Roomonitor

Real Case: How to avoid squatters in your short-term rental apartment

Pisos okupa

According to official figures (data from 2017), it is estimated that in Spain there are around 90,000 illegally occupied dwellings; 23% of them are located in Barcelona.

One of the biggest fears when talking about squatters are so-called organized mafias, which are dedicated exclusively to finding and occupying homes to make a resale of the property or to demand that the owners leave them.

The law states that if the owner gives notice to the police and the police act within 48 hours, the eviction can be immediately. Although if this does not work, a civil complaint must be made.

How can the Noise Alarm sonometer help you to protect your property?

We’re no longer just talking about noisy guests, but it can help you with other types of noise violations.

A great control tool, it is our panel where you can see the sound pressure graph of the apartment.

panel roomonitor
Roomonitor panel image with 24hs lens, 2019. SOURCE: panel.roomonitor.com

In Roomonitor you can see in real time the sound pressure of your apartment and detect if there were suspicious movements in days and hours where you do not have check-in operations.

This is the case of our client Classbedroom, who were alerted by a neighbor about suspicious movements inside their apartment.

Marcos Bosch, of Classbedroom tells us “The on-call staff moved to the apartment with a patrol and thanks to the way we were able to prove that they had entered at 2am with the Noise Data Chart, they kicked them out. If we hadn’t had a sonometer, we’d still have the squatters, they had been only two hours in the apartment.”

Classbedroom panel image, Sunday 13th of October 2019 – 2 am. SOURCE: Roomonitor

This proves that our panel is a very valuable tool because it allows you a quick reaction to protect the property in the moment.

If you act immediately, the police can remove the occupants without a judicial process because it is a flagrant crime, i.e. the occupation is occurring or just occurring and there are witnesses.

So, our measurement charts, they serve to demonstrate when there were unexpected movements and to prove that it was a private property violation.

If you would like to receive a quote of our Noise Alarm sonometer, and start monitoring the noise of your rental apartment, leave us your details. Click here.