Those who bought a house before 2019 and signed a mortgage loan for this have homework this weekend. They are running out of time to claim mortgage expenses, which according to an estimate by experts could amount to around 1,000 euros. The most prudent thing is to do it before January 23, which is when the deadline to claim expenses linked to the formalization of the mortgage is met, but now the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) has pointed out that the expenses associated with the formalization on of the mortgages, for property registration, management and appraisal, as well as half of the notary expenses, can be claimed judicially until April 14, 2024.
When is the deadline to claim mortgage expenses?
There is a weekend ahead of us searching for all the necessary documents if we meet the requirements and want the bank to return what the rest of us paid. Thus, if you are thinking of claiming the mortgage expenses derived from the purchase of your home, you should know that the deadline is January 23, 2024. This was stated in the Supreme Court ruling that declared this practice abusive and obliged the banks To return a part of the amount collected. According to this body, the limitation period was five years, although the judges were not clear when it began to count, so for now those five years are included, from January 2019, which was when the sentence was handed down.
Before June 16, 2019, the bank had to face several expenses in the formalization of a mortgage loan, but in practice it charged them all to the client. These costs will be those of registration, management and appraisal, and half of the notary costs. As for the amount of expenses, it will depend on the value of the mortgaged home, that is, the higher the value, the higher the expenses that will be incurred. As an example, the costs of an import mortgage loan of 150,000 euros are around 1,000 euros, including the notary, property registry, management and appraisal. Taxes would have to be added to this, but these could not be claimed.
However, this changed as of March 2019, when the Real Estate Credit Contracts Law came into force. The new regulations modified the existing regulations regarding mortgage expenses when a loan was established, so that both the notary, registration and management would be borne by the bank. An exception will be copies of the deed that the consumer wants for himself. The client would be responsible for paying the appraisal. Regarding the tax on documented legal acts, the new regulations establish that they will be borne by the financial entity. Furthermore, the fact that this clause has been declared void allows the holder of the mortgage to claim it even if he has already paid off the debt, say financial sources consulted by La Información.
Estefanía González, Kelisto’s personal finance spokesperson, explains that “given that the deadline ends in January 2024, the most advisable thing is to accelerate the process and not leave it to the last minute since the deadlines to go through extrajudicial (and free) means “They are already very tight.”
Key date to claim mortgage expenses according to the OCU
For the OCU, the five-year period to claim begins on January 23, 2019, when the Supreme Court ruled that banks must return these expenses to clients. However, remember that the declaration of the state of alarm on March 14, 2020, as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, implied the suspension of the statute of limitations until June 4, that is, a total of 82 days. . natural.
Therefore, it is signed that as of June 4, once the state of alarm has ended and the suspension has been lifted, the aforementioned 82 calendar days in which the deadlines remained suspended must be added to the prescription periods. For this reason, OCU considers that the action would not prescribe until April 14 or, in the best case, April 15, 2024 at 3:00 p.m., by application of the day of grace granted by the Civil Procedure Law . .
How to claim mortgage expenses from the bank
As for the steps, you must first go to the entity’s complaints service, Kelisto points out, and file the complaint. If the answer is negative or is not satisfactory, you should go to the complaints service of the Bank of Spain. And if this route is not effective either, go to court. However, it is common that many consumers prefer to claim through specialized law firms to facilitate the process, even though this service has a cost.
HelpMyCash recommends anticipating this possible statute of limitations as much as possible and claiming out-of-court reimbursement of mortgage expenses. “In this way, there will be evidence that it has been claimed before the deadline expires,” says Javier Mezcua.
Documentation necessary to claim mortgage expenses
As for the documentation that you must provide, in addition to the ID of the affected person, you will have to include the deed of the mortgage loan, the notary invoice and the property registry invoice. Also the invoice for the agency and the appraisal of the home as well as the import of the property registry. As for where to locate the documents, they are normally carried out through an agency, so it would be possible to request a copy from it.
Although you can claim the costs of establishing mortgages, it is not so clear regarding the mortgage opening commission. Precisely, the Supreme Court also established in 2019 that the opening commission was not abusive. However, the Court of Justice of the European Union considers that this charge, to be valid, must be transparent; In other words, the courts will be responsible for assessing whether the consumer has been able to evaluate the economic consequences of paying an opening fee and understand that its purpose is to compensate for the costs of studying and processing a loan application.
