There is irritation in Roquetas del Mar today, after the town hall setup an auction to flog off 64 properties, and not one person showed up to bid.
The properties have all been seized by the townhall in lieu of taxes.
The two biggest lots were the old Hotel Colonial at 1.6 million euros (with further taxes of 1.2 million owing) and Hotel Bellavista Mar at 14 million euros (and a further 13 million owing to Banco Popular. It’s also leased to a company for the next two decades and you can’t break the lease).
12 of the properties were regularised just before the auction – a dog kennels in Las Lomas paid up, as did Hotel Salinas Mar, which paid up 8 million euros to save sister hotel Andarax in Aguadulce.
The rest will now be up for sale for the next six months to see if anyone is interested. The properties are supposed to be cheap (they aren’t, I’m told, realistic) but the purchaser usually has to cough up for back taxes or mortgage arrears owed.