Free divorce with every house – as long as it’s in Spain!

Over the last few months we have all read reams and reams on how the bottom has fallen out of the housing market.

Left:Paella, the cat, was most distressed to hear she was getting divorced as well as moving house

When this sort of thing happens, mortgage providers often start to be a little more creative with the ‘incentives' they offer to try to entice us back.

In Britain, this has taken the form of free valuations, free surveys, free council tax, free stamp duty or free (house buying) legal advice all of which is very useful, however, in Spain free offers have entered the realms of bizarre!

The housing market is so bad in parts of Spain (reports say it has dropped by 40%) that drastic action to turn it around is now being employed.

In the Huelva Province, if you buy a house worth the equivalent of £61,000, they throw in a free DIVORCE LAWYER.

I can't help wondering how they came upon this idea. Was it someone in marketing looking for an excuse to get divorced but who needed that ‘extra' incentive?

Was it just a bad translation of the British supermarket obsession with buy-one-get-one-free, which has ended up with one couple needing to buy two houses because they have taken advantage of the ‘special deal' with the first? 

Or, was it a genuine attempt to keep two industries going as, apparently, getting divorced in Spain is prohibitively expensive so people aren't doing it.

My other question is, how on earth do you sell this to your partner, which one gets the lawyer and which one gets the house? 

I wonder if there is a time limit on the use of the lawyer or if you can keep it on the back burner, for those days when your feel sorely tempted.

It would certainly make a change from the more traditional cry of ‘going back to mum'.

I understand it's easy to knock new ideas, but having thought this one through, it may be fine for the Spanish market but I hope it doesn't catch on here!

Sylvia Waycot, Publisher - Moneyfacts Group