The objective was to sit jurisprudence, so that others can follow the path that they have now managed to move successfully. And they have succeeded. 28 Affected by the abusive clauses of the rental contracts signed at different times with the Néstar company, which manages the heritage of the Buitre Azora Fund, sued their landlord in September 2024 with the help of the Tenkine Union of Madrid and this June 23 have received the sentence of the courts that gives them the reason. Six of the seven clauses claimed have been declared void, so Néstar will have to withdraw them from the contracts and return more than 20,000 euros to the neighbors, although the company indicates that it will resort. The sentence is also a pioneer, because according to the tenant union opens the door.
The story begins with tenants who were not known, but that in their more or less dignified housing they ended up signing at different times contracts with Néstar. Once they all became neighbors of the Vallecano building themselves began to realize that reality was not what they had imagined: contracts that forced them to pay for non -payment insurance, very high penalties for delays in case of eviction, oy community expenses. The invoice at the end of the month could exceed 700 or 800 euros to more than 1,000.
“In February 2023, a neighbor accompanied by a member of the tenant union to tell me that they were going to organize against the vulture funds, so that our rights were respected,” says Sara Torrijos, one of the demanding neighbors. “I think we were not asking for anything from the other world,” he clarifies. When the union touched on his door, Sara had already lived in the street of Martín Muñoz of the Posadas 7, the first three with a contract and then with another, which is the one that is in force. “Before I lived with my son and husband, who has a lung disease, in a bass that had a lot of moisture, so we needed to leave now. I thought that our problems would be solved in this eighth plant,” she says. At first they paid 685 euros and now the monthly price of their home is around 1,200.
A Néstar spokesman points to this newspaper his disagreement with the sentence, and argues that all the clauses were “clearly specified in the contracts and were of full knowledge of the tenants before the signing of them.”
“Many of the tenants have been thinking that they will be a short time, that a home will already be bought, but since the situation worsens every year it is more difficult to leave,” explains Blanca Martínez, spokesman for the tenant union. These residents of Villa de Vallecas have been the first to get so far against Azora by the hand of the union, but they will not be the only ones because five other blocks have already filed demands for similar clauses and 10 are in the process of organizing. The objective is to eliminate any indication of abuse in the contracts of, mostly located in districts and municipalities of the periphery, such as Carabanchel and Villaverde or Parla, Móstoles and Pinto. And if possible, then load against other funds such as Blackstone, or those that manage social housing in the region.
The lawyer who has taken the case, Víctor Palomo, confirms that this sentence is a pioneer because never before the neighbors attached to a union had managed to give them the reason in the courts against a real estate fund. “It was important that in the first one they gave us the reason. This sentence inaugurates a new procedural strategy so that we can judge the real estate companies that abuse the tenants,” he says. However, Néstar says “that the clauses conform to applicable regulations and legislation, so it will be appealed to the Provincial Court of Madrid” and warns that this judgment “does not feel jurisprudence, so it is not extendable to other cases that could be similar.”
The lawyer explains that the sentence leaves in a “clear and resounding” way that the default insurance that is claimed in the contracts is not a bond, but an imposition that only benefits Néstar. That is why the company must pay the amounts paid by the tenants for this concept in 2021 and 2022, which are the years of the contracts that could be taken to trial, which give an amount of more than 20,000 euros among all those affected. Palomo points to what extent Néstar has taken his abuses, which today, with the sentence in the hand, continues to claim the neighbors for non -payment insurance that they have not paid lately. “We learned in the process that Néstar’s lawyer has been paid with the money of the insurance themselves,” he adds.
According to the sentence, to which the country has had access, the judge has annulled other clauses such as penalty for delay in triple the daily income per day of delay, that of renunciation of rights in case of the interruption of supply due to cause outside the lessor, the examination to the housing, the resolution for non -essential breaches and the non -return of quantity, and the one that claimed that the clauses were negotiated individually.
Both Palomo and the neighbors have been the thorn of the seventh clause, which has not been recognized as abusive, and is that of the payment of the IBI and the community. While Néstar takes it as a victory, the union lawyer emphasizes that it is “difficult” to explain to the judge why paying these quotas is also abusive, but that they will resort that point of the sentence and will concentrate on detailing why it is. “We are building the right to housing and we are doing it in court,” he says, hopeful.
