The eight mistakes that knock out most applicants

This is by far the number one cause. In allocation processes (adjudicación) for affordable housing with high demand, the stage where most people drop out is not the draw (sorteo): it is the request for documents that comes after it. An out-of-date certificate, a missing signature or a tax return from someone in your household that you did not provide is enough to be dropped.

You registered four years ago, nothing has changed in your life, and you assume you are still on the list. But your entry on the applicant register (registro de demandantes) expires and has to be renewed. When the draw comes, your application simply does not exist.

Fix: write down the expiry date on the day you register. If you leave us your email, we will remind you in good time so you can renew.

Large family, single-parent family, disability, young person, victim of gender violence: each quota (cupo) reserves homes and cuts the competition drastically. It is not applied automatically: you have to declare it and provide the document, when you register and in every application.

Many registers let you choose several towns. Ticking only the capital, where competition is highest, cuts your chances to almost nothing; ticking thirty towns where you would never live leads you to turn down an allocation and, in some calls, to a penalty.

Fix: tick every town where you really would live, including those in the metropolitan area. It is the decision with the best effort-to-result ratio in the whole process.

Calls for applications (convocatorias) are published in official gazettes and on town hall websites that nobody checks every day, and deadlines are counted in working days. By the time you hear about it by word of mouth, the deadline has usually passed.

Fix: do not rely on checking. Sign up for the email alert for your area, or add our deadline calendar to your phone so the closing dates appear in your diary on their own.

"I earn too much for a VPO" is the sentence that has cost the most chances. The limit is worked out with a yearly index based on fourteen payments, weighted by the number of people in the household, and it changes by regime and region. Doing the sum roughly, with twelve payments and no weighting, gives an artificially low cap.

Fix: work out your real limit with your region's rules before giving up. And remember that some regions also require a minimum income to buy.

Between the allocation and the signing there are weeks, not months. People who only start talking to banks at that point often do not make it in time, lose the home, and it goes to the next person on the waiting list.

Fix: get a mortgage pre-approval before the draw and check whether you qualify for the ICO guarantee (aval ICO), which can take the place of the down payment.

Not being picked is not the end: the draw puts all applicants in order, and the waiting list really is used, because there are always people who turn homes down. Many people never check their position and do not answer when they are called months later.

Fix: keep a note of your waiting-list number and keep your documents up to date. And apply to the next call: the people who get protected housing are usually the ones who kept trying, not the ones who were lucky the first time.