The deadline to claim mortgage expenses from before 2019 ends in one month

If you are thinking of claiming the mortgage expenses derived from the purchase of your home, you should know the deadline to do so will end in just one month. Clients who established a mortgage before 2019 have until January 23, 2024 to request a refund of the expenses that the entity charged them in formalizing the mortgage. This was reflected 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 the responsibility of 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.”

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

Regarding the documentation that you must provide, in addition to the DNI 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.