“It’s better than winning the lottery”: buying an apartment from a vulture fund to avoid being left homeless

BadalonaHer legs still tremble when she recounts how she went from being homeless to owning her own apartment. "We were saved by the bell, yes," Anna Pujol (a pseudonym) explains, describing how, after years of being threatened with eviction, pressured to leave quietly, and desperate attempts to stay, she finally succeeded last Wednesday, just 48 hours before the deadline for the eviction notice. Two days earlier, she reached an agreement with the investment fund and signed the preliminary sales agreement to buy the apartment where she and her mother had been renting for twenty years. The process has been very complicated and, emotionally, has been a journey through depression, anxiety, and fear for the mother, who has a disability, and for the daughter, a 24-year-old master's student who just started her first job, which facilitated her obtaining the mortgage.

Pay religiously

The family moved into the apartment in the La Salut neighborhood of Badalona in 2006 and since then, "every first of the month has been paid religiously." First, to the private owner who ended up losing it for defaulting on the mortgage, and then to the two vulture funds that acquired it. "We have never been squatters, we have never asked for an apartment just because we're pretty," says Pujol, who, desperate because neither the court-appointed lawyer was making any progress nor were the municipal social services providing adequate support, sought help from the Sant Roc Som Badalona Platform

The organization, which began as a splinter group from the local PAH (Platform of People Affected by Mortgages) during the height of the 2011 mortgage crisis, now supports families facing eviction orders through a handful of volunteers, either by actively protesting on the street or by providing guidance from an office. Enric Marín, a retired banker, along with Montse Conejo, is responsible for studying cases like Anna Pujol's and contacting the funds that own the apartments to persuade them to sell to the current residents who have a "real" ability to continue paying their mortgage or rent. "We don't make purchases to stop evictions, but so that people can live," he explains in the small office at the Sant Roc community center. He estimates that "around a hundred" transactions have been completed, although he lacks computerized records, but maintains that almost all the beneficiaries "are complying."

All these families have official vulnerability reports, they work, and they have some savings, but it's completely insufficient to access the regular housing market. On the other hand, almost all the landlords are vulture funds that, with the bursting of the bubble and crisis after crisis, have taken over "practically all the apartments in the neighborhood," the activist points out. Small landlords are a thing of the past, one at most per month, and the Platform refrains from challenging them. Despite the moratoriumEvictions have never stopped in the neighborhood.

Structural Degradation

This neighborhood in Badalona It is one of the most vulnerable in CataloniaThe area is plagued by high rates of poverty, unemployment, school dropout, urban decay, as well as squatting and evictions. Every week, the Platform intervenes in eight to ten evictions. A few years ago, Marín suggested that "the only solution" was to present social rental or purchase offers to vulture funds to prevent residents from having to leave. This was a difficult process. First, it wasn't easy to find someone to start a dialogue with because the apartments have been sold off in batches and have changed hands: from BBVA to Divarian, from Sabadell to Promontoria. All of this makes the network of companies a complicated web because "each fund has its own policy."

Fátima Salah encountered this ordeal when she was looking for someone to pay her rent after discovering that the man she thought was her landlord was actually a con artist. She calls it a "miracle" that she now lives "peacefully" with her two young children in an apartment in Sant Adrià de Besòs that she is gradually renovating. A decade ago, she entered thehousing by subletting a room Without knowing that it was actually an occupied apartment. It was the Platform that finally "negotiated" with the fund a "price adjusted" to their circumstances as a vulnerable single-parent family, although, after they had already reserved the apartment, they learned that the fund had wanted to sell it to a third party, who then relinquished it in favor of Salah. Problems arose with the bank due to the obstacles they placed in its way, since the family from Morocco had lent them money and they had to prove that it "did not come from money laundering."

Marín explains that there is a business "of buying apartments with people already living in them" and believes that, to increase the number of beneficiaries, it is necessary to take advantage of the fact that the funds are willing to get rid of a portfolio of properties that, at the moment, is "overused." However, the Platform's room for maneuver is very limited because it does not have the capacity to "negotiate packages of apartments," but rather fights on a case-by-case basis. At this point, the activist argues that if public administrations adopted this approach and secured funding, they would obtain better conditions and more residents could keep their apartments. "If we, four volunteers, could do it, why can't the administration?" he laments.

María Llanos Cortés's family received an eviction notice in 2019, right when the apartment they'd lived in for almost half a century changed ownership. In fact, they had owned it until they had to surrender the property to remain as tenants. They were never in arrears and paid their rent every month until it was unilaterally canceled. To pressure them, the fund offered them €3,000 to vacate the apartment. "But what are we going to do with that money?" asks Cortés, who also turned to the Platform. After doing the math, they agreed to make an offer of €35,000 to buy the property, but the company wouldn't budge from €38,000. "Now we own the apartment again, and once the bank accepted my paperwork, that was the best night I've ever slept. We've won the lottery. No, even better than the lottery," reflects Cortés, who lives with her retired husband, a daughter, and two granddaughters.

Conejo points out that "the best moment" is when neighbors with financial difficulties "go to the notary and sign" to become owners of their apartments. "We don't mislead them about their chances of being able to buy, and we warn them that with the guaranteed minimum income, it will be very difficult."