Illegal Building: The Expat Nightmare

Spain is notorious for illegal builders, but how bad is the problem really?

If it's not the state grabbing half your land, it's muggers grabbing your handbag; if it's not these, then it's the media telling everyone you live in a hell hole dominated by beer swilling expats, corrupt officials and murderous thieves.

Add to which, these days, an increasing number of tales of bad builders; at best incompetent, at worst criminal.

The bad shepherds are finding new ways to fleece their ever increasing flock of lambs to the slaughter. But how bad is it, really? The answer is, bad, but mainly only for those who fail to do their homework.
Sally and Joe Alden, originally from Bradford, in Britain, bought their home near Calpe, on the Costa Blanca, from a British estate agent, acting on behalf of a British vendor.

No, you don't need a solicitor, he told them, I'll do all the searches for you.

Betty Anggold was assured her house would be ready by October, 2005 but it wasn't. nor by November, or even by Christmas. It still isn't. It wasn't until they moved in that they learned that proposed development adjoining their land would cost them at least 25,000 Euros in infrastructure charges.

Furious at this apparent deception, they took both agent and vendor to court.

They lost, and had the defendant's costs awarded against them.

The reason for the court's decision? Simple, the oldest rule in the book: Caveat Emptor; Let the Buyer beware.

The onus, they were told, was on them to have researched the property; the agent and vendor, who both knew of the proposed charges, and did not tell them, walked away, and the Aldens were left some 50,000 Euros out of pocket.

Outside Spain, rules and regulations are to be obeyed. In Britain, for instance, they employ a solicitor to carry out searches when buying a house, even though it is usually safe to assume that full planning permission was originally granted.

However, when Britons buy in Spain, alas, all too often they make the same fatal assumptions, only to find that their new home is completely illegal, and should never even have been built. Frank and Billie Somers, from Sussex, in Britain, bought a tumbledown finca near La Herradura, Granada.

They were assured by the agent that they could demolish it and rebuild, anywhere on their 18,000 square metre plot.

Too late, they learned that they could only rebuild on the original site of the ruin, (which backs on to a dog pound!) right against a main road, and only to the original size.

Again, blind trust in what an agent told them had cost them dear.

Most agents are genuine and reliable; most builders trustworthy and dependable.

But enough are not, to have started a whole new genre of horror stories.

Full story from Expatica.com