Madrid (EFE) others do tricks to get around the law with hidden commissions.
So much so that Facua has already denounced some thirty real estate agencies in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia or Palma de Mallorca when verifying the tricks they are carrying out to continue charging tenants for management expenses and fees.
In fact, Facua does not rule out new complaints before the autonomous consumer protection administrations requesting the opening of disciplinary proceedings, according to what its spokesman, Rubén Sánchez, explained to EFE.
There are some that continue to charge tenants the expenses against what the law says; those that communicate that the payment of the efforts must be made by the tenant (usually, a monthly rent payment); those that invent concepts such as carrying out a “feasibility study and economic solvency” of the tenant or those that use anglicisms to refer to fees based on services provided to the tenant that are not detailed and whose payment is imposed, denounces Facua.
In these cases, it recommends that consumers who are being affected by this situation claim the money back, even if they have already formalized the rental contract.
The agencies assure that it goes against professionalization
From the National Federation of Real Estate Associations (FAI) they assure that the agencies are complying with the law and that there is “zero tolerance” with the premeditated bad practices of a few, for which it regrets the attacks on the sector, which has more than 120,000 professionals and more than 30,000 agencies.
In addition, they criticize that it has entered into force without a reasonable adaptation period and defend that it must be complied with, although it will further aggravate the rent problem.
For his part, the general director of the Rental Negotiating Agency (ANA), José Ramón Zurdo, understands that it goes against the professionalization of the sector and that it will mean more workload for judges, since it is a complicated sector in which that if both parties choose not to hire a real estate company, they can add illegal clauses or clauses that are not applicable to the contracts and end up being a “kingdom of taifas”.
In addition, it points out that the law has a marked ideological and political weight, that it is born flawed and the result of haste, and whose future is uncertain after the municipal and regional elections and the next general ones.
Escape to other rental formulas
There are exceptional cases in which the agency may pass on the expenses to the tenants: housing rentals not subject to the Urban Leasing Law (LAU); leases for use other than housing (premises, offices, offices, etc.); seasonal rentals or temporary home assignments.
For this reason, Zurdo warns that these types of rentals will proliferate, further reducing the supply of housing and raising prices further, and is committed to providing security and guarantees from the State so that more than 1.5 million homes go on the market empty.
Offer more services, the bet of real estate
Although the management and formalization expenses of the leases can no longer be passed on to the tenants, the sector points out as an exception the cases in which the real estate companies offer a series of additional services during the rental.
In fact, the vice president of the Alfa Inmobiliaria network, Jesús Duque, affirms that the agencies will be forced to pay more attention to other value-added services that they offer to owners, such as legal and tax advice, promotion of rental properties, services management and maintenance, translation services, mediation in the move, or help with changes in supplies.
Risk of self-management
From FAI they add that as a result of legal insecurity, lack of protection and loss of profitability, many owners are withdrawing their homes from rental and others are managing rentals on their own, which will reduce the activity of real estate agents and harm less tenants. solvents.
This is going to translate into higher rents, more underground economy, more lack of protection, tougher search conditions for tenants and more complicated processes to recover the home, he warns.