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Made the law, made the trap. In His attempt To tackle the proliferation of tourist floors, the Valencian Community has encountered an unexpected (not so) challenge: the picaresque of the homemade, who have found in The new law that regulates the sector a loophole that allows them to rent floors to tourists by receiving more lax standards. The key is in something in principle as innocent as the duration of the rooms. To be more precise in themselves last more or less than 10 days.
There are those who already talk about “The 11 -day trap”.
What happened? The news I advanced it A few weeks ago the newspaper Levante-EMV: Airbnb have begun to announce apart from Valencia with a common denominator, the minimum time of stay required to their tenants. It doesn’t matter in which street they are located, how they are decorated, their surface, whether or not they have seen the sea or if they are more or less expensive. In all the same is repeated and invariable condition: minimum stay of 11 nights. Not one less.
Are they many homes? A few. At the end of February Levante-EMV He pointed out that only in Airbnb could be consulted “tens” of housing located in residential blocks of Valencia (sometimes located in thirds or fourth plants) that were offered under that condition: a minimum stay of 11 days. A quick search on the same platform shows that ads are still like this. Moreover, there are businesses that They have decided Start applying the same criteria.
And why 11 days? To understand it you have to use Valencian legislation. To be more precise of Decree Law 9/2024a text approved in August and that updated the 2018 standard on vacation rentals. Your goal, like He moved in 2024 The Valencian government is “to improve the regulation” of tourist floors and “offer legal certainty” to users and homemade.
The key is what is a ‘tourist floor’ for the new regulations. Where the temporary barrier comes into play. When modifying article 65, the document Clarify That the “housing for tourist use” are those that (among other conditions) “are given in conditions of immediate availability, for tourist purposes, for a time less than or equal to 10 days, computed continuously to the same tenant.”
What does that mean? That vacation homes are associated with that temporal horizon: 10 days. Anyone who is rented for longer would remain out of that categorywhich requires also having a tourist license. In practice it is a legal route that allows homemade to announce their homes on platforms such as Airbnb as something else: Seasonal rentals.
According to the urban lease law (Lau) The latter are the rentals that are not destined to cover “the permanent need for housing of the lessee.” The Moncloa already It has been proposed Work in their regulation to prevent them from being used to dodge the requirements that apply to conventional rentals and benefit people for whom they are really intended, such as students.
Why is it important? Because one of the objectives of the regulatory change applied in August 2024 in the Valencian Community was precisely to stop the increase in tourist homes, a rental modality that has gone winning strength in Spain and Tense (even more) the market residential. It was recognized by the regional government itself by arguing what it was looking for with the new regulations, in addition to “stopping unfair competition” or giving greater “transparency” to the sector.
“The proliferation of this modality (…) has meant its exponential and uncontrolled increase in certain areas, which determines the need to adopt urgent measures to stop a phenomenon that, if not acting immediately, can generate problems that are exponentially aggravated,” reasoned In 2024 the Generalitat Valenciana. There are experts who They already question that the new law has been right when specifying what a home for tourist use is.
Have you had consequences? Yes. Or at least reactions. After The news of Levant The Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Valencia (FAAVV) has demanded that the Generalitat regulations be changed as soon as possible He has jumped Already to the Valencian political debate. “Instead of proposing clear limits to the activity and assuming the responsibility of inspecting and sanctioning create endless ambiguous and contradictory assumptions,” laments the FAAVV.
“The norm must be changed because it does not help to contain the threat of tourist floors against residential rental and create legal confusion and insecurity.”
And what does the government say? The Ministry of Tourism has already warned that the fact that a rent is not considered tourist does not mean that it should not comply with certain standards, such as the deposit of a bond, and that in those cases in which a fraud is appreciated those responsible are exposed to sanctions that can reach 10,000 or even 100,000 euros, depending on the characteristics of the case.
However, they are open to make certain adjustments in the standard. “The law was approved in August. Now that it has been working for a while we will review everything, see if there is any type of dysfunction and act,” Recognize The regional government, which also ensures that the vision of this temporal framework (the 10 -day stays) varies from one locality to another. A few weeks ago, the Generalitat discharged 886 homes of the Tourism Registry for lacking NIF/NIE, And he warned: It is the first phase of a process that will end up affecting 34,000 homes.
Images | Giuseppe Bucola (Unsplash)
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