# Lawyer recommendation to review a new long term apartment lease? (Barcelona city)



## libove (Feb 24, 2008)

Soon, I will have been in my present rental apartment for five years! And so of course the initial contract will be beyond its mandatory renewability period.

In an email a few months ago, the owner (which is a large landholder, a very wealthy family with many properties) and I agreed in principle that we both intend to continue having a rental relationship. (Which has no legal bearing, just that we have talked a little already).

As the rental law has changed, and as my current contract is now five years old, has an original now-much-too-high price which has been negotiated down twice (to a value which I think is reasonable), and I have a ridiculously high aval (6 months, which was understandable when I was a brand new quantity, the economy was hot, and the apartment was absolutely new; but now I'm a known quantity, the economy is moribund, and the apartment isn't new anymore), I think it makes the most sense to negotiate a completely new lease.

Can someone please recommend a competent rental real estate attorney in Barcelona to work with me in this process? .. Someone who focuses on real estate rental law and who has a good understanding not only of what the updated rental law says (I think I have that understanding myself), but has insight into the practical responses that landowners are taking (in the same way that my current lease has me forego the right of first refusal to purchase the property at the end of five years, I have no doubt that lots of new language will be being created in response to the recent updates to the rental law).

And if anyone would like to comment, here are some things I'm thinking about:
1. That the new contract make reference to the antiquity of the current contract (so that, should anything come up later, there is clear notice that the relationship is old and stable).
2. That the new contract should explicitly call out those sections of law which define the financial responsibility for repair/replacement of major systems (in other words, if pipes inside the wall/ceiling/floor break, or the caldera or air conditioning system needs replacement, or a persiana wears out, as those are all original equipment and any major investment in them has a longer term payback cycle than any lease agreement, that these would be the responsibility of the owner, not of the renter).
3. That the owner foregoes the rights established in the law to revoke the lease for cases of "family need", etc.
4. That the new contract should be inscribed in the Registro de Propiedad (with proof of inscription delivered to me, the renter).
5. Clarifications of the rights, obligations and limitations in case my name should ever appear in the new registry of bad debtors, to avoid an error on the part of the nascent credit reporting industry in Spain creating an imbalance in the rights and powers of the two parties. (Debt reporting is quite mature in some countries; not here; and here an error on the part of this immature industry, combined with terms such as in the updated rental law, can be extremely prejudicial to a renter with no meaningful recourse).
6. Reduce (or totally eliminate) the aval in favour of a simple fianza. (I've been here for five years, and I'm about as good a tenant as any owner could hope for).
7. Set the monthly rent to the current negotiated amount, instead of the original amount + five years of IBI/IPC - negotiated reductions.
8. anything else that you would recommend a shiny new rental contract on a moderately high end apartment should address?

thanks!
-Jay


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## snikpoh (Nov 19, 2007)

I would suspect removing clause 3 (right to take back in case of family need) would be a VERY foolish move for the landlord. The law protects this right for a good reason.

Clause 5 is actually covered by law anyway. If you are the contract owner for utilities, the debt is yours. If the landlord has a mortgage (which I doubt) and he defaults, it's his problem not yours.

Clause 2 should be there anyway so I agree, a good contract lawyer should have spotted this first time around.



If you are wanting to start the lease again then, by law, the landlord MUST get an EPC (energy certificate). Due to the costs, he may want you to pay towards this or may not want to get one - be careful.


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## libove (Feb 24, 2008)

Hi snikpoh,



snikpoh said:


> Clause 5 is actually covered by law anyway. If you are the contract owner for utilities, the debt is yours. If the landlord has a mortgage (which I doubt) and he defaults, it's his problem not yours.


When you say my item 5 (that I don't want the landlord to be able to cancel my lease just in case I ever incorrectly end up on a bad debtor list because of the error of some third party) is covered by law anyway, what do you mean? The new rental law would allow a landlord to cancel a tenant's lease, even if the tenant is paying reliably on the lease, simply because the tenant appeared on a bad debtors list for any other unrelated reason. Or so I understood it. What I want is for the landlord to agree to not use that element in the new law. It is my contention, having seen how terribly immature these lists are here in Spain, and how hard it is for a person to protect himself against them, and having come from the US where that industry is much more mature and the regulatory actions much better protective of the consumer, that this clause in the new law of urban rentals was Not Ready For Prime Time and shouldn't be enforced yet.




snikpoh said:


> Clause 2 should be there anyway so I agree, a good contract lawyer should have spotted this first time around.


I'm unsure whether the rental law already sets the responsibility for major system replacements over time with the landlord, and whether my existing now-five-year-old lease either acknowledges that tacitly, or whether I really must get this in writing now. Can someone point me to a statement of law or a judicial precedent which already establishes this beyond the ability of a clause in a residential lease covered under the ley de arrendamientos urbanos to un-do (to assign even extraordinary long-term maintenance/ repair costs to the tenant)? Thanks.




snikpoh said:


> If you are wanting to start the lease again then, by law, the landlord MUST get an EPC (energy certificate). Due to the costs, he may want you to pay towards this or may not want to get one - be careful.


I'm unfamiliar with the energy certificate issue. Could you post a pointer to the details please?

thanks!
-Jay


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## libove (Feb 24, 2008)

rauleml said:


> I recommend you Paul Murga of Pinera del Olmo Law Firm. He is extremely competent. The web is pineradelolmo and the phone +34 93 514 39 97


Thanks rauleml. It's a little late for me now, as I've already had to move ahead with this, and have a meeting scheduled with my own lawyer (who I'm not sure is fully up to speed on this yet) due to timing. But for the benefit of others here, how have you used Paul Murga, or how do you know his work, so that you're confident of his abilities?

saludos,
-Jay


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## snikpoh (Nov 19, 2007)

libove said:


> Hi snikpoh,
> 
> ...
> 
> ...


If you use our search facility and look for either EPC or CEE then there have been a couple of threads on this.

Basically it's a European requirement that all rentals (long term) and any property for sale must have one.


Regarding maintenance, contracts would normally state what is the landlords responsibility and what is down to the tenant. However, I suspect that you want more than this.

Regarding clause 5, I was unaware of this subtlety. We have a tenant now who is on the debtors list but is paying the rent on time and also the utilities. In the current crisis I would never contemplate kicking him out due to his other debts (that would be too short-sighted).


Overall I suspect you are asking for an awful lot and I would not be at all surprised if the landlord refused to add those type of clauses.


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## Justina (Jan 25, 2013)

The latest contracts are for three years instead of the five last year.


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## Grandvizier (Oct 3, 2013)

Has anyone used a firm called Perez Legal Group, based in Marbella? If so, any feedback, good or bad?


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## libove (Feb 24, 2008)

snikpoh said:


> Regarding maintenance, contracts would normally state what is the landlords responsibility and what is down to the tenant. However, I suspect that you want more than this.


In fact, in reviewing the contract and the law with my lawyer, we agree that this isn't a problem. Although I am now fluent in Spanish, still there are shades of interpretation which I lack, plus my involvement with contract law is from the US which has not only a different language but a different legal tradition, so I simply hadn't been interpreting the contract clauses correctly. I erred on the side of caution, but in the end it's already ok.





snikpoh said:


> Regarding clause 5, I was unaware of this subtlety. We have a tenant now who is on the debtors list but is paying the rent on time and also the utilities. In the current crisis I would never contemplate kicking him out due to his other debts (that would be too short-sighted).


In fact, reviewing the latest version of the texto refundido de la LAU, I do NOT see reference to the bad debtors lists. Hopefully, that means that this proposed facility for landlords has not been implemented into law nor practice. Hopefully.





snikpoh said:


> Overall I suspect you are asking for an awful lot and I would not be at all surprised if the landlord refused to add those type of clauses.


I met yesterday with the principal of the land management firm which represents the apartment. We did not discuss responsibility for large repairs, being that I am now comfortable that it wasn't necessary. We did not discuss the bad debtors list item, seeing that it does not appear to have been enacted. We agreed to cut the aval in half; although I dislike the whole concept, and in my particular case it would simply never be necessary, and even though he largely agrees with that, there is still the matter of conservative practice. As a landowner in the US, I appreciate that.


The subject of the energy efficiency certificate simply did not come up. His attorney strongly prefers a new contract rather than a renewal; my attorney looks at it the other way. I'm somewhat neutral; waiting for the updated proposal to see how it looks. We agreed that the new contract will be written to satisfy a legal agreement which clearly shows the continuity from the prior contract, which as I understand it provides me with a certain amount of defense in the very unlikely case that I ever ended up arguing my rights against the owner's rights in front of a judge, whether the antiquity of the contract would have some effect.

So, so far, so good.


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## libove (Feb 24, 2008)

Justina said:


> The latest contracts are for three years instead of the five last year.


Yes, but also with a committed initial period of six months instead of twelve, and a variety of other changes.

There are references to stronger enforcement of the rights of the renter, particularly in cases of forced acquisition of the property by someone who would not want to maintain a tenant, if the rental contract is inscribed with the property registry (which the representative of the owner of the apartment which I'm renting has agreed to do, and for which I'm perfectly happy to pay the registration fee).

And other changes.


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