On July 01-2011 the Spanish Cabinet enacted an executive Decree containing several measures aimed to protect individual home owners against wild bank repossessions

07 Jul On July 01-2011 the Spanish Cabinet enacted an executive Decree containing several measures aimed to protect individual home owners against wild bank repossessions

On July 01-2011 the Spanish Cabinet enacted an executive Decree containing several measures aimed to protect individual home owners against wild bank repossessions. The most important measures are:

– Firstly, in order to lessen the harmful impact of the economy crisis on the citizens who are most defenceless, and more specifically those ones having family burdens, the Decree increases the threshold of not attachable (for seizure) assets when the price received for the public sale of the mortgaged permanent home on a repossession procedure is not enough to cover the bank’s mortgage. Even though in general terms the minimum not attachable amount for any debtor is equal to the Spanish statutory minimum wage (SMI), this Decree now increases such minimum up to 150% of SMI plus an additional 30% per each debtor’s family member not earning income superior to SMI.

– Secondly, the Decree reforms some exiting normative in order to secure that the debtors in a repossession procedure shall receive an accurate price for the house thus enabling them to settle, or greatly reduce, the remaining debt. For this, it is resolved that the adjudication of the mortgaged house in favour of the bank in a repossession procedure will never be for a value inferior to 60% of the house’s certified appraised value whatever the debt amounts to.