More help evicting tenants who dont pay the rent
A new law recently passed by the Spanish congress will help property owners struggling to evict those tenants who cannot or refuse to pay their rent.
The law will apply to the whole of Spain including Tenerife. Previously buy-to-let owners have always ran the risk of having bad tenants in their apartments and villas. Non payment can be a huge problem for a landlord with a mortgage to maintain. But trying to move these non-payers along was a lengthy and stressful process which if executed incorrectly could lead to the tenants prosecuting the landlord.
The new law proposes that the property owner can give the tenant a voluntary 15 days in which to leave if they don’t pay their rent. if the tenant does not leave and still cannot make their rental payments it should be possible to evict them in as short a time as 2 months. Currently the process takes 12 months on average! A lawyer is the best course of action in such situations and the lawyer can usually begin the eviction process after 3 or 4 months rent remains unpaid. The time and cost are the obvious downsides of the current system.
The hope is that by helping landlords deal more efficiently with bad tenants they are more likely to maintain their mortgage payments and thus less likely to default. However, the obvious downside is the social problem of who is going to protect the genuine cases where a family have lost their income in the midst of one of the worst economic crashes in history?
If a tenant or tenants really don’t have the means to pay, would it not be a better idea for the government to provide/increase the help on offer to such vulnerable people rather than moving the problem along. Surely it is easier to help a family simply make rent payments than it is to help a family who are homeless and re-house them?
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- Will this new law help combat unscrupulous tenants who refuse to payl?
- Or will it simply mean more heartache for legitimate cases?
- Have you had to deal with bad tenants or a bad landlord?
Leave your comments below:
I would like to know if a landlord can enter property on the day contract ends, and change locks, if I have a baby, and attempted to resolve my rent debt, in the final months.
I am struggling to find the deposit for another place, and have two weeks notice from immobilaria to leave keys at office. After these two weeks, can I be personally evicted? if I have no other accomadation?