Here’s some good news for everyone.
At last, an end (possibly!) to the differences between the Nota Simple and the Catastral information
Source – Kyero
The Vice-President of the Spanish Government, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría announced last week that the Government has taken an important step forward in the reform of the public administration services, with the approval of three new laws to be submitted to parliament which, she said: “are highly focused on facilitating the lives of our citizens, in removing administrative burdens and in using instruments available to us as a result of new technologies”.
One of the draft laws is for the reform of the Mortgage Act and the Cadastre Act, with the aim of facilitating the secure exchange of data between the Land Register and the Cadastre Register, and thus avoiding contradictory and incomplete information on the same real estate property.
The Vice-President underlined that the two institutions currently have very different powers but act in the same areas – the situation of property in Spain. For this reason, the coordination of information between the two registers is essential in order to correctly identify a property, and so provide a better service to citizens and, above all, legal certainty when it comes to purchasing a property or land.
Among the benefits brought by this regulation, the Vice-President said that it will avoid some 22,000 in person declarations per year, “in other words, having to go to the land registry with physical documents”, which represents “an annual saving of 1.8 million euros”.
Survey Spain Comment
Many more than 50% of the Nota Simples and the Catastral records are different, when we compare them as standard within our Survey reports. In addition, they are as often different from the actual measured size. In Barcelona, where there has to be a new Occupation Licence (Cédula) for each sale we’ve just found that it is different yet again. It’s because changes to the size, use or accommodation of a property often tend only to be registered in the Title Description (Nota Simple), an owner’s obligation, when the property is being sold. However, the Catastral is an independent record that’s largely based on historic information sourced from building licence information in the Municipality where the property lies. Thus, it can be more up-to-date that the Nota Simple. If our measurements show major differences to both of these, then there is a possibility that the difference is due to illegal construction – but not always as Catastral update can be very hit or miss as to their timing. As taxes are based on the Catastral value, which in turn depends upon the property description, with the pressures on municipal income, Catastral offices are becoming much more rigorous in their updates, even reported to be using Google Maps and suchlike sources.
So, don’t expect it to happen overnight, but as some areas of Spain have had these links for many years, Rioja for example, it is possible and will happen gradually. Now if they could get the planning zoning, use and density of development permitted recorded in the same place as well, we would really be working with an efficient system!
