Housing claims

To avoid consumer to be undefended, consumer associations and Municipal office of consumers (OMIC) offer the posibility to open a claim. If you are house shopper you can find irregularities referred to breach of contract, mismatch with qualities standars... Once house is bought you can also find flaws in your home.

In that cases, you should proceed to one of these associations or OMIC, where you will open that claim. Buyer can urge in court to terminate contract, compliance or contract repair and also compensations for losses. This is all included in LOE ( Law of Construction Planning ), and you must proceed as follow.

CLAIM REASON.

If there are structural failures, underlying problems, technical standars have been breached,minimun spacing is not complied, basic construction regulations are not followed or quality standars are not equal than offered in contract, costumer has six months from contract sign up to open a cliam. If it is public housing this period is five years since final allocation.

In case we find structural failures, we must attach expert opinion to ensure presence of this failures. Buyer has a period of ten years to sue judicially. This period can be increase up to fifteen years if defects were the result of a failure on the part of contractor to the conditions stipulated in the contract to implement.

REACH AN AGREEMENT.

When the consumer is beiing presented to the corresponding association or OMIC,the first thing that prompted is docomentation.The most important thing is the sale contract, where they should be shown rights and duties of both parties.The association is responsible for informing the partner of their rights, and if agree you should sign a complaint sheet, and association is responsible for its representation.

Once documentation is reviewed, there is a check whether the claim has viability, in which case begin to contact the other party. In this first moment it is important to arrange an extrajudiciary agreement. If so, and consumer get a compensation or what he was asking in thh complaint, the checked ends here.

THE JUDICIAL ROUTE.

If, in addition to compliance or irregularities the problem detected does not comply with the rules on consumption, we are facing with a punishable act.In these cases must be denounced to the administration (directorate-general consumption), wher once studied documentation, can be determined whether the alleged facts are certain and acts accordingly. Administrative penalties for infringements of comsumption, are imposed without prejudice to civil responsabilities, criminal or others.

For this reason are independent of the compensation shall be given if appropiate to the buyer for damages.

WHAT IS OUR POTENCIAL IN DENOUNCING?

The complaint can be written (signed by complainant) or verbal, and can be done personally or trough legal representative.

The complaint will be done to judge of the place were crime was commited. to prosecutor or police.

It is very important to make a concise account of facts, indicate date on which they occurred, identity of those responsible (if known) and damage caused.