A Basque house of almost 350 square meters perched on the heights of a typical village in the Basque Country, Ayherre, crystallizes tensions, as Le Figaro explained it last weekend. Its sale price, 1,495,000 euros, or more than 4,000 euros per square meter, is considered excessive. The current owners bought it for 250,000 euros in 2017 and completely renovated it. But this titanic work does not justify the gap between the purchase price in 2017 and the price displayed today, for the “anti-speculation” demonstrators. According to various real estate valuation sites, the sale prices of houses in this town start, certainly a little above €2,000/m² but can, at the top of the range, exceed €5,500/m².
The demonstrators don’t want to hear anything. After asking the potential buyer, ready to inject 1.37 million euros into this property, “to renounce the acquisition at a price unrelated to the real value of the property and inaccessible to the inhabitants of the territory», the Arberoa LurraEtxebizitza collective is now attacking the real estate agency in charge of the sale.
On Saturday, around 70 to 80 people gathered at the collective’s call, in front of the Puyo real estate agency, in Hasparren. For Arberoa LurraEtxebizitza, the real estate agent is one of the “responsible for the real estate and land crisis» with the “speculative sellers” and the “wealthy buyers”. Jean-Michel Puyo, the director of the agency, replies that agents estimate properties by comparing them to other housing sold in the same neighborhoods and that owners do not necessarily follow the agents’ estimates. They are the ones who control the price. The seller’s fault therefore and not the agents.
1500 euros damage
The activists already expressed their anger to the real estate agent last January: 60 demonstrators entered the agency’s offices after making a false appointment, and allegedly degraded them according to Jean-Michel Puyo. They took down the advertisements displayed in the window. “They stole a remote control from me. They took down my poster holders, they damaged some. I have 1500 euros worth of damage after their passage. I have quotes that prove it. Who will pay for this?», confides Jean-Michel Puyo to South West .
Jean-Michel Puyo therefore filed a complaint for “fraudulent occupation» from the agency, «deliberate degradation or deterioration” And “meeting flight”. But this filing of a complaint did not cool down the demonstrators who returned to demonstrate in front of his door on Saturday morning. They denounce the summons to the gendarmerie of two activists after the intrusion into the agency’s premises in January. Some gendarmes stood up against the Puyo real estate agency to ensure its defense.