What is legal and what is (currently) illegal?
Vacation rentals on the Balearic Islands – and what you should bear in mind!
In recent weeks, we have received an increasing number of queries from unsure customers who want to make sure that the vacation apartment or vacation home they want to rent or have already rented (and paid for) is actually being rented legally.
We are also often contacted by people who have booked their vacation accommodation via other portals and whose booking has been canceled at short notice, usually without giving any reason.
This means that they are sitting on packed suitcases and booked flights, so to speak, and are left without a place to stay at their destination.
To ensure that this does not happen to you and that you can enjoy the best weeks of the year without any worries, we would like to summarize the key points of the current legal situation for you here.
However, we ask for your understanding that we cannot accept any liability for the correctness of the information – if only because changes can occur here on a daily basis.
We also give you other valuable tips on how you can verify the reliability of offers.
The legal situation:
A new tourism law came into force on the Balearic Islands on 08.08.2017.
Since then, no new licenses for vacation rentals have been issued, only previously submitted applications are still processed and provisional license numbers are issued for the properties.
The moratorium can last up to one year, i.e. until August 2018.
Only then can new licenses be applied for again, albeit under strict conditions.
What does this mean in concrete terms?
1. single-family houses, semi-detached houses and village houses that already had a valid tourist rental license before August 2017 or had applied for it by then and thus have a provisional license number may continue to be legally rented out to holidaymakers and offered via brokerage portals
2. for the tourist rental of apartments in buildings that serve residential purposes (i.e. no explicit complexes consisting exclusively of vacation apartments), there is and has been no license for tourist vacation rentals.
This means that the tourist rental of such apartments is currently illegal (a small exception may be granny apartments in a few individual cases).
Since there are no licenses for tourist rentals for such apartments, marketing them via brokerage portals is also illegal.
3. tourist rentals within the meaning of the law are initially all rentals of up to one month.
Longer rentals are not considered to be tourist rentals, but the marketing of such longer-term rentals via tourist rental portals is also illegal.
Many landlords try to make it palatable for tourists to circumvent the law by offering longer-term contracts (> 1 month), which are then terminated at the end of the vacation, for example after two weeks.
We strongly advise against agreeing to this, as you have no guarantee that this will actually be adhered to in practice and you may not have to pay the rent for the entire rental period; especially as the landlord must also demand a full month’s rent as a deposit from you after the contract has been concluded in accordance with Spanish rental law.
4 The new Tourism Act has drastically increased the penalties for both landlords and operators of accommodation portals, while at the same time tightening controls.
According to initial reports, some owners have already been fined up to the maximum penalty of EUR 40 thousand and operators of intermediary portals have already been fined up to EUR 300 thousand (maximum penalty EUR 400 thousand) for violations.
As a result, some owners are now becoming more cautious and are no longer offering their vacation apartments (via brokerage portals) or, as described above, are canceling some apartments that have already been booked.
5.
What does the future hold?
It is currently planned that certain zones will initially be defined on all islands in which the legal tourist rental of vacation apartments will be possible in future, subject to certain conditions.
One of the conditions for the granting of a license is that the tourist rental of apartments in the designated regions requires the majority approval of the owners’ association.
In general, it should only be possible to apply for a license for tourist rentals – whether apartments or houses – for buildings that are at least five years old.
As promised, here are a few tips on how you can check the reliability of offers:
1. make sure that the house offered has a valid license for tourist rental.
The license number of the property must normally be stated when booking via agency portals.
You should have a copy of the license sent to you at the latest with the contract.
Work is currently underway to make the details of the tourist rental licenses issued and applied for in the Balearic Islands publicly available.
2. have a lot of information and photos of the property sent to you.
It is ideal if you receive the geodata of the property (on request).
This will allow you to compare the location of the property and its surroundings with the information and photos provided by the landlord or agent.
3. read the rental agreement carefully, especially if – as is often the case – it is not written in your native language.
If in doubt, consult a translator.
4. transfer money in advance only to a bank account at a bank in your home country, the home country of the owner or the country in which the property is located.
We strongly advise against using transfer service providers.
5. only book through trustworthy providers.
You can usually recognize these by good reviews, corresponding seals, membership of associations, recommendations from friends and acquaintances and, last but not least, your own positive experiences.
If you have any further questions or would like to make a specific inquiry, please do not hesitate to contact us.
