When Cristina’s family moved to Calle Antonio López, almost on the edge of Manzanares, in Madrid, she was around 6 or 7 years old. It was the 1950s and, although he doesn’t remember the exact dates, he talks about the tram, the cabins or the dirt floor beneath his feet. His parents obtained rent and a few years later they bought a house on the avenue, on the front line of what is now Madrid Río and upgraded the neighborhood. At 77 years old, this professional nurse sees in danger the roof under which she has lived for half a century and of which she owns 39%. A vulture fund has taken over 61% of the property his brothers inherited, claims a debt that already amounts to several tens of thousands of euros and is awaiting the auction of the apartment.
The real estate drama began with a call. “The vulture fund told me they bought 61% of my house and I had 39% left. At that point they warned me that I would have to buy it back or they would auction it off. “I was speechless,” she explains. Given this situation, Cristina could not even exercise her right of first refusal. “I didn’t have it, they didn’t tell me,” he laments.
“We have always heard about pro-indiviso companies, which buy debts and houses and end up evicting the tenants. In our neighborhoods and cities we see many forms of investors or vultures, from the big ones, whom we already know, to medium-sized investors,” explains Mercedes Revuelta, housing rights activist and member of various social movements. She points out that when these companies want to keep a house someone lives in, the only way to do it is to “extort,” in one way or another. “Always”.
In March 2017, the company Elite Invergest SL presented a procedure for sharing the property. At that time, the court declared the indivisibility of the house, accepted the dissolution of the proindiviso and ordered the sale by public auction. This procedure was stopped, but in January 2020, the fund demanded from Cristina the amount equivalent to the rent that she had not been able to collect for the property. The company had estimated the average income of the area, at the height of the rental boom in the city of Madrid, and estimated that for her 60%, the woman, who was then 73 years old, would have to pay 21.71 euros per day . . More than 650 euros per month. At the time of the conviction, the amount exceeded 15,500 euros, and this amount continued to increase day by day.
Cristina then alleged that this house had been her family home “practically since her birth” and that the company, professionally dedicated to the purchase and sale of real estate, was carrying out an “anti-social and abusive exercise of the law”. According to this judgment, to which elDiario.es had access, Elite Invergest SL, which acquired 61% of the property for 36,000 euros, which it then valued at 253,498 euros, had offered the woman to leave the house during the time . of the year corresponding to this percentage, i.e. 8 months.
The court ruled on the merits: the “exclusive and exclusive” use was “illegitimate” and Cristina had to pay 15,500 euros to Elite Invergest SL. The auction never happened, but Cristina’s debt continued to grow. Today, it exceeds 40,000 euros. And that’s when the auction was reactivated. “They expect you to be up to your eyeballs in debt, because you can’t leave, and then they keep it for nothing, because since I owe them, they will give me 1,000 or 5,000 euros and find myself on the street,” laments Cristina.
Legal equipment
“It’s a piece of equipment. It started in 2017, when the vulture fund became aware of the situation and took over 60% of the house. This is where the legal engineering begins: the company wishes to liquidate the house and, as it is an indivisible asset, requests that it be put up for auction. At the same time, they began another procedure some time later. For years they have put him in debt, and now that his debt is high, they are launching the auctions they had in mind. to wait for“explains Mario Álvaro, of the Cano&Sánchez law firm, led by Santiago J. Cano, who handled the case.
The fact is that beyond moral considerations, the procedure is based on legality. “Another thing is that they are going to remove an elderly person from their home, with operations behind their back and with a lot of malice,” considers Álvaro.
“The network generated is increasingly broad and complex,” explains the spokesperson for the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH), Juanjo Ramón, who regrets that there is “no type of will or measure to prevent them from doing so.” things like that. “They have the money and the power and they can find themselves in situations like this, get into inheritance issues, go to auction and, for four dollars, keep the house, regardless of what happens to third-party owners.”
The situation is even more perverse and is reminiscent of the episodes experienced after the bursting of the real estate bubble. If such an auction is void, the owners can agree to purchase the property for 75% of its appraised value. “This is a very old practice used by banks. When the auctions of the apartments they had taken over were abandoned, the law allowed them to keep 75% of them, even if part had already been paid by the family.
In the midst of the bubble, Cristina obtained a mortgage to buy a house where she could go after her father left, although she continued to live in the family home. “I left all my savings there, 80,000 euros,” he explains. It was a time when credit flowed, given the results, with little control. In 2013, the Community of Madrid approved its forced retirement plan for health workers and this nurse, who planned to stay in the hospital until age 70, found herself out of work. “My work has always been my refuge and my calm,” he remembers with nostalgia. She was also unable to pay the mortgage. He stopped paying. A seizure procedure is underway on this house, which is in a situation of abandonment because it cannot meet the charges.
“I have nowhere to go,” she repeats in a firm voice, but horrified by her housing and health situation. “As I don’t cry, I somatize it.” Last month, he went to the emergency room with severe pain in his side. “He had a spot on his left lung.” Then, a pulmonologist. “And a nodule in the right kidney.” He is now waiting for the result of a scan with the fear of an oncological diagnosis. “They told me they might have to remove my lung and what should I do, sick and on the street?
