Catalonia on Thursday became the first region in Spain to pass legislation which prevents landlords from renting accommodation on a temporary basis rather than long-term in order to skirt price caps and other standard rental rules.
The Catalan parliament on Thursday approved a law regulating seasonal and room rentals, closing down loopholes used to circumvent the cap on rents currently in force in Catalonia.
According to the new regulations approved by a slate of left-wing parties, temporary tourist rentals will no longer be considered ‘seasonal’ for legal purposes and will be governed by the same rules as regular housing.
This change means that, regardless of their duration, these contracts will be subject to the price reference index in areas declared to be under pressure, and therefore will prevent landlords from setting rents higher than those set by law under the pretext of being tourist or seasonal accommodation.
READ ALSO: Barcelona to limit temporary rent prices so landlords stop skirting rules
The new regulation establishes that only contracts for tourism or recreational purposes will continue to be considered seasonal, with the corresponding tourist tax commitments.
What determines whether a flat should have a price limit or not is not the duration of the contract, but its use. If a property is for living in, its price can be legally limited, even if the contract is for only a few months for work, study or medical reasons.
Only flats that explicitly state that they are being rented for strictly recreational or tourist use will be exempt from this limit.
Room rentals are also regulated in the new regulations, namely that the total price of all the rooms cannot exceed the price limit for that specific flat.
The law also establishes that some 35,000 flats that would have entered the deregulated market in the coming years will remain under official protection.
The new rules will come into force in Catalonia in the coming days following an agreement between the Socialists, Esquerra, Comunes and the CUP.
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This comes at a time of crisis in the rental market in Catalonia and the country more widely.
Nine out of ten tenants in Barcelona now have temporary rental contracts, according to a December 2024 study published by the Barcelona Urban Research Institute (IDRA).
Three quarters of rental ads in Barcelona are for rooms, which are also usually done via seasonal or temporary contratos de temporada.
Many landlords had previously tried to use short-term tourist and seasonal accommodation as a means to bypass price caps, something the newly approved regulations hope to stop.
The reason why temporary or seasonal rental contracts under a year in length have become so common in Barcelona and around Spain is that landlords don’t have to abide by price controls as they’re not deemed long-term residential contracts.
Barcelona and Catalonia already have price controls for ‘stressed rental areas’ which mean that long-term rentals, including new ones, cannot be above a certain price, and on a national level there’s a rent cap on existing long-term contracts that prevent year-on-year increases of more than around 3 percent, also in place in Catalonia.
READ MORE: The pros and cons of signing a temporary rental contract in Spain
