The first Instance Court No. 3 of Denia has ruled in favour of a Buyer who in 2016 had purchased a house in Benissa and after less tan a year he found very serious damages that affected not only the façade and walls, but also the foundation of the house, which implied a risk of collapse.

The buyers had visited the house with a technician and after two or three surveys they purchased it after a discount of its original price.

As you may know, in 2016 we suffered a period of heavy and constant rains which caused that serious damages appeared in the house and, what is worse, several cracks which had deliberately been hide in a tricky way, were then visible.

They asked for an important amount of money, which was the budget needed to repair the house.

The sellers, of British nationality, turned to CBL LAWYERS Carlos Baño Leon after that another lawyer had already issue the writ of defense, but they trusted us because they saw that we could better defend them and indeed we eventually achieved that the judgment was not as detrimental to our clients.

The question that was discussed in trial is if the Sellers were liable for such important and serious damages appeared in the house after less than 6 months from its purchase.

The Spanish Law clearly establishes the liability of the Seller in this cases unless a disclaimer clause is included, which was not the case. Therefore, the approach we used in our defense was differentiating the damages for which the Sellers were liable from those which were a consequence of the lack of maintenance of the house, which caused that the damages got worse.

We will not cease to warn our clients how they must proceed when selling a second hand property if they want to avoid important problems like those we have mentioned in this case.

There is no doubt that if the Seller had proceeded under our law firm advice we would have given him the formula to avoid the liability for those damages. However, since they proceeded without legal advice now they face a conviction which, thanks to this law firm, is not as serious as the Buyers asked.

Do not hesitate in contacting our lawyers before making any purchase or sell, both if it is a new property or a second hand one. A good professional advice would avoid you the existence of many problems.