repossessed property - no water or electricity meters - bank obligation to disclose?

We bought a repossessed bar /restaurant so no previous info available. It has a licence. It also had obvious working electricity and water. However when we investigated to have the power turned on it appears that there are no meters for water or electricity. The mains water was installed to the building after the repossession (it ran off a water deposit previously)so it requires connection (€900 for meter + plumbing installation costs). The electricity meter had been removed (we didn't know this as the property is on an urbanisation with a room with banks of electricity meters and many empty boxes - none of which indicated which meter belonged to which property - we assumed (reasonably we think) that we would ring Iberdrola and ask them to switch us on. As we actually do not have a meter we now have to pay for a new installation which involves digging up the road. Costs so far for this excluding full interior rewiring are currently estimated at a minimum of €4000. We feel hard done by here and wonder if the bank have some form of legal obligation to inform us that these basic utilities were not available to us. We are with CAM bank. We have been treated very shabbily by them right down to them not providing keys when we signed. We had to wait 3-4 days when they were next in town to deliver it or drive to their offices an hours distance to pick up 1 key (there are 8 doors in this property)  and we had to have all new locks at another expense of €600. I think they breached a legal requirement by doing this. They insist that you take out mortgage protection with them, and the quote they provided was double anybody else's. We are fighting this with them at the moment. They do not give 100% mortgages despite what they say on their boards - certainly for commercial properties.

Did you use a lawyer?

 Of course the seller ( unless otherwise agreed anywhere) needs to sell the property to you fully fitted for its purpose. I would certainly claim all those expenses back from CAM.

You would need to read contract.

Most banks have pretty lengthy contracts drafted by their legal department.

For instance CAM in their rent to buy contracts have clauses as set out below so I'm sure they have something similar in their purchase contracts etc

In rent to buy they allow the first months rent to cover reconnection costs.

At the end of the day if you don't engage a surveyor and solicitor then you live with the consequeces or pay legal fees to take on CAM and their lawyers - either way it will cost you.

The same happens when you buy any property and the cost of rectifying or upgrading connections to obtain bolitin/certificate fall on the buyer.

I would also suggest you visit the town hall and clarify the terms of your licence and where you can or can not put tables & chairs and what else you can or cannot put on terrace etc - otherwise you will be back on here next week telling us the police arrived fined you and shut you down. Also what type of food you can prepare/serve. Don't rely on what you have been told by agent.

You should have been told about the water and electricity connections before you purchased.  We are agents for CAM and had a related argument with them a while ago regarding the utilities.  Part of what any agent or solicitor does - or should do - is they check that there are no outstanding debts for community, Suma, water and electricity.  CAM insisted that they had no records of the water and electricity contracts for the previous owner (ie the person they repossessed from) and they had no intention of trying to find out.  We did try to find out but were unable to, without the details of the previous owner.

CAM told us that it was their policy to tell all buyers to take out new contracts for water and electricity, and in that way there would be no come-back in respect of debts from the previous owner.  We reluctantly had to give in and the client paid for new contracts - but this was all discussed prior to completion.  

Did you deal with CAM direct or did you use an agent? 

Thank you for all of the replies.

Yes we did use (and are still using) a good lawyer. We bought the property outright - it is not a let to buy. We bought through CAM Mediterraneo. We do have a licence and all is ok with the town hall. The problem is that the meter had been removed so we have to install a new one. As regs have changed we need to upgrade the electricity - new size cables too big for exisiting underground conduit so we have to dig the road to put in new ones. CAM did not tell us that the meter had been removed. The bar is on an urbanisation with a room full of boxes some with meters and others with cables only. There is no indication which belongs to who, so we did not know we had no electricity until we rang Iberdrola to switch us on after we had bought. Given that the place ran as a fully functioning bar and restaurant for many years with a full kitchen/aircon/lights//all obvious junction boxes/etc. we assumed we just need to switch on. Cam had already said there was no debt on the property.  We have now had an electrician on the case for 2 days just to get to this position of finding that we have no meter. We are working this with an electrical engineer technician (certified by the town hall), the town hall and an Iberdrola technician. We know we are not being scammed by anybody now (other than Cam).

Regarding the water, the mains were installed on the urb 7 years ago. Apparently the owner refused to pay to connect and carried on using his water deposit. There is an outstanding bill now for €9000 apparently that the urb believe is our debt. They maintain that they have an agreement with Aquagest that Aquagest will not install a meter until given the nod by the urb (i.e. when the bill has been paid).  This surely cant be legal?. We're having this checked out at the moment. They say they told Cam about this debt to ensure that any buyer knew about it when purchasing but Cam never told us about it. In fact our escritura states that the property  was sold to us free of any debt.

Our problem is that we are trying to get the bar up and running with an ever shrinking pot of money and the delays and maybe having to either pay just to get water and electricity to get the project started or begin court proceedings will lose us the business before we even get started. We have people (lawyer, etc.)  trying to sort these things out for us, but if anybody has had any previous experience of something similar and how to get around it, I'd be grateful to hear from you.

Thanks

 Hi I'm reading that often in bank reposessions new buyers get with a surprise, meaning debts due from the previous owner:

electricity, water, urbanization maintenances fees, etc ,etc.

How can a buyer be sure that the property he is buying DO NOT have any Pending debt ?

The community fee issue is simple. please see below a section in the horizontal property law that covers community debt....

Any person acquiring a unit in horizontal property ownership, even where the title was entered in the

Land Registry, shall be liable for, and the unit acquired attached to payment of any outstanding

amounts payable to the community for general expenses by the previous owners up to the limit of

the fees assessed for the period to date of the year when the transfer of ownership took place and for

the natural year immediately precedent. The unit shall be legally burdened with fulfilment of this

obligation, and the rules on precedence of debts stated above shall be equally applicable in this case.

The deed shall include a statement by the transferor declaring that there are no outstanding debts for

general expenses payable to the community or, in the event that there are, he/she shall declare their

amount. The transferor shall produce at that moment a certificate concerning the state of debts with

the community that shall coincide with said statement. Execution of the deed shall not be authorised

unless the purchaser should expressly waive such requirement. The certificate shall be issued by the

person acting as secretary within seven natural days of request, with the approval of the president.

Both shall be accountable, in case of malfeasance or negligence, for the accuracy of the data on the

certificate and for any damages resulting from delay as to its issue;

Every debt on the property is reflected on the Land registry Informative note, but Community of owners´one, if this has not gone through a judicial procedure.

So, it is essential that the certificate of NO-DEBTS by the President of the Community of owner is given to you by the owner

Rest of possible debts ( water, electricty, insurances...) will never be requestable to the new owner of the house but in order to avoid possible problems when hiring your supplies, ask for last receipts too. Now that you have the seller in good-selling-mood