The Elix Rental Housing investment fund is . What was going to be a quick operation: buying, expelling the neighbors, renovating and converting it into tourist apartments is on its way to ending up in court, almost two years after The blame lies with eight neighbors who, as if they were the old Gallic village of Asterix, unitedly resist the speculative onslaught.
After 20 months of fighting against the Elix Rental Housing Socimi, the residents of Tribulete 7 have managed to get the Court number 17 of Madrid to accept their case for real estate harassment. “It is the first time that a fund of these characteristics has been charged with harassment of tenants,” says Alejandra Jacinto, lawyer for the Tenants Union. “An investigation has been opened and four company officials have been summoned to testify as allegedly responsible, including one of the founding partners, the architect or the construction manager,” Jacinto detailed.
The residents of Tribulete have been fighting against Elix Rental Housing since March 2024, the date of Lavapiés with 54 residents inside. All of them were told that their rental contracts would not be renewed and little by little they left, but eleven of them said no, that they had a series of rental contracts and that they would continue paying the rent until a judge resolved the problem, summarizes Nacho, one of the neighbors ‘in resistance’, who prefers not to give his last name.
So Elix Rental Housing began to torture their existence: construction works all day long, damaged walls and pipes in the common areas, roof collapses, and a portal that floods periodically. Everything until little by little it went away. “The intention was to get them to leave on their own and thus make it more profitable for them, saving the costs and time it would take to evict them through judicial means,” insists the lawyer.
Last month a couple of octogenarians did it and the previous month another elderly couple who had been living in Tribulete 7 all their lives, also decided that they couldn’t take it anymore. The eight remaining neighbors decided to unite and endure and with the help of the Tenants’ Union.
The buyer who will have to go through court on February 19 is Elix Rental Housing, a real estate fund owned by AltamarCAM Partners, of which Claudio Aguirre is president, cousin of the former president of the Community of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, that family that ends up in court for buying a building with tenants inside for whom it makes life impossible.
Tribulete 7 is the best-known case of a speculative attack that affects the entire neighborhood. Before them, the funds bought the buildings at Buenavista, 25, Zurita, 22 or Argumosa, 11 and one after another they expelled the neighbors when acquiring the entire building.
More than five residents leave Lavapiés every day due to the increase in rental prices. According to the latest report from the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid, the neighborhood has lost 10,000 in the last five years, a situation that completely alters the ecosystem.
“They have been unbearable months. Elix has tried to negotiate, but they don’t want it to be in a group, but rather individually,” explains Cristina Gómez, another of the besieged neighbors. “Their goal is to divide us,” he insists. The families who resist in the building accuse Elix of engaging in what is known as real estate mobbing. A practice that is causing material damage to their homes, but also subjecting them to unbearable psychological pressure. “This practice of harassment and harassment through supposed improvement works is common currency on the part of all vulture funds to make life impossible for the neighbors and for them to leave even before the end of their contracts,” the Madrid Tenants Union insists.
“The court has understood that the evidence that we have set aside is sufficient to summon them as investigated,” says the lawyer. If the lawsuit is successful, it could put a vulture fund in the dock “and the penalty provided for in the criminal code for real estate harassment is pressure, but there is also criminal liability of the company itself that could lead to the dissolution of the company,” he adds.
In Madrid, rents have risen 60% in the last 10 years compared to salaries that have only risen 3%. The tenants’ union seeks justice and that in addition to an investigation, “the fund be cut when it comes to making life impossible for these neighbors. After all, they were living peacefully in their house until this investment fund bought the building and decided to replace them with others that were more profitable in the future,” says Lucas Vaquero, spokesperson for the union. According to those affected, in the Madrid of impossible housing prices, the large holders received a clear message this week: “they are no longer impunity and using the works to intimidate and empty a building to speculate with it,” adds Jacinto.
