Fernando Salmerón of Bufete Salmerón, a Seville-based law firm that specialises in banking and property law, said he has won more than 100 off-plan property cases for Irish clients through the Spanish courts since the crash.
He is currently awaiting judgements for 15 further clients.
All 15 clients “put down deposits for off-plan properties before 2008” he said.
The claims “relate to a wide variety of developments across Spain. But there are even some in Morocco that were built by Spanish developers, with payments taken through Spanish banks.”
Salmerón recently won a case that led to an order for Galicia-headquartered Abanca to pay more than €1.9m to Irish and British investors who made payments to a developer for houses in Marbella that were never built.
Spain’s supreme court said financial institutions were responsible for refunding deposits
Salmerón’s most high-profile case involving English-speaking investors was with former footballer Geoff Hurst, the last living player from the England team that beat West Germany in the 1966 World Cup final.
Hurst, who played with Cork Celtic for a month in 1976, had hired Salmerón to pursue a €298,000 deposit he put down in 2004 on an off-plan property in a development called Aloha Royal in Marbella that he’d intended to use during his retirement.
When the property bubble burst, the development company failed to meet bank loan repayments and went bust, taking Hurst’s deposit with it.
Tens of thousands of Irish investors collectively ploughed millions into deposits on Spanish holiday homes in search of a place in the sun.
But the property crash put paid to those dreams, with off-plan developments either never built or left to rot as ghost estates.
As developers scattered, buyers were left in limbo trying to recoup deposits.
Newly built apartments in southern Spain. Photo: Getty
However, a ruling by Spain’s supreme court in 2015 made the country’s financial institutions responsible for refunding deposits placed with them for the purchase of unfinished property.
Investors were entitled to have their payment protected by a Spanish bank guarantee, even if they hadn’t requested one and regardless of whether or not the developer provided one, the court said.
That’s because builders and developers were required by law to place deposits in a protected bank account and provide a bank guarantee – a rule that was widely flouted.
The Spanish court decision paved the way for overseas buyers to claim directly from the banks rather than from property developers, many of whom had declared bankruptcy when the property market imploded.
Salmerón’s new service provides legal advice to prospective buyers
However, according to Salmerón’s firm, a lengthy wait to get through the Spanish legal system was exacerbated by appeals from banks against decisions not in their favour. An appeal can add two or three years to the duration of a case.
The Seville lawyer earlier this year opened a legal service in Ireland for Irish people who bought property in Spain or are considering purchasing property there in the future.
The new service provides legal advice to prospective buyers so they can understand the benefits and pitfalls of purchasing property in Spain and navigate the country’s complex conveyancing process.
