Seasonal rentals have become a way used by companies in the real estate sector that are looking for the formula to not comply with the new housing law of the Government of Pedro Sánchez in force since May. With a contract of this type, of between one and eleven months duration, the rental contract is outside state legislation and avoids the future price limit that can be established in all those cities that are considered market areas tense residential
“The Government will not allow the use of seasonal rentals as a way of evading and circumventing the limitation of the rental price”, assured yesterday the recently appointed Minister of Territory, Ester Capella, in her first intervention in a parliamentary committee since taking office last month. The Barcelona municipal government and the tenants’ union have been warning about this phenomenon for some time, which is particularly intense in the Catalan capital.
Advertisements of less than a year on real estate portals have increased exponentially and the Generalitat fears that the same thing will happen again as in the months following the appearance of covid, in 2020. Then, the empty tourist apartments due to the lack of visitors they became seasonal rentals and bypassed the need to comply with the Catalan law on containment of rental prices, later overturned by the Constitutional Court. It is a subject that Capella knows well, as she was Minister of Justice at the time. Now it is even more worrying, since those who switch to this type of rental outside the law are homes that should go on the market complying with the urban rental law (LAU) with their corresponding five-year contracts.
The intention to curb the fraudulent use of short-term rentals requires, as a preliminary step, the consideration of stressed areas in 140 municipalities, among which are all the large centres, where 80% of the population of Catalonia resides. In all these places the Generalitat wants to limit the rental price under the new state housing law. Catalonia is the first community to initiate the procedures, the regulations are already on public display, and, according to Capella, the Government’s procedure will be enough, without the need for the town councils to make a decree declaring it, as made last week by the mayor of Barcelona, ??Jaume Collboni.
The new councilor has also pledged to push forward “a new regulation of the urban planning regime for homes for tourist use” thinking of the places where “tourist use produces price tensions and does not guarantee a sufficient supply of rental housing to meet the needs of the resident population”, according to Capella.
He announced all of this in a speech presenting the master lines of his department to Parliament, much more focused on housing than on infrastructure, unlike what his predecessors used to do. There were no surprises in this area and Capella bet on tiptoeing over delicate issues, such as the expansion of El Prat airport, the Hard Rock project in Salou and the B-40 between Terrassa and Sabadell. Even with regard to questions from the opposition, he chose to answer without much concreteness, although he did make it clear that “it is not the B-40, but an urban patrol”. Instead, he insisted on recreating himself with all kinds of data about incidents and lack of investment in the classic of the classics: the integral transfer of Rodalies.
