Whilst many companies advertise the buying of property in Spain via auctions none of these web based advertisements are actually official auctions where Spanish repossessed property can be bought.
The official auction process in Spain is a very different process to those being touted on the web.
When a property is going through a repossession process the final part of this process; before the bank can take ownership; is that the official court auction takes place. This auction is only advertised on the Court Boards of the relevant and local court to the property.
Each Spanish property has on its deeds an auctionable amount recorded when the loan was originally granted. At court auction the property cannot be sold for lower than 70% of this defined amount. Bidders must put into court 30% of the current value of the property or they will not be able to attend.
If the property is not sold at auction then the bank takes ownership at 50% of the auctionable value and must pay transfer taxes etc relevant to this amount. The 50% value is then deducted from the amount owing to either pay off fully the outstanding Spanish mortgage or leave an amount outstanding that the mortgagee will be pursued for.
The Spanish Bank has 21 days before taking over property to find a buyer who will then buy direct from the courts. At this point the bank can agree to sell the property at any amount they wish but cannot if they choose to sell at a lower price pursue the original owner for any more money than was crystallized at day of Court Auction.
The Spanish Auctions advertised on the web are in fact private auctions where direct sellers can chose to advertise their property and try to sell it by a bidding process in comparison to perhaps using an Estate Agent or other marketing avenues. They are not however official auctions which in anyway form part of the normal repossession process in Spain and nor are they currently used by Spanish Banks to offload surplus stock.
Access to official Spanish Auctions is difficult to gain as many remain a closed shop but buying from the banks in the days in between auction and them taking full ownership is by far the timescale at which point the best price can be achieved.
Anyone genuinely believing that going to a private auction means they are getting true Spanish Bank auction stock will find this is far from the reality.
In the UK eventually bank owned stock not sold within a period of time via normal processes ends up at auction this is not the case in Spain. The auction process is the final part of the re-possession process not how the Spanish Banks sell the stock they have taken over.
