granted declined 38.5 percent.

With over a quarter of the population out of work, demand for mortgages has been muted, while credit conditions have tightened significantly. According to Public Works Ministry figures, house prices have fallen by 27.1 percent from their peaks at the start of 2008 when a decade-long property boom started to unravel. However, the falls have been insufficient to run down a huge pile of unsold housing built up during the boom.

Tax incentives to buy the family home have also been removed as a result of the government’s austerity drive.

Via: elpais.com

 The IRS tax will substitute Euribor next April 2012 in Spain

irs - Interest Rate Swap will make Things Harder for Homebuyers in SpainAs it appears today in The Washington Post, central banks expand system of ‘swapping’ money to ease credit crunch. The Interest Rate Swap (IRS) tax will substitute Euribor next April 2012 in Spain.

The Washington Post explains it this way: "The swap lines are a global form of the central bankers’ “lender of last resort” role, backing the world banking system.

The way it works is the Fed lends dollars to, say, the ECB, in exchange for euros of comparable value. The ECB pays interest, and lends out the dollars to banks in the euro currency area that have obligations in dollars but are temporarily unable to borrow dollars to meet them.

The swap lines themselves are not new — they were first introduced in December 2007 in response to deepening difficulties of banks funding themselves. They were used in vast amounts during the financial crisis in the fall of 2008 and were reintroduced in May 2010 when Europe’s financial troubles worsened".

Substituting Euribor with the Interest Rate Swap tax, though, will make Spanish banks interest grow up to one point. Consequently, homebuyers will end up paying higher interests in their mortgages.

Not so sure this will make things easier for mere citizens.