Canarian Rental Law Tweaked

The Canarian Government has altered some of the requirements of its proposed new law on holiday rentals after receiving more than 3,000 objections during the preliminary phase of publication.

Among the changes are the minimum size of a property, which has been reduced from 39 cubic metres to 25, allowing many smaller apartments to fall within the law.

The requirement to provide access to recharging points for electric vehicles, and a clause that demanded that all properties have access via a pavement have also been largely removed.

However, the law is still being strongly criticised for its strictness. The Canarian Holiday Owners Association ASCAV has described it as an attempt to “exterminate” holiday rentals on the islands, “leaving tourism in the hands of the same old people as always.”

Among their objections are proposed measures to limit the involvement of third-party property management companies, and to forbid rental owners from passing their licences on to family after their death.

The law will also place the responsibility for regulating holiday rentals on local councils, meaning that those municipalities which have not yet prepared regulations will be unable to register a single property as a holiday rental once the law comes into effect.

The Canarian Government insists that holiday lets are one of the main reasons for the lack of residential rental properties and soaring rents. They estimate that 40% of all accommodation on the islands are holiday rentals – a figure which has increased hugely following an avalanche of registrations following the announcement of the law last October.

Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, director general of territorial ordnance for the Canarian Government, recently stated that one of the aims of the law was to ensure that holiday lets could only exist in residential zones in “exceptional circumstances.”

Opponents of the law allege that the Canarian Government is using holiday lets as a scapegoat for its own failure to build affordable housing for decades, and that the law plays into the hands of the influential hoteliers lobbies.