My partner and myself bought our villa about five years ago and have never missed a payment. We have about 165,000 euro loan but recently put it on an interest only payment which the bank happily accepted. The villa has been up for sale for about four years after realising that we had made a mistake but at that stage it was too late. I feel somewhat cheated when we went through the buying process by our solicitor who naively I trusted, the estate agent and the bank manager who were all there when the papers were signed. Hindsight!!!
The reason I say this is because at no stage did anyone explain to me and my partner that if there was a de-fault on the mortgage payment and the house was repossessed we would lose our home in the Uk and every penny we would get in the future. How can this not be explained to a buyer, greed! I would have never in a million years signed a document leaving partner and myself in a vulnerable position that could make us homeless and probably no one else would either. To me this is a massive miss-selling scheme where the banks, builders, estate agents, solicitors and the rest who stand there with their hands held out are the winners and the looser being the naive ex-pat who could loose every penny they have. I always advise anyone I meet who is in Spain “shopping” for a villa to never take out a mortgage. Moving to Spain is something I regret and only hope that the place can sell so we can unshackle ourselves from the bank. I live in hope but won't hold my breath.