Despite the fact that the vacation rental industry is increasingly regulated and the requirements of a legal rental are increasingly complex, the wide offer of apartments and houses for rent does not stop growing. In Andalusia the rental law acts together with 3 decrees to regulate the vacation rental sector, generating numerous doubts and obstacles to ensure correspondence with the regulation that does not put the activity at risk. On the Costa del Sol, the competitive world of rentals translates into periods of high season that remain unoccupied and the lowering of prices that is inconvenient for owners and managers who are increasingly attending to more practical and legal requirements to have the house rented.
And is the demand growing? Yes, the demand is also increasing with an increasing number of families, couples and small groups of young people looking for accommodation that is well located and has privacy and comfort. One in three travelers prefers to stay in a rental house instead of in a hotel, because it is more informal, more economical and collaborative. The trend this season points to a search for higher quality, tourist accommodation being equated in terms of services to hotel stays, with fewer and fewer tolerances in difference of language, rhythms of arrangements and attentions, methods of collection, and curiously to the norms derived from autonomous and national governments.
And the fact is that the number of different signatures and contracts that a tenant has to make when entering a rental home is exaggerated and strange to most travelers.
The experts compare the regulatory dispersion that exists in Spain, with the increasingly restrictive trend with what happens in other countries around us, and unfortunately they discover that European countries prefer to bet on the collaborative economy by rewarding small businesses in the sector and owners who have income from their rent with minimal regulation and permissiveness, while in Spain, what is being demanded right now is more order that allows not only to avoid tax impunity and provide information about, but also to find a regulation at the country level that unifies the actions of different laws and decrees. The reality, however, is that nowadays a rental property owner gets lost in a maze of regulations that even the institutions themselves do not know how to interpret, encountering many more owners in the same situation who do not have a clear reference regarding a decent and fair rental price and adequate quality standards.
