“It's never too late if the bliss is good”, says a very famous Spanish Word of Wisdom. And effectively, slowly but surely, the Spanish Court´s Doctrine is finally giving protection and recognizing their rights to be refunded to the huge amount of purchasers of real estate in Spain, many of them with AIFOS, that have lose the money paid to the promoters in account of their “dreamt” Spanish houses that never were built or finalized for many different reasons, and were not even given, neither by the promoters and/or by the banks to where those funds transferred or deposited, with the perceptive Bank Guarantees to cover the above indicated risks.
It has been a long hard road to all those customers who saw how, despite having paid to the promoters, as significantly AIFOS, important amounts “on account” to acquire their houses, “on plan”, first saw that these houses were never to be built or if it came to be, was with very great delays and poor finishing conditions and, lately, when they decided to cancel their contracts and ask the promoters for their money to be refunded, they found such promoters, often, or had disappeared or had been declared bankrupt and having never received, despite being their legitimate right, the Bank Guarantees that covered these risks and that would have allowed them to recover from the banks those sums through friendly or judicial execution thereof.
But from recently, this situation has radically changed as not only the Spanish Supreme Court, but also many of the High Provincial Courts are recognizing in most of their judgments, the right of the purchasers to be refunded on that amounts directly from the banks in which “special accounts” the advanced payments for the purchase of the properties were lodged by the promoters, separately & independently of have been given or not with any “individual certificate of guarantee or insurance policy” either by the promoter, by the bank or by the involved insurance company.
This supposes a significant victory of the “justice” in its higher expression and a very relevant progress in the protection of the customer rights by the Courts in Spain, that country where so many foreign buyers excited trusted and, finally, begin to show that their expectations were not entirely in vain because, although the stubborn reality of the facts and the economy has prevented them from enjoying the house with which at the time dreamed, at least will allow compensation for all the inconveniences suffered by recovering their money together with the legal interest, (6% from the moment of the different payments), generated by it.
In the particular case of AIFOS purchasers, and as a consequence of the decision of its bankruptcy trustees of declaring the universal legal cancelling of all the AIFOS purchase contracts as per the AIFOS Bankruptcy Court approved order of 13-04-2015 for the trustees liquidation plan report dated 02-02-2014, which is one of the previous procedural requirements to proceed against the banks, the way is widely open to start those court actions.
In Martínez - Echevarría lawyers we are specialists in real estate law, banking law and litigation. We are also one of the most experienced Spanish law firms in defending such matters representing English speaking clients.
Do not leave the time goes by without recovering your money. Feel free of contacting to our offices to be attended by our lawyers.
Autor: José Manuel Cerviño Sosa
