Hotels and estate agents at odds over rental laws

HOTELS and estate agents are at odds over proposed changes to the law to make the rental market more ‘flexible’. The aim is to promote rentals and prevent ‘unfair competition’, and to do so, properties rented for tourism will no longer come under the national Urban Rental Law. Instead they would be regulated at a regional level. 

The President of the Costa del Sol Hoteliers’ Association (Aehcos), Jose Carlos Escribano, said that the Urban Rental Law allowed for an apartment to be rented short term and the money obtained was often not declared.

But according to the Housing Management Association for Tourism Purposes, the law would limit what people can do with their homes and how tourists choose to spend their holidays. Rental of apartments for tourism generates €2 billion per year in Spain. 

There is a property register in Andalucia on which owners must register if they intend to rent to tourists. However, most people do not, and often advertise the property for rent online, so they cannot be traced. They don’t declare the money they obtain and experts complain that the proposed changes to the law won’t solve this.