DOWNANDOUT

I thought I might provide you all an update since my last thread 'Tenant Eviction Nightmare' (thread now closed).

Tenant Eviction Nightmare

The tenant is still there and we are still going through the court procedures to evict him.

I've bullet pointed the history of events to make it easier to follow.

1. Went through courts to evict tenant for non-payment of rent - tenant was granted 'Free Legal Aid' .
2. Courts decided in our favour - judge instructed tenant to pay 18k euros before he could lodge an appeal.
3. Tenant paid 18k the day before the eviction and raised an appeal to a higher court 'Audiencia Provinciales' - I don't think he was allowed free legal aid for 'higher court' appeals.
4. 4 months later , the court of appeal judged in our favour again - gave the tenant 20 days to appeal to the ' Supreme Court Of Spain' .
5. The tenant decided he would appeal to the Supreme Court of Spain - he fabricated falsely paid invoices for building works done in the interior of the flat up to 10.5k euros (in the month he moved into the flat in 2007).
6. The Supreme Court pushed back his appeal saying they could not accept the appeal unless the tenant had proved he had paid all rent arrears up to date (which he hadn't).
7. Tenant claimed he'd paid our rent to some charitable organisation .
8. The Supreme Court ruled that his appeal was to be rejected and allowed the tenant another chance to appeal against their rejection
9. The tenant did appeal , knowing full well that by doing so , the Supreme Court would take over a month to reply because they go on holiday for the whole of August.
10. September arrives and we hear from our Lawyer that the Supreme Court rejected the case and pushed it back to original Denia Court that raised the first eviction notice.
11. As soon as that happens the tenant is allowed free legal aid again , he sacks his current lawyer to delay court proceedings.
12. After another 2 weeks has passed and the eviction order is fast tracked and we are told the tenant will be evicted in 7 days.
13. 4 days before eviction , the eviction order is suspended by the court because the tenant has not got legal representation- apparently one cannot proceed with the eviction notification unless the tenant has legal representation (which is why he sacked his lawyer in point 11 above).
14. Denia Court orders the tenant to recruit a new free legal aid lawyer - which he does after about 10 days.
15. 2 weeks later we receive notification from the court that the tenants lawyer refuses to support the tenants request for him to raise an appeal called 'Recurso De Queja' (there is a time limit of 10 days to do this). The lawyer considers this appeal to not be viable and does not wish to continue with the case. The period for this appeal has been suspended, and the court has given the lawyer 10 days to make written allegations why he won't represent the tenant. The court will decide what to do then but obviously this issue will delay the eviction for some time.
16. The lawyer is forced to raise a 'Recurso De Queja' on behalf of the tenant- On trying to translate the contents, it's basically asking the Supreme Court to reconsider their 'initial appeal rejection' due to the fact that the tenants previous lawyer did not instruct him to pay all outstanding rent before 1st appeal was made to the Supreme Court (he still hadn't paid 1 yr overdue rent since his last 'bulk backlog rent' payment of 18k to avoid 1st eviction).
17. 3 months later - no response from Supreme Court - so I attempted to use their website to determine the status of our case but it was asking for all sorts of registration references , etc .
18. I informed my solicitor and he couldn't find any 'court references' so he checked where the defendants lawyer sent the appeal . He noticed that the lawyer sent the 'Recurso De Queja' to the WRONG COURT ! They sent it to the 'Audience Provinciales ' instead of the Supreme Court.

So we have been waiting for 3 months for nothing and could have raised an eviction order after they had missed the 10 day deadline for submitting the 'Recurso De Queja' to the Supreme Court (back in November 2019).

19. Eviction order now raised to SCNE Denia - awaiting a confirmed date for eviction but worryingly , the Denia Court have still allowed the tenant the option of appealing against their eviction judgement. That doesn't make any sense to me because he has already appealed to the highest court in the land and failed. Apparently every court judgement allows the option to appeal against .

Anyhow it has taken us 4 years to get this far and I have been informally advised by a few different lawyers that we might need to consider alternative means to remove this tenant from our property. Obviously they are inferring methods that do not use the Spanish court system.

amideislas

Jeesus. (shakes head, rolls eyes). Unbelievable. You couldn't make it up.

mierda.

jonboy

Goes to show that the law can be an ass all over the world. I feel for you.

The UK can throw up some crazy landlord/tenant situations that seem to defy any hope of a legal solution.

missile

I hope those who are considering buy to let in Spain read your post

el collado kid

What can i say.Why do people put so much effort into acting this way it is a horror story i hope it ends for you soon.My best wishes and fingers crossed

Mark604

I remember Part I and thought it interesting. Now a relative is in the same position as you (though way back in the process) that interest doubles.

Question - how was it determined that the invoices for building work were false and fabricated? Was it as simple as contacting the supposed builder to ask if the work had been done? Or was the builder fictitious as well - or - no builder was employed and the tenant said he had done the work and the invoices were for materials etc?

I ask because the tenant of the relative moved into a newly renovated apartment (obviously paid for by the relative) but now is saying when he did move in, he paid several thousand Euros in renovation.

DOWNANDOUT

The reason we knew it was fabricated was because the previous tenant (a nice British expat pensioner) lived in our flat for 20 yrs (paid rent on time -fantastic tenant). No issues about mold on the ceilings, walls , rooms , hallway , kitchen , etc . The new Spanish tenant moved in within 1 month of the old tenant dying and paid us rent without problem for 2 years without one mention of mold to us or our letting agent.
Then when the court case appeal to Supreme Court happened he produces this invoice from some local building company listing over 10k euros cost to remove mold from the whole flat + redecorating. The date of the invoice is in the month he moved in !!! Why would any tenant pay £10k euros of his own money to repair and redecorate our flat on just moving in?

I checked the building company and found that it was owned by the same man who was trying to become mayor of the local district for a Spanish political party (for which my tenant was also the Provincial President). Imho, the tenant and the owner of that company fabricated invoices to try and get through the 'front door process of the Supreme Court' claiming we owed the tenant more monies than he owed us (therefore to avoid eviction for non-payment of rent).

Both of them knew that by getting past the 'front door ' process of the Supreme Court would mean that our case would not be heard for 5 years (because of a backlog of cases). The tenant would be allowed to stay in our flat unless we paid some enormous fee to have him removed while the case is pending. If after 5 years, the tenant wins the case, we would have to forfeit that fee, allow the tenant back into our flat and compensate him for all the inconvenience we caused him. We would not be allowed to sell our property while the case was still pending.

I would never have believed this would/could happen via Spanish legal system but its obviously completely biased towards the tenant and they even offer them free legal aid if required. The courts do not seem to have any process to check the validity of the evidence and its easy for people to produce fraudulent documentation to try and win their case.

For lawyers to keep pressing landlords to go through the legal system and forego alternative methods of getting rid of tenants is a joke ! All they are doing is fleecing the landlords with huge lawyer/court costs via a biased court system.

We have spent over 24k euros in lost salary , lawyer and court costs so far but we were lucky to get the 18k back from the tenant who made an error when he appealed to the Supreme Court (he should have paid us another 3k rent owing). If he hadn't made that error , his case would have been allowed through the Supreme Court 'front door' process and our eviction case would be stuck in that 5 year backlog.

Opinion

I'd have sent a couple of very large men to have a "conversation" with them. If they want to play silly buggers then why shouldn't you? Could have solved this in 4 minutes; **** 4 years.

jonboy

It maybe that the Tenant would then return the favour upon the Landlord and also involve the police in the matter. It has already been made clear that the Tenant is far from resource-less.

Slowlycatchymonkey

Wow! I read up about renting in Spain and saw that a lot of landlords require bank guarantees n references due to it being incredibly hard to evict a non-paying tenant as the legal system is in their favour but blimey that is something else. So if he is getting to start the whole thing back from the beginning could this mean (heaven forbid) another 5yrs of appeals n mucking about?
What exactly could happen if he returned home one day to find the locks changed and two or three likely looking characters were staying there for a while?

snikpoh

He could denounce the landlord and even take him to court - the police would escort him back in to the property.

Slowlycatchymonkey

What is denouncing the landlord?
Im wondering if a lawyer is suggesting going outside of the courts to resolve it if this is a likely occurrence.

missile

A friend of mine runs a property management company . He waited until the tenants were out and changed the locks. Tennant called the police. He was arrested and spent the night in a cell, before appearing in court the next day.

DOWNANDOUT

The only other way outside of court is to play the system.

I have found out that any electricity bill he runs up without paying (which I am expecting he will) is the responsibility of whoever's name is on the 'contract' and not necessarily the landlords liability. This tenant changed the contract holder name to himself after the previous tenant died.

Now rather than going through this terrible court process spending many thousands of euros getting nowhere and just making lawyers and courts richer , consider the following:

1. Contact the electricity company , produce a copy of the Nota Simple proving you are the legal owner of the property.
2. Ask them to change the contract holder from the tenant to yourselves . Provide them with a direct debit mandate for a new Spanish bank account that you've just opened.
3. Once the change of contract owner has been changed , ensure all monies in your bank account is removed and cancel the direct-debit before the next payment is due.

If the tenant racks up electricity usage, you will be liable to pay the bills as you are now the contract owner. The electricity company will be chasing you for the payment but you can just claim to them that you have no monies because the tenant is not paying the rent.

4. The electricity company will have to cut off the electricity before the debt gets too large .

5. Hopefully the tenant will have no choice to leave if he has no electricity.

I don't know how large the electricity bill will be allowed to increase before they cut it off but its got to be cheaper than going through the court system without any guarantees that you can evict the tenant (especially if they also get free legal aid to keep appealing and delaying proceedings for several years).

Slowlycatchymonkey

What happened in court?