Vesta Vigilar is a company set up by a Norwegian businessman with a holiday-home in Spain to help other owners protect their property from squatters, including squatter mafias who extort money out of foreign owners by holding their holiday-homes to ransom.
Vesta Vigilar: Company & service feature [Sponsored article]
Founder Erik Malterud tells us about the squatter threat in Spain, and how Vesta Vigilar can help you protect yourself against it.
What does Vesta Vigilar do?
We help owners protect their property from the growing risk of squatters in Spain with a 24/7 monitoring service using high-quality security cameras, and we also offer a service to cover all the legal costs of eviction if squatters do get installed. So we reduce your risk of having your Spanish property squatted, and if it does happen, we offer a service to take care of the eviction process and costs, giving our clients peace of mind.
Why did you set up Vesta Vigilar?
I have had a holiday home in the Murcia region for more than ten years. I have since seen several examples of squatted properties, and how squatter extortion gangs are a serious problem in Spain because they are so well protected by the system. I was amazed to find that there is no service specifically for foreign and absentee owners offered in English to reduce the risks of squatting and costs of eviction, so we set about fulfilling that need. Anecdotally, our first experience of squatters in Spain was a policeman squatting in a friend’s house, which just shows you how crazy the system can be in Spain.
What would you say is your unique selling point?
Along with providing our monitoring and support in English, Norwegian and Spanish, which no other companies do, we also provide a full eviction service that is unique in the market. When we take on a new client we get a power of attorney to represent them, and keep copies of their critical documents like the property deeds, known in Spain as the escritura. So if there is a problem we call the police on the owner’s behalf and present the police with notarised documents to make it more likely that they will evict the squatters on the spot. And if they don’t, we can take care of the eviction process at no extra cost to the owner, which no other companies do. Alarm companies in Spain just call the police and leave it at that. The service we offer is much more comprehensive, and ends with the squatters being evicted, sparing the owner a great deal of time, money and stress.
Why is the squatter problem so bad in Spain?
Spain has one of the worst, if not the worst squatter problem in Europe, and I think part of the reason is Spain’s constitutional right to housing, which means everyone’s right to housing is protected by the highest law in the land. So if people occupy an empty house that belongs to someone else without permission, in a way they are just exercising their constitutional right to housing, and they are more protected by the law than in other countries.
If squatters get into your property in Spain
Find out more: Vesta Vigilar
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