They paid the mortgage for decades, completed 30 years of council protection and discovered the house wasn’t entirely theirs. The reason? Because there’s a city hall lot underneath. This is the fine print of Plan 18,000, the municipal sheltered housing program for cooperatives. It affects thousands of families in Madrid and has been circulating through documents, plenary sessions and courts for 30 years.
Now it has reached its decisive moment in an autumn in which housing rules the agenda: Sol Camp began on September 26 and the plenary approved plans for 18,400 more sheltered homes on October 8 with votes from the PP and Vox. Let us try to understand where this diabolical administrative maze came from.
That’s what it is. Between 1984 and 1997, the city council handed over the plot to the cooperative under surface rights for 75 years. The Council itself estimated the program with 8,559 protected houses, 2,107 garages and premises and 108 plots, with more than 10,000 owners. The successful bidders, called superficiarios (sic), owned not the land on which it was built.
Why was the land free? The original design had three measures by income, which was measured as a multiple of the minimum wage. Those with low income are given land without paying any money. It was sold at an appraised value, amid high returns. The City Council maintained that the free transfer was the most appropriate formula for this family’s capacity, and that 75 years equated to, in effect, a sale at zero cost. The first buyers of the land paid a million pesetas, about 6,000 euros, in the nineties. With each specification update, the average as of 2018 was around 30,000 euros.
What happens at 75. The law is clear: the consolidated text of the Land Act states that, at the end of the term, the landlord takes possession of the building without compensating anyone. The Madrid Law sets a maximum age limit of 75 years for public transfers. Victims have been warning about it for years, and a viral thread backed it into state law and ended some plots in 2072. The City Council does not dispute this: it admits that there will be no compensation and makes it clear that whoever does not buy will keep the house in the same condition until the end of those 75 years. Plots had an average of 40 years remaining in 2023. In 2024, the Council spoke of about 45.
Thirty years of closed doors. Since 1992, the city council has offered to sell the land to neighbors, and some almost always fail. The first offer requires all residents of the block to say yes: without just one, there will be no sale. 8 plots have been sold. Already in 2010, Elmundo headlined the news “They will be able to buy their homes”, more as a promise than an actual reality. City Planning admits it today: the campaigns were blocked by a single vote The offers continued until January 2018, when 30 years of protection were completed and the first plots were no longer VPOs.
In December 2017, the plenary unanimously approved another offer with lower prices, which will be launched in 5 months. It didn’t work: Legal counsel knocked him out. The representative at the time, José Manuel Calvo, called it “wet paper”. In July 2020, all groups signed the Village Agreement, which prohibits the sale of land or public housing. According to the platform, the idea was to close the investment fund. It ended up being a thorn in the side of these neighbors.
Chaos in 2023. In January 2023, the city council launched an offer for around twenty plots already unqualified at market value. It was five times more expensive than the previous one, as the council itself later admitted. In Ciudad Lineal, a fee rose from 29,537 to 241,000 euros. Almeida defended that Villa had no choice but to make deals.
On April 20, a month before the municipal elections, the city council withdrew the proposal. On the 25th, in the mandate’s last plenary session, all parties voted to revoke it. They also removed these neighbors from the villa agreement, with a PP amendment presented a few days ago. Those affected celebrated, but it reassured them nothing.
Platform. The organization claims to have 3,500 members and over 10,000 affected people. You want to buy the land at a fair price before the lease expires. Along with lawyers from a university legal office, they appealed the 2023 offer and demanded a price agreed upon in the 2017 plenary session. Their spokesman, Magncio Lopez, said they were not seeking to give up their land and that the courts would be the last resort.
Three options. Effective January 24, 2024, the terms of Municipal Bulletin 9,556 apply. Each owner can choose between buying the cheapest with strings attached (prices start from the most secure housing and go down to 90%; a share of Hortaleza goes from 150,527 to 17,295 euros, and one of Moratalaz, from 140,352 to 22,709. In return it cannot be sold for more than 5 years or sold on the market) price, which is a garage without housing and premises The only way to do it, which was never protected, and then sold at a high price.
Well, the other option is nothing. In their “Frequently Asked Questions” they opined that non-eligible plots can be sold at ex ante free price, with approval and paying the difference updated with CPI. In still protected plots, only the first route is valid.
The City Council maintains that it cannot sell public land below market without an anti-resale brake, as that would be bad administration. The platform refutes that this is 90% true compared to the nonsense of 2023: families will pay closer to the usual 30,000 euros. And he warned that “it’s going to destroy a lot of people’s lives.” Each owner must calculate their value with a formula that victims find complicated. They have a deadline to make a decision, which ends on May 31, 2027.
Land itself becomes expensive. The protected value comes from the VPO maximum set by the Community of Madrid. These maximums have not been touched since 2008 and were updated in February 2024 They have since been reviewed annually, most recently in January 2026 Since the City Council assesses the fee at the time of application, it is more expensive to wait than to act PSOE and Platform warned: This increase would leave the most vulnerable families without choice
Jam. From September 2024, the files are managed by EMVS The City Council acknowledges the delay due to the volume of the request and ensures that the application is not rejected as a result of the delay. The viral thread goes further and condemns the paralyzed signatures from 2024 and registries that refuse to register municipal rights of trial and revocation, which last for the remainder of the surface, according to the document. Their argument is that the Civil Code limits agreed withdrawal to 10 years. There is no official confirmation of these blocks. The same thread maintains that the second purchaser of the flight pays the floor with 21% VAT, as the reduced rate applies only to the first.
Those who are left out. Affected are many retirees who have just finished paying off their homes. Banks, they say, don’t finance municipal land. A 74-year-old neighbor sums up the problem: At his age, no one gives him a loan. The platform adds other areas: seniors who want to transition to an adapted apartment or pay for a residence with a reverse mortgage, separated couples and second buyers who don’t even know the land isn’t theirs.
Regarding this figure, the city council talks about 2,500 residents who have bought since 1992. Another source said between 1,500 and 6,500 homes were still trapped. The platform says 8,000 families. But let’s not be naive: no matter how many statements we quote, thousands of people’s homes depend on market pressure. It’s always like this.
What the parties say. The PP rules with an absolute majority and defends what has been done: representative Borja Karavante said in 2024 that what the owners demanded was the protected price. In March 2025, he promised to study installment payments and reduce the limit from 15 to 5 years, although he warned that they could not deviate from the approved conditions. The reduction was requested by Vox, which took the matter to committee with a greater focus on seniors without the credit. The PSOE and Más Madrid forced the withdrawal of the free price offer in 2023.
In any case, the municipal elections are on May 23, 2027. The application will expire after eight days. An extension, given the circumstances, will depend on the government that emerges from the elections.
Picture | Cover: Lajos Christophe Kantor for Pexels / Body: Plan 18,000 Association / Last photo owned by Selena Pizarro for ElSalto
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