An update on RDL 29/2026, emerging judicial practice, and the recovery strategies behind Indemo's Discounted Debt product.
Dear Indemo Community,
It has now been just over a month since the Spanish government introduced Royal Decree-Law 29/2026, bringing new measures to address the country's housing challenges.
In our previous CEO update, we shared our initial legal assessment and explained why we considered the overall impact of the new legislation on Indemo's Discounted Debt product to be low.
We deliberately took some time before returning with further conclusions. Our servicing partners recommended allowing approximately one month to observe how Spanish courts would interpret and apply the new provisions in practice.
After all, there is an important difference between interpreting legislation and observing how it is actually applied by judges in real cases.
Today, we are seeing strong and increasingly consistent signals from Spanish courts confirming our initial legal assessment: the new eviction moratorium under Article 2 of RDL 29/2026 does not apply to mortgage foreclosure proceedings (ejecución hipotecaria). This is a particularly important development, as mortgage foreclosure forms the legal backbone of Indemo's Discounted Debt recovery and monetisation model.
Executive Summary — Three Key Takeaways
1. Strong judicial signals indicate that the new eviction moratorium does not apply to mortgage foreclosure proceedings — the legal backbone of Indemo's Discounted Debt monetisation model.
The first month of practical implementation has brought important judicial clarification. Following initial decisions by courts in different Spanish provinces, the judges of the Barcelona Court of First Instance have adopted unified criteria explicitly excluding mortgage foreclosure proceedings (ejecución hipotecaria) from the new eviction moratorium under Article 2 of RDL 29/2026.
This is particularly important because mortgage foreclosure serves as the legal backbone of our Discounted Debt recovery and monetisation model. It provides the enforceable judicial framework that supports the creditor's position and enables multiple opportunities for monetary recovery throughout the NPL lifecycle. The emerging judicial interpretation therefore directly addresses one of the fundamental mechanisms underlying our investment product and strongly supports our original legal assessment.
2. Indemo's Discounted Debt product offers approximately six potential monetary exit opportunities without requiring the creditor to take ownership of the property and pursue eviction.
Professional NPL recovery is not limited to completing mortgage foreclosure and taking possession of the underlying real estate. Throughout an asset's lifecycle, several opportunities to monetise the investment may emerge through debtor settlements, voluntary property sales, secondary debt market transactions, judicial auctions, and transfers of auction award rights. The availability and attractiveness of each opportunity depend on the individual characteristics of the case, its judicial progress, and, importantly, the quality of the legal and commercial work performed by the servicing company.
3. Our product model allows recovery strategies to be actively managed, targeting the most economically attractive exit for investors.
The advantage of acquiring mortgage debt at a discount is not only the potential recovery margin, but also the flexibility it creates. By combining legal enforcement, negotiations, and commercial asset management, our servicing partners can continuously evaluate alternative exit opportunities and select the most attractive available route for investors. Rather than mechanically pursuing foreclosure until the property is taken over and sold, the objective is to achieve the best risk-adjusted investment outcome, balancing potential returns, time, costs, and execution risks.
Our conclusion: Emerging judicial practice supports our initial assessment that the new eviction moratorium does not create an automatic suspension of mortgage foreclosure proceedings. Equally importantly, the Discounted Debt product is built around multiple actively managed exit opportunities rather than dependence on eventual property possession.
In this update, I would like to explain the judicial developments in more detail and why they matter for Indemo investors.
1. A brief reminder: Why were the housing decrees introduced?
Housing affordability has become one of Spain's most important social and political challenges.
In response, the Spanish government introduced a broad package of measures aimed at protecting vulnerable households, strengthening tenant protections, increasing the availability of affordable housing, and addressing certain practices in the residential property market.
The original versions of the housing decrees were rejected by Parliament on 2 October. The government subsequently introduced revised legislation, including Royal Decree-Law 29/2026, adopted on 6 October and in force from 8 October.
Importantly, this legislation was not specifically designed to regulate the secondary mortgage debt market. Nevertheless, some provisions attracted considerable attention from investors and professional asset managers operating in Spain's distressed debt market.
One particular measure raised questions: the new moratorium on certain residential evictions, potentially extending until 31 December 2030.
This naturally led institutional buyers of distressed mortgage portfolios, private investors, and professional debt servicing companies to ask an important question:
Does the new eviction moratorium also apply to mortgage foreclosure proceedings (ejecución hipotecaria) under Spain's Civil Procedure Law (Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil, or LEC)?
This question is especially relevant because mortgage foreclosure is one of the principal legal recovery mechanisms used in the Spanish non-performing mortgage loan (NPL) market.
2. One month later: What are Spanish courts telling us?
Over the past month, our servicing partners and their legal teams have been closely monitoring the practical implementation of the new decree across Spanish jurisdictions.
According to the feedback received from our servicing companies, several Courts of First Instance in different provinces have rejected attempts by debtors to suspend mortgage foreclosure proceedings by invoking the new eviction moratorium.
These developments have also been documented publicly.
On 22 October 2026, TARSSO Abogados, a Spanish law firm specialising in debt recovery and real estate-related legal proceedings, published a legal briefing examining the first judicial decisions concerning the applicability of RDL 29/2026 to mortgage foreclosure proceedings.
The briefing refers to decisions from courts in Málaga, Torremolinos, and Cerdanyola del Vallès, where requests to suspend mortgage-related evictions under the new decree were rejected. The common interpretation is that the new suspension regime does not extend to mortgage foreclosure proceedings.
The findings are available in TARSSO's publicly released legal note:
More importantly, we now have a significant published judicial development.
On 29 October 2026, the judges of the Civil Division of the Barcelona Court of First Instance adopted an agreement establishing unified criteria for the interpretation and application of RDL 29/2026.
The agreement, signed on 3 November, explicitly confirms that mortgage foreclosure proceedings are excluded from the scope of the new eviction moratorium established under Article 2.
The judges explained that mortgage foreclosure proceedings are governed by their own specific legal framework.
The agreement also clarifies that the transitional provisions of the new decree apply only to the specific types of proceedings identified under Article 441.5 of the LEC, referring to Article 250.1(1), (2), (4), and (7).
The original signed agreement has been made publicly available by the Barcelona Bar Association (ICAB):
What does this mean in practical terms?
The new moratorium concerns certain proceedings relating to the recovery of possession of residential property, including rental evictions, certain cases of occupation without a valid legal title, and specific proceedings concerning possession or registered property rights.
These are legally distinct from the special mortgage foreclosure procedure used to enforce a mortgage-secured claim.
The Barcelona agreement was also communicated to the President of the Provincial Court of Barcelona and the governing bodies of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia.
The agreement provides an important and authoritative indication of how judges are approaching the new legislation.
For the professional NPL market, this is a meaningful development.
The emerging judicial interpretation is clear: the new eviction moratorium under Article 2 is not a general suspension of mortgage foreclosure proceedings.
3. What does this mean for Indemo's Discounted Debt product?
This judicial clarification is particularly important for understanding the expected performance of our investment product.
Indemo's Discounted Debt product is based on acquiring rights to recover non-performing mortgage debts at a discount, rather than purchasing residential properties directly.
Mortgage foreclosure is one of the key judicial mechanisms available to recover these claims.
Given the emerging judicial interpretation, we do not consider the new Article 2 eviction moratorium to be a reason to revise our portfolio's expected recovery timelines or financial assumptions.
In other words, the moratorium does not introduce an automatic suspension of the mortgage foreclosure proceedings underlying our recovery strategies.
This supports our initial assessment that the additional impact of the new eviction moratorium on Indemo's Discounted Debt product is low.
However, there is another important point that I would like to emphasise.
Taking ownership of the property and eviction, where applicable, represent only one of several possible exit scenarios within our product.
In fact, the ability to pursue different recovery routes — sometimes simultaneously and sometimes sequentially — is one of the fundamental characteristics of professional NPL servicing.
We have prepared a separate educational article, “Behind the Discounted Debt Product: Six Exit Opportunities Across the Mortgage NPL Lifecycle,” explaining how professional servicing can create monetary exit opportunities at different stages, long before any need to take possession of the underlying property.
Thank you for your continued trust!
Sergejs Viskovskis
CEO & Co-Founder, Indemo
This content is a marketing communication. It shall not be treated as investment advice, independent research, or an offer, recommendation, or invitation to invest. Investing in financial instruments involves risks, including the possible loss of invested capital. Expected returns and recovery timelines are estimates, not guarantees. Past performance does not guarantee future returns.