Next week, the Government will activate work to establish a regulation of seasonal rentals, as La Vanguardia has learned, to prevent cheating by owners who try to circumvent the new state Housing law. Temporary rental contracts are reserved, in principle, for students and temporary displaced workers, such as digital nomads. But, as they have fewer requirements than those that affect permanent leases, they are being used by more and more holders to avoid the rule, as certified by real estate portals. The Executive assumes the problem and will launch a specific working group next week to try to solve it.
The Urban Leases Law (LAU) states in its article 3 that seasonal rental regulates the rental of real estate for a certain period of time “for an industrial, commercial, artisanal, professional, recreational, healthcare, cultural or educational activity.” That is, they are contracts linked to a specific activity designed mainly for university students or very specific workers, but not for renting a property for regular use. The Housing Law did not address this aspect.
The problem that the Government has detected is that this modality is restricting the offer of traditional rentals, mainly in the so-called stressed areas, which generally correspond to the central centers of the country's large cities. Since the entry into force of the first state housing regulations, seasonal rentals have grown by 40% in the last year and at the end of September they already reached 10% of the total, explains the Idealista portal. On the other hand, offers of housing for permanent rental have fallen by 12% year-on-year.
The situation is especially worrying in Barcelona and San Sebastián, where at this time one of every three apartments offered for rent is seasonal, according to Idealista. In Valencia they reach 13%, and in Madrid, 11%. The problem is widespread in large cities, since the supply of traditional or long-term rentals has fallen. “An increasing number choose to switch to seasonal rentals which, although they have clear limitations, offer the owner a less rigid and perfectly legal environment,” notes the real estate portal. In the last quarter alone, regular rents have fallen by 4% in Barcelona and 3% in Madrid.
To try to advance the regulations for regulating seasonal contracts, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda has formed a specific working group that will hold its first meeting next Friday the 22nd. It was one of the obligations included in the fifth additional provision of the Housing law, which the department led by Isabel Rodríguez now enforces. The norm included a period of six months for the implementation of this group, but the Government, in office since July, did not comply with the requirement.
The working group on seasonal rentals will be coordinated by the Ministry of Housing. The Ministries of Economy and Presidency and the General Secretariat of Economic Affairs of the Moncloa, on behalf of the Government, will participate in it. Representatives of the Council of Associations of Property Administrators, the General Council of the Associations of Real Estate Agents, the CEOE, and the CC.OO unions will also be present. and UGT and the central office of tenants, as well as the Confederation of Urban Property Chambers and Associations of Urban Property Owners. It is not, in principle, planned for Sumar to participate, despite the fact that the Ministry of Social Rights was a co-proponent of the Housing law.
The objective of this working group will be to establish a differentiation between traditional housing rental contracts and seasonal ones because they are two “totally different” contractual modalities, explain Government sources. They remember that regular rentals provide for a series of regulatory elements that protect access to housing with greater intensity than in seasonal rentals. For example, a permanent rental contract offers stability in the contractual relationship through a system of mandatory and tacit extensions, limits the requirement for additional guarantees to the deposit or relieves the landlord of the costs of real estate management and formalization of the contract, among other elements.
The Ministry of Housing, together with the rest of the members of the working group, also plans to address the problems with room rental contracts, a modality that is especially used by foreign citizens who arrive in Spain, according to sources in the sector. , of all ages.
