Manchester couple forced to sell dream Spanish villa after squatter trashed house and refused to leave

Joanne Venet, 61, says her ordeal began when a tenant refused to pay his €1,400 a month rent for the €450,000 three-bedroom luxury villa near Benidorm earlier this year. Joanne was then faced with Spain's tough tenancy laws which could have seen her spend years and thousands of pounds to evict the tenant, who was a Spanish citizen.

In the end the wedding celebrant and actress from Radcliffe, Greater Manchester, was forced to pay an eviction agency - or 'de-squatters' - £4,000 to evict the tenant who owed €5,600 (£4,800) for four months unpaid rent and bills.

When she finally obtained possession of the property, it was trashed and covered in cocaine and cannabis paraphernalia, and debris. It comes as a number of Brits have decided to sell up and move out of the country due to issues with squatters.

Joanna says the whole ordeal has left her exhausted, unable to work and so traumatised that she is selling up her dream villa which she had successfully rented out for years. Joanne said: "We couldn’t get him out – we were advised ‘you can’t even knock on the door’. We couldn’t even go and see him unless we had an appointment with him.

“He wouldn’t leave – he decided to blackmail us and said ‘I’m not leaving, I’m going to stay in your house’. He said ‘I can stay in here, I can do what I want, I have my rights’. I’m an actress and I’m a wedding celebrant. I’m normally on social media, I’m normally at wedding fairs.

“The mental strain of it stopped me advertising myself, I’ve not got enough weddings for next year because I didn’t work. All that happening in Spain, it makes you feel so down that you can’t just get on with normal life, knowing that somebody’s living in your house.”

In November, the couple rented out their three-bed home, located in a small town just a few miles outside Benidorm, to a local resident for €1,400 a month. Joanne says the seaside town has some ‘magical parts to it’, but what happened next was anything but.

After just two months, the tenant stopped paying his rent and even his bills – meaning electricity at the home was cut off. Frustrated, the couple tried to take their home back when they discovered that Spanish laws meant they could only evict the squatter immediately if he had moved in within the last 48 hours.

Joanne and her husband, who asked not to be named, missed out on four months of rent and had to pay £4,000 to a specialised eviction agency, to finally get back possession of their Spanish villa last month.

But only because the squatter finally signed a voluntary eviction agreement. The eviction company says it involved the local police after discovering that the home had cocaine and cannabis in it.

The eviction process took the couple around five weeks. The mum-of-three said: “It would have normally taken two years if it was just left to us. It’s only because I had spare money from an inheritance that I could afford to do that.”

Joanne and her husband found the process of evicting their squatters even more difficult due to post-Brexit rules limiting the amount of time Brits can stay in Spain.

Those travelling on a British passport can only stay in the Schengen area, which includes Spain, for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. Those who wish to stay longer must apply for a visa or could face a ban from the Schengen area.

She said: “We can’t stay there together at the moment. We’ve got to make sure we’ve got X amount of days. That’s why my husband’s there, we didn’t want to leave the house. We’re scared of squatters going in. This guy was a tenant, but if we leave it empty we’re scared of squatters going in.”

Now, Joanne wants to see the Spanish laws changed to provide greater protection for landlords. She added: “We do want to sell it now, yes. We just can’t have this stress.”