The Great Spanish Land Grab Law
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How a Spanish regional government created a law to steal land from foreigners and make the foreigners pay for the theft. This blatent theft has been going on since 1994 and both the national Spanish Government and the EU have ruled this law illegal and despite more than 5000 British and Dutch residents of Spain who have now lost their house and land, nothing has been done.
The Valencian government passed the LRAU land grab law to speed up urban development in 1994. This law, known as Ley Reguladora de la Actividad Urbanistica (LRAU), was created to ensure developments were built with sufficient social housing, public services and facilities. However, the law was badly drafted and was soon abused by unscrupulous developers. The abuse has resulted in over 5000 property owners having their land compulsorarily purchased, at prices far below commercial values, and to make matters far worse, receiving huge bills from the developer to pay for certain infrastructure, such as roads, water and electricity. In some cases, not only did the owner of the property lose 50% of his land but also had to pay as much as €50,000 for the infrastructure.
The Spanish land grab law enables property developers to ask that land be reclassified from rural to urban without the owners’ permission. Publication of this change must be made, but only fifteen working days are allowed to make an objection. With many absentee holiday homeowners this notification is entirely inadequate. The Valencia land grab law applies throughout Valencia but it’s effect is felt mainly on the highly developed coastal strip. It is almost entirly aimed at British ex-pats or British holiday home onwers.
The second major problem for British land/villas owners is a problem of fraud between developers/builders and the local major and the local planning officer. People have paid for a villa, only to find out later that it has never been registered on the Register of Land. The seller has disapeared, the local authority claim to now nothing and the registration documents do not exist. In 2008, in the region of south Valencia, 13 town majors and 23 local councilors and 15 civil servants were arrested on suspicsion of fraud. As of today, none of these people have been charged or sent to trial. Eventually, the police will do nothing more and the cases will be droped.
For any interested party, it would be worthwhile having a look at the following blog site. In the meantime thousands of British pensioners have not only lost their homes and their savings, but can’t afford to come home. Now I know that in context of the starving people of Africa, and to do-gooder Geldoff, this is a drop in the ocean but its happening to our people, not strangers. Think about it. Visit http://abusosjan.blogspot.com/
1 Comment
We live in the South of France but have a house also between Marbella and Estepona. We have not had this exact problem but are in the middle of something which has taken our breath away. We bought the house in Oct 08 and paid all the taxes etc via the lawyer. We are now being asked to pay 15,000 more Euros as the Tax officials have decided to re-value our house! Then tax us on this rediculous figure. The costs of appealing mean that we would have to get them to move so significantly for it to be worth while. I cannot believe that this is lawful- it certainly is not moral. We are told that the authorities are bankrupt and so looking for soft targets.
Be careful with any dealings in Spain – that is the advice for anyone.