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Is it legal to rent flats out for short term in Barcelona? |
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YES.. according to the law LAU – you just have to make a contract with your tenants under the LAU and you are not doing anything illegal: the LAU has not been changed so there is nothing they (The Generalitat) can do about it – if you sign the contracts.
There is now formed a tourist apartment assosiation last year to deal with this apparent attack on this business. To say the whole thing is still murky is an understatement, but this councelor says he has the power to stop apartments which are not fully registered from operating. The tourist apartment assosiation doesn't agree. The (national) law allows people to rent their apartment for 3 days or 3 years as they please. This is different from being a "tourist apartment". It is simply being an apartment. What it might mean is we simply have to differentiate in the website between apartments that are strictly classifed as tourist apartments and those that are just normal apartments. To be a tourist apartment officially you would need:
1 - to be registered with the Generalitat
2 - to get the (new) license from the Ajuntamiento. (Noone has this yet as it doesn't actually exist yet) This requires a "change of use" of the apartment, which itself is something we doubt many people will want to do, and is again something that we need to learn more about.
Problem - only those apartments registered with the Generalitat before the "Plan de Uso" came out can actually apply for a license, and your apartment is not registered with the Generalitat, and now they won't let us register apartments in the old town.
To be a normal apartment you don't need anything at all, unless they change the national law (LAU) , which is no small matter, so we don't see any real reason to panic. However, during the course of the year we will no doubt learn more about the implications of this act, and the Generalitat itself is expected to draft a law related to this. Again this can not counteract the national law. Source; Scott Sebastian Doane, on the board of the tourist apartment assosiation and Director and owner of www.vision33.com
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