Janet Jalil dreamt of retiring under the Spanish sun to live in the flat that she had bought with her husband on the Costa del Sol.
Instead of relaxing by the pool, though, the couple have spent the past eight years fighting through the Spanish courts to reclaim the €227,000 they paid for the property. Now the Jalils are among the first Britons to have won a victory that means banks will be forced to repay the money that they invested.
About 100,000 British buyers invested cash deposits estimated to be £2 billion on off-plan Spanish properties that were never finished. The money was committed during the building boom that ended with the financial crisis of 2008. Many Spanish property developers went bust.
In December last year the Supreme Court in Madrid ruled that Spanish banks should be held jointly responsible, along with the developers, for buyers’ money. Until then, only the developers were liable and many had gone out of business.
A court in Malaga has now ruled that Banco Popular must repay Mrs Jalil, 64, and her husband, George, the money they invested in a two-bedroom flat in Los Lagos de Santa Maria Elviria, near Marbella. For Mrs Jalil, a retired hospital receptionist from London, it was a hollow victory. When they bought the home in Spain in 2003, they sold their two-bedroom flat in Brondesbury Park, northwest London, for £156,000. They estimate that it would be worth £550,000 today.
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Their legal costs amounted to £30,000 and they have had to endure the strain of the case while Mrs Jalil was recovering from colon cancer and her husband was being treated for a heart condition.
In 2003 Alison and Gren Handley, from East Leake, Nottinghamshire, believed that they had found an ideal retirement home when they saw a development at Cortijo de Torreblanca near Fuengirola. They made the first payment of €65,500 but the property was never finished and the promoter went out of business. The court in Malaga has ordered Banco Popular to repay the money.
“We thought it could be our holiday home and also for our retirement. But they never finished it and it is now vandalised,” Mrs Handley, 61, a retired IT consultant, said. “We loved Spain but I don’t think I would buy there again. All this fight has been such a stress.”
Carlos Comitre, a lawyer with the firm Ley 57, has 70 British clients who are fighting to reclaim hundreds of thousands of pounds.
“Janet Jalil and Alison Handley are among the first people who have won payments. This has only happened because a group of lawyers persuaded the Supreme Court that the buyers were not to blame but rather it was the banks and the promoters,” he said.
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Mark Stucklin, who runs the website Spanish Property Insight, helped to put Mrs Jalil in contact with Mr Comitre just as she was about to give up the fight. “It is now the case that some law firms specialise in these cases on the Costa del Sol,” he said.