Letting / Renting in Spain

– How I can file a claim against my tenant?

If your tenant has stopped paying rent, we recommend you to contact your lawyers and grant a power for litigation. Let them have a copy of the lease and of any outstanding utility bills. Firstly, a demand for immediate payment will be sent to the tenant by registered mail. Should the tenant fail to comply with this requirement, next step will be to start the legal eviction process.

 – Does a tenant have the right to renew automatically the contract?

According to Article 9 of the Urban Tenancies Act, contracts have the duration that the parties agree freely. However, those long-term contracts in which the term is agreed for a period lesser than five years (or seven if the landlord is a company or legal person) will be automatically renewed each year unless the tenant waives renewal with at least two months before the expiration of each annuity. Upon expiration of each agreed extension and after the five or seven year period has passed the contracts will be renewed for three years periods unless one of the parties notifies their intention not to do it. Tenant must notify his/her intention not to renew the contract with two months in advance and landlord must give four months notice. This right to extend automatically the leases does not apply to seasonal or short-term rental agreements, or to those properties that, because of their high surface area or of their considerably high rent agreed, can be considered sumptuary.

 – My tenant does not pay the rent, can I have the electricity and water supplies cut off to force him/her to leave the property?

No. The tenant might claim against you in Court for coercion and the situation would worsen.

 – My lease contract ends in one month. As at the time I paid a security deposit equivalent to a month’s rent, can I stop paying rent and offset the amounts?

No. You must pay the remaining monthly rents. Once the landlord checks that the property has not suffered any damage and that there are no bills due, you may request the return of the deposit. The deposit is not considered a payment on account of future rent, so if you do not pay the last month rent, the landlord might claim it judicially.

 – If extend the contract to my tenant, can I raise the rent?

Yes, but only after each year has completed and according to whatever the parties have agreed to such effect in the contract. The parties can freely agree on the rent figure but its revision must be expressly agreed in the contract, so that if there is no specific agreement to do so, the rent figure cannot be raised. The revisions in any case, when they have been agreed on the contract, must be made from year to year and in any case they cannot be superior to the variation of the Consumers Price index (CPI).