The Government has developed a new law for housing that has already been known and whose forecast is that it will be approved next March. This is a renewed regulatory framework for rentals that directly affects tenants and owners. The question is to know which are the most relevant points of this text and how it can have an impact.
As a base point, the new law seeks to include the regulation of rental prices in stressed areas and will impose a 150% IBI surcharge on empty homes, as well as a bonus of 250 euros per month to make it easier for young people to can seek their independence. The most relevant aspects are those explained below.
One of the most important changes that affects the owners who rent their apartments is the regulation of prices in those labeled as "stressed areas". The declaration of a neighborhood or a municipality with these characteristics will depend on the State and each Autonomous Community, including the City Council of the municipality where these areas are being studied in the review.
If an area is declared tense, this will have a minimum duration of three years, extendable from year to year to avoid an indiscriminate rise in rental housing prices. Thus, the average rental price in the area is more than 30% of the average income of the inhabitants of the specific neighborhood.
Therefore, if the average income of a neighborhood is 25,000 euros, the rental price should not exceed 5,000 euros per year (or 416.60 euros per month). In this way, in these affected areas, rental price reference rates will be established that large owners must respect, as well as small owners who want to qualify for tax benefits.
As explained by the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, the new law seeks to "contain and reduce rental prices, with a very powerful package of tax benefits for owners, to encourage price reductions."
Large landlords, which are natural or legal persons who have more than 10 homes on their property (excluding garages and storage rooms) or with a constructed area of more than 1,500 m2, must adapt their rental prices to the reference index of the area where it is located for those homes that are in the so-called "stressed areas", limiting the rental price to the price of the previous contract, although this price drop will only apply to large owners who are legal entities.
From the approval of the law, a period of 18 months will be given to establish what this reference index of the rental price will be like.
The new norm will include a tax for empty houses through the IBI surcharge up to 150%, with some exceptions. To encourage the rental of these homes to those that have been empty for more than two years for owners with more than four homes in the same municipality, the Government will allow municipalities to increase the IBI rate for homes that are empty with a surcharge of up to 150%.
Although it has been qualified that the new regulation will take into account the different existing powers in the matter, both regional and municipal, for which reason it was indicated that it should be the autonomous communities that request whether or not they want to apply price control in stressed areas. . This increase could mean paying 1,600 euros a year more for the tax.
Both legal procedures and rental contracts when there are situations of vulnerability. We want to improve communication between judges and social services to make it faster and more effective. Thus, it will be possible to promote that the social services give a housing response to those vulnerable households by the municipalities, the Autonomous Communities or the State.
To allow time for these situations to be resolved, the period for launching evictions is extended from one to two months when the owner of the home is a natural person and from three to four months when the owner is a company.
