Nowadays, it is simpler and faster to buy a house without compulsory heirs as it is no longer necessary to wait two years in order to make use of the property. Until this last 3rd. September, Article 28 of the Mortgage Law stated that if a house did not have any rightful heirs (that is, if the deceased owner of the house had no children or descendants nor parents or ascendants and neither had a spouse), then it took two years to be able to sell the house and register it in the Property Registration. Previously, when the property was registered, a clause stated that if a legitimate heir turned up within two years then the rightful heir would be favoured. The good news for the buyers is that this article was abolished last 3rd September and, therefore, it has ceased to have effect making it no longer necessary to wait two years in order to dispose freely of the property. To get an idea of the progress that the abolition of this article means, we only have to imagine the number of houses that were inherited by brothers/sisters, cousins or nieces/nephews of the former owner. Subsequently, these houses came on to the market: however, no buyer was the legitimate owner of the property until two years had passed. Logically, this circumstance discouraged many buyers, and they dismissed carrying out the deal as they were not willing to wait all that time in order to have the entire ownership of the property which they had purchased. Currently, this no longer happens because the buyer of property which has no compulsory heirs becomes the legitimate owner from the moment it has been paid for.

REPEALING AN OUTDATED LAW

Article 28 of the Mortgage Law had its origin in what was known as the Cuban Law. By means of this law, priority was given to compulsory heirs in relation to the rest of the heirs. Thus, a period of two years was set in case a possible compulsory heir appeared and wished to claim the property. The name of this law was related to the Spanish people who emigrated to Cuba in the XIX century so that they could claim their inheritance when they returned to Spain. If we take into account that this law was passed in 1946 (more than seventy years ago), then we see how outdated it was and made no sense at all. Just think that, previously, when somebody decided to purchase property which had no compulsory heirs, then this person knew that the property had to be returned if a rightful owner appeared in the period of two years since the death of the previous owner: let us just imagine the uncertainty that this possible situation could imply. Not only did this Article 28 discourage many buyers from purchasing a house, but it also gave rise to making many banking entities refuse to finance these kind of operations not wishing to run the risk of having to cancel the deal.

OWNERSHIP WITHOUT HAVING TO WAIT

In this blog, we wrote an article about a new all-time high of housing inheritances in Spain. That article gave us an idea about the importance of the reform of the Mortgage Law and the abolition of Article 28. More and more houses are inherited and this means that these inherited houses are being increasingly commercialized. Nowadays, the buyers of these houses do not have to wait in order to become the rightful owners. In addition, the buyers that have been waiting for these two years to pass, have become the legitimate owners as this waiting period does not need to be completed.