In Madrid you can rent a repossessed home from an unscrupulous squatter – or even 'buy' one for €1,000
The hundreds of thousands of empty homes across Madrid has spawned a black market for cheap housing in which groups illegally break into, and then let, repossessed properties.
Almost all the cases involving the properties, most of which now belong to Spanish banks, are identical, said Vicente Pérez, from a residents group, the Federación Regional de Asociaciones de Vecinos de Madrid: "Somebody goes and kicks in the door. Once he's in, the others come – and they sell the place."
While prices vary greatly, it generally costs from €1,000 (£830) to €2,000 to "buy" a repossessed property, El País reports. Those who cannot afford the fee can instead choose to rent for a few hundred euros a month. The price often includes electricity, gas and water, and sometimes even heating.
The homes are guaranteed until a judicial process issues an eviction order, said Pérez. That process that could take up to two years.
Exact figures on how many people are taking part in such arrangements were hard to come by, he said. "People are scared and they don't want to talk."
Nearly 15,000 households in Madrid were served eviction notices in 2012, according to official figures from the courts. Coupled with sky-high unemployment rates, this has led to "infinitely long" waiting times for subsidised housing, said Pérez. It has left families, immigrants and others desperate for affordable housing in the capital region.
"A few shameless people are taking advantage of the needs of the most poor to make a business out of it," he said.
The "landlords" of this black market range from people just looking to make some extra money to groups with criminal connections. "Some of them are mafia," said Pérez. "I wouldn't call them the Italian mafia, but they are highly organised groups."
Spain's Guardia Civil police force was forced to acknowledge the problem last month when it responded to neighbours' complaints about an illegally occupied flat. Police arrived at the building as a prospective tenant was being shown around the foreclosed flat.
Two siblings, aged 33 and 28, were arrested for breaking and entering foreclosed properties and illegally renting them out. They targeted immigrants, who were charged €400 a month for flats in the south of the city.
Manuel San Pastor, a lawyer for the group Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca, said the root of the problem was Spain's "hundreds of thousands of empty properties". His group provides support to Spaniards facing eviction, be it by negotiating with the banks or backing movements to occupy empty houses.
Just 10 years ago Spain was in the throes of a construction boom, with developers building hundreds of thousands of homes a year. The bubble burst in 2007, leaving its relics scattered across the country, including more than 300,000 empty homes in Madrid.
Last year, in an effort to convey the staggering size of Spain's construction bubble, a group of civil engineers and an architect created Nación Rotonda (Roundabout Nation).
Their website uses satellite imagery to show aerial pictures of dozens of Spanish neighbourhoods, before and after the boom. Where forests and farmland stood 10 years ago, now there are half-built homes, elaborate roundabouts and roads leading nowhere.
"It's mind-blowing," said Rafael Trapiello, co-founder of Nación Rotonda. "These were developments that were thrown together with little consideration of social needs, just big expectations of making money."
The aim of their project is not to editorialise the changes, but rather to inform Spaniards of the dramatic changes to the landscape in the past 15 years. Particularly powerful, he said, were the rows and rows of empty houses across Spain. "
"What we've ended up with are ghost towns," said Trapiello. "There's not much to compare it to across Europe. It's pretty shocking to see."
San Pastor said: "They're still evicting people from their houses. They're leaving no other alternative but for people in need to enter these houses."
The lawyer condemned those whom he believed were taking advantage of the situation to make a profit.
Neighbourhood associations in Madrid have urged the owners of these empty properties to take responsibility. "If you own a home that's sitting empty, what's stopping you from renting it?" asked Pérez.
Instead of trying to let or sell the properties at the current market value, which had dropped an average of 45% in the Madrid region since 2007, he said, banks were holding on to the properties, hoping to sell when the market recovered. In the meantime, entire communities were paying the price. "It degrades the neighbourhood."
The latest census data indicate a total of 3.4m houses sitting empty in Spain alongside another nearly half a million properties that were abandoned part way through construction.
Other municipalities have launched initiatives to penalise the owners of empty properties in high-demand areas; in Barcelona threatening fines of up to €100,000, and in San Sebastián, in the Basque country, a 50% surcharge on property taxes.
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