If you have received notification of a mortgage foreclosure after more than a year without paying your mortgage, don't worry, there is a solution so you don't lose your house. More and more Spaniards are deciding to postpone the payment of their mortgage installments, overwhelmed by their debts or, simply, being unable to cope with the rise in the Euribor and inflation. If you receive the letter from the court along with a lawsuit of more than a hundred folios, you have the possibility of staying in your home if you carry out the procedure that we tell you below.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, mortgage foreclosures on middle-class families, who are economically and socially more established than in previous periods, have skyrocketed. According to experts, this is due to the increase in the Euribor, which in some cases has doubled the mortgage payment; and the uncontrolled increase in the CPI (Consumer Price Index), which produces a decrease in general purchasing power.
According to Asoban Abogados, a law firm with experts in banking law that has been helping hundreds of citizens since 2020 throughout Spain, including the Canary Islands, "from the moment the first mortgage payment is missed, it takes a minimum of 20 months for the lawsuit to reach the debtor. When the mortgagor has not paid the mortgage for more than a year, the creditor can begin the procedures to prepare the mortgage foreclosure, and the debtor will begin to be notified by burofaxes, ending with the receipt of the notice of mortgage foreclosure of the house." However, if you are not in a position to pay what you owe, plus what you have left on your mortgage, plus interest and costs, you have another option: "Object within a period of days to prevent your house from being auctioned off."
What procedural options are there in mortgage foreclosure
I have received the mortgage foreclosure notice, what do I do? Following the advice of the lawyers, you have 10 days to defend yourself. Otherwise, it will be considered that the right to do so has been waived and, therefore, if the objection to the mortgage foreclosure is filed after the deadline, it will not be admitted for processing.
In that time, you have to get a lawyer and that lawyer has time to write an objection to defend your house, which has probably been the biggest investment of your life. In this sense, Asoban Abogados emphasizes the difficulty of finding a lawyer specialized in mortgage foreclosures and also of getting a reasonable price for the defense, given the haste with which you have to react to that mortgage foreclosure lawsuit. There are only 10 days and desperation can lead you to accept any service offer that is presented to you. To file the objection, a lawyer specialized in mortgage foreclosure is required.
Can they take my house?
If you receive the mortgage foreclosure of your home, remember that you have possibilities of winning, mainly due to procedural defects and abusive clauses, or at least substantially reduce what they claim from you, and if necessary, be able to leave the property reaching a favorable agreement. In addition, the lawyers of Asoban Abogados explain that "after an objection, you could end up having the reins of the negotiation with the bank, in the worst case scenario you will have gained time, and in this case it is money." This firm often asks its clients "how much does it cost to live in a house like yours if you were renting: we can delay the procedure for years", simply calculate how much you would save.
From this firm, unfortunately, "an exponential increase in mortgage foreclosures in the coming months" is expected. They remind that to file a mortgage foreclosure, a minimum of 12 months of non-payment must have passed, plus the time that must elapse with the different notifications that must be made, and the vulnerability reports to the city council, therefore, there are many families that will be foreclosed soon for the non-payments of these last two years. If this could be your case, remember to go to a specialized lawyer who, like the team of Asoban Abogados, can accompany you throughout the process and thus prevent the bank from kicking you out of your own house.
