New mortgage law

The new law of real estate credit will come into force three months after its publication in the Official State Gazette, and not 30 days after its publication, when the Congress approved this Thursday the amendment of the Senate that gave more margin to the entities financial resources to adapt to the legislation.

This change, which has been voted on Thursday in the Plenary Session along with the rest of the amendments introduced by the Senate in the law, has been supported by PP, Citizens, PDeCAT, UPN and Asturias Forum, while PSOE, Unidos Podemos, Esquerra Republican, Compromís, EH-Bildu and Canary Coalition have opposed, without success, to change.

In this way, the new real estate credit law, which has been definitively approved by Congress and has been ready for publication in the BOE after this last parliamentary procedure, will not enter into force until at least the end of May, once the The maximum period to transpose this European directive will expire three years ago, in March 2016.

► That the bank pays you the mortgage expenses comes out less on account of what you think

The reform of the mortgage law has thus completed its parliamentary procedure completing one of the most complex legislative processes addressed in financial matters by the Government without being affected by the advance of general elections.

The origin of the law of real estate loans is a directive that Spain should have transposed before March 21, 2016 and for which delay Brussels threatened to sanction the country with 105,991.6 euros per day fine.

The mortgage reform legislation was developed on the basis of said directive by the previous Government of Mariano Rajoy introducing additional measures to strengthen the protection of mortgage consumers and improve the commercialization of loans by the lessons learned during the crisis.

The first document came to Congress on November 6, 2017, already late, and the strong division of opinions and initiatives among parliamentary groups on such a complex rule led to successive extensions of the deadlines for submitting amendments until March 2018 .

With the arrival of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez, the Minister of Economy and Business, Nadia Calviño, placed it among the priorities along with the transposition of the multiple directives whose delay in their transposition entailed a risk of sanction from Brussels.

Among the main changes introduced by the law is the imputation of most of the costs of formalizing the mortgage to the bank. The client must still charge the cost of the appraisal, but will no longer have to bear the costs of a notary or registry, nor of the tax of documented legal acts, which will be borne by the financial entity.

The new law will also end the rule that allowed a bank to begin the process of claiming the debt when three unpaid installment installments were accumulated, and replaces it with a more demanding mechanism for banking and favorable for the consumer where it will be necessary that the family has accumulated 12 defaults or 3% of the capital granted without paying to launch the process.

That rule applies in the first half of the loan's life. For the second half, the default would have to accumulate 15 months without paying the fee or having accumulated an unpaid debt equivalent to 7% of the loan received.

The future law places special emphasis on improving the commercialization of mortgages to protect the citizen, ensure that he really knows what he hires and put an end to the high litigation related to this financing by conditions such as land clauses, constitution expenses, IRPH or the clauses of anticipated expiration, restoring legal security.

In this way, the bank will be required to carry out a customer solvency study before granting a loan, the notaries will provide free advice to the families on the conditions of the operation and even change the contract to improve transparency on all conditions.

The regulation will oblige banks to signal, even clearly and with different typography, the most conflictive clauses, while at the same time reinforcing the role of notaries and judges to ensure that abusive contractual conditions are not imposed.

The law will also limit default interest, require the conversion of multi-currency mortgages and face the early repayment commissions when the repayment occurs before the stipulated.

To facilitate such amortization or change of bank will apply a drastic reduction to the commissions. The amortization fee is met at 1.5% when the operation is contracted at a fixed rate and the repayment is made within the first 10 years of the loan's life, and at 2% if it is later. In variable-rate mortgages, the client will choose if he assumes a commission of 0.25% in the first three years or 0.15% in the five. Subsequent to these terms will be exempt from commission.