Spanish mortgages

[curly131]

There has been some discussion about the legality of "floor" rate clauses in a lot of the mortgages that were issued by the Spanish banks whereby no matter how low the Euribor goes you hit the floor of say 3-4% and that is what your mortgage interest is calculated on rather than the normal of Euribor plus say 1%.
Spanish courts and European courts appear to hace decreed that the clause is " abusive" and therefore illegal but there is no indication of whether this decision is being appealed by the banks or if they are just dragging their feet.
There was an advert in Round Town News saying that a firm called cpiltd will check your mortgage contract for you to see if there is sufficient evidence to make a claim against your bank for repyment of the higher interest charges.
Has any body used this firm or indeed had any success in getting their bank to repay any interest just by talking to their bank.
My bank has written to me recently offering a fixed rate rather than the floor clause. It is less than I am paying now but not by much and of course I guess the clause would be removed and maybe negate any future claims against them
Appreciate any help forum members can give on this subject.
Ian

[gunner]

You are right 4 Spanish banks were taken to the court over putting a celling on there mortgage rates The banks were found guilty of this 3 of the banks withdrew the celling .Only one did not the bank of SABADELL . Shocking there defence was you had to prove that you wasent told about the celling at the time of taking out the mortgage. IT was your word against theres. Shocking we were paying 300E too much every month for 4 years on our SABADELL mortgage . In the end we sold the house and paid the robbing F...ers there money back and it still cost us 1700E  to repay the mortgage early.

[Aficionado]

That would be this firm you are referring to:

http://www.cpiltd.co.uk/

I have no experience of them but they do offer to carry out a review free of charge, obviously hoping to be appointed to recover any excess interest payments for you should you have one of these mortgages. Note that they also say not all banks were issuing this type of mortgage but sadly do not say which ones.

May be early days for this though, at present the courts have only directed that affected banks should repay excess charges from May 13 on, not very helpful for those with mortgages taken out way before then. Looks like this may have some ways to go yet.

Michael.

[curly131]

Thanks for the replies.
I understand that the European court has also said that if the clauses are illegal then they are illegal from day one which sounds unusually logical of them, so there may be back claims as well.
We will have to see how it develops but you can be sure it will be slow whatever it is.
Ian