Evicting tenants in Spain is from today, easier. Tenants who are late in paying their rent may be evicted if they fail to pay it within 10 days. It is the most important bill to be presented today by the Ministry of Development in the Cabinet, which includes a series of administrative, judicial and fiscal measures to "speed up and make more flexible" the rental market.
The legislation introduced today approves tax incentives for investors, but does not change the measures announced by Ana Pastor in May's blueprint, regarding late payments, which introduced three major changes:
First:
Landlords can sue a defaulting tenant from the first month of being unpaid, whereas before they had to do this starting the second month.
Second:
It shortens by 10 days the period that the tenant has to contend, once the owner of the property has taken the tenant to court and filed in a case for non-payment of rent. Before the deadline was one month. If not, the tenant doesn’t show up, the judge may order the termination of the contract immediately and issue the statement. From the beginning of the process to eviction it used to take at least four months.
Third:
The eviction process can be carried out only with the presence of a judicial officer, who accompanies the police and the locksmith, when previously it took two, with the aim to double the judicial activity and shorten those four months or more, ranging from the judge passes sentence until the eviction occurs.
The draft of the bill created by the Ministry of Development aims to increase the percentage of the population that uses the rental market by 17%. The law itself has changed in recent months, as a direct result of the pressure made by some members of the european community who want to see something done about the million vacant houses and nearly 700,000 unsold properties. This 'stock', which mostly remains as currently in the balance sheets of financial institutions, may be offered for rent under favorable tax conditions.
The Bill also includes measures to strengthen freedom of landlords and tenants when formalizing new contracts and reduces the “forced extension” of the contract from five to three years.
Other measure included in the new law, is that the parties involved may agree to update rents outside the IPC. In addition, tenants may leave the premises warning with one month's notice and the landlord may recover the house for family use reporting two months.
Source:
ElMundo.es
