Confessions of a Real Estate Agent!

Until a few years ago I used to assure my clients that in Andalusia at least all properties which were not 100% legal could be legalised with the help of a competent lawyer, efficient Notary, a scrupulous registrar and a sympathetic politician (be it a mayor or a councillor for urban matters). That is how it used to work as recently as 2002. That was the year when the regional government came out of twenty years of voluntary hibernation and realised that the rats had emptied out the larder and indiscriminate building, resembling an overspill from a giant Lego, set had taken place. It is the normal practice of politicians in power to find ways of blaming others for their own mistakes. So The Junta de Andalucia proceeded to shut the stable door( the horse had already bolted), and beat the hell out of everyone left inside by issuing new normatives regulating urban and building matters in such a strange way, that no one can now understand what can legally be built, if anything!

The new normatives basically castrated all local councils whose main source of income was the issuing of building licences and the negotiated agreements with promoters, who would part with vast sums of money in order to see the their cheaply bought rustic land converted into building land.
Honest councils used the money received from these activities to improve the infrastructure of their towns and villages, while other not so honest politicians improved their own and their family’s bank accounts. Nobody in their right mind, with a minimum of social consciousness, likes to see the destruction of the Mediterranean coast or the spoiling of the Andalucian country side. Therefore clear laws, albeit too late, that regulate the building industry in Andalusia would be welcomed if and when they arrive.

What’s not welcome is the Andalucian Government’s current strategy of persecuting individual property owners, by the use of inquisition like tactics (aided and abetted by the notoriously dense and bureaucratic justice system) to the point that anyone who owns a legal property in the country side could be receiving hefty fines and in some cases demolition orders. What this region really needs (apart from a change in government ASAP) is an amnesty for all individual proprietors who possess a legal Escritura for their property, because the majority bought in good faith (advised by lawyers) and paid their transfer taxes, registration and notary fees.

Although personally I think it is a waste of public money, I understand the need to arrest and try corrupt politicians, speculators and promoters, who have made themselves rich by breaking the vague and confusing existing laws. What I cannot understand is that the weight of the judicial system should fall on individuals and families, most of them from northern European countries, who acted in good faith. The Andalucian government is projecting a banana republic image abroad, which will take a generation to forget, as well as damaging the already tenuous economy of the region.