SUMMARY OF THE CURRENT SITUATION OF TOURIST VILLAS AND VACATION HOMES
I.- GENERAL OBLIGATIONS
Regardless of whether or not you have registered your establishment with the Cabildo (i.e. whether or not you have a “license”), any person who rents a house or apartment for tourism has the following obligations:
- To register in IGIC and to add in the invoices that it will have to emit. Every three months you will have to present the IGIC declaration and pay the collected amount (7% of the invoiced amount).
- Taxation of income to the State Treasury: non-residents must file a quarterly tax return to pay the corresponding amount and residents must include it in their annual tax return.
- From the amount received as rents you can deduct all the expenses credited with invoices in order (that is why it is important to request invoices in form of all the expenses and that the persons that are contracted for cleaning or another service can issue legal invoice.
- Notify the police each time a person over the age of 16 stays in your home within 24 hours of arrival.
To do so, you must first register with the police, who will provide you with passwords to access their website. The data to be notified are all in the passport or DNI of the guests.
II.- PROCESSING TOURIST REGISTRATIONS
Apart from the above, to rent the property for tourism you must be registered in the Tourist Registry of the Cabildo. The modality will depend on the characteristics and place of the accommodation, but from now on I indicate that the Cabildo of Lanzarote denies or does not admit, in my opinion, 90% or more of the applications for different reasons, in my opinion most of them illegal, which forces the applicants to go to court. That is why, with few exceptions, if you are going to make an application you have to know that it will be rejected and assume, if you want to go ahead, that you will have to go to court.
We can advise you on your particular situation
The Law establishes that for the modality of “villas”, once the responsible declaration has been filed, it can be operated within 24 hours. For vacation homes it does not expressly establish it, but it should be understood the same.
It is therefore very important to at least submit the application in order to be covered against possible inspections.
The Cabildo usually takes a long time to reply, sometimes a year, and usually asks for different clarifications.
The application modalities are:
Villas.– Applicable only to single-family detached dwellings on tourist land: very unusual circumstances. It is necessary to present: title deed, data of the establishment and of the owners.
Current position of the administration in response to our requests: So far it denies it stating that it is necessary to process another “authorization” procedure demanding, in fact, lately, 4 different authorizations.
This firm has appealed all the resolutions received, having obtained to date 100% of favorable resolutions, the last ones this month, although I must point out that since these last results, they may now change their tactics and use other arguments.
Vacation housingIt is applicable to all types of establishments (Villas, semi-detached apartments,…), but there is a big obstacle and that is that it excludes this type in tourist or mixed “zones”, considering the Cabildo as such: all of Costa Teguise, Puerto del Carmen, almost all of Playa Blanca (with the exception of zones R1 and R2 of Montaña Roja). They do not admit it in rustic land either, Famara or La Graciosa.
The provision of the Law that prohibits renting in tourist or mixed zones, art. 3.2 we consider illegal for being contrary to many superior laws and therefore my advice is to make the request and if it is denied, which will come, Appeal to the Courts.
I say this because, in fact, several Associations have already appealed the Law (we, as individuals, cannot appeal the Law but only on a case by case basis) and there have already been at least 3 rulings upholding the appeals and declaring that the article prohibiting vacation rentals in those areas is null and void, but these rulings have been appealed before the Supreme Court by the government and the appeal will be pending.
On the other hand, the Government is in the process of drafting a new law to regulate vacation rentals, but according to the advances that have been published, this specific point will not change, which leaves us in the same situation we are in.
Apart from the impediment of the place where it is located, there is another one, and that is that among the documentation that is requested is the “Cédula de habitabilidad” document that is normally delivered at the end of a house and that is usually held by the promoter.
Many homes either do not have this document or it is impossible to locate it due to the number of years that have elapsed.
Our position is to try to obtain the document, requesting it from the City Council, but if it is not expected to be obtained, to replace it with a certificate from a technician who inspects the dwelling and certifies that the dwelling complies with the habitability conditions required.
I understand that if registration is denied for this reason it is also Appealable as many possibilities exist for reasons that in this brief exposition are difficult to explain.
Our vision of the matter is that, of course, the administration puts all possible obstacles to rent in a legal way. Our activity of the last four years in this area has shown us that unfortunately, there is no other solution but to go to court so that they apply the law correctly. By this means we have achieved to date the registration of more than 120 homes to which the administration had denied registration.
Our assistance consists of particular advice for your property on the best way to make the application, presentation of the application and follow-up before the Cabildo answering the requirements sent to us, until obtaining a final resolution from the Cabildo. All this for a fixed fee
If the resolution is negative, you will have to go to court and the costs involved will be budgeted at the time.