The Department of Territory and Housing of the Generalitat is finalizing the decree that details how the registry of large homeowners will be, announced a year ago but still pending activation. The latest draft includes measures to facilitate consultation for tenants: knowing if the landlord of their apartment or the one they want to rent has the status of a large tenant, which requires greater demands than if they are not. To facilitate the consultation, the name or NIF of the owner will be valid, in addition to demonstrating “legitimate interest” to carry it out. It would be worth, for example, attaching the rental contract for the apartment where you live, or an advertisement on a portal or real estate agency. Something that justifies the query about the landlord of a rental home. The creation of this registry was a demand from Comuns to invest Salvador Illa in 2024, but it has not yet been launched.
The draft of the decree, advanced by The Newspaperit only has to pass the opinion of the Economic and Social Council and in a few weeks it could be active, Comuns sources explain. The same sources point out that the registry will be launched with a long delay, and that as planned from the outset, it was not practical for a landlord to check how many apartments a landlord had. And if it is a big fork it is relevant. Determine if you have to adjust the rental price to the official index (which may mean lowering the price compared to the last contract). Or if you are obliged to make a contract with a duration of seven years, instead of five.
Housing groups such as the Tenants’ Union have been denouncing for some time that since the regulation of rental prices, they opt for annual extensions of current contracts as a formula to avoid their obligations.
The registry of large holders appeared in the decree approved by the Government in February of last year, but has not yet been implemented. In fact, that decree included dozens of changes in housing, many linked to Illa’s plan to add 50,000 apartments to the public stock. In the register of large holders, “the natural or legal persons who own five or more urban properties for residential use in municipalities declared to have a tight market” must be registered, or “the natural or legal persons who own more than ten urban properties for residential use located in the territory of the State or an area of more than 1,500 square meters for residential use, excluding garages and storage rooms, although one of the apartments must be located in the territory of Catalonia.”
It will be mandatory (if not, landlords face fines according to “serious violations”). And its objectives are two. One, detect empty housing to be able to incorporate it into the public park. And two, facilitate compliance with rental price regulation, which establishes that large tenants must adjust the price to the official index and until now tenants could only know this by consulting the registry and paying for simple notes.
The decree contains 22 articles in four chapters. The first are the general provisions; The second details the Registry of empty homes and occupied homes without enabling title; the third focuses on the Registry of Large Holders; and the fourth regulates the coordination of inter-administrative communications, the consultation and dissemination of data, the interoperability of both registries, and the sanctioning regime.
If the Government manages to approve its budgets before March 20, it will go further in disseminating the status of a landlord as a major holder. The Law on Fiscal and Financial Measures, better known as the budget accompanying law, includes in its articles a modification of the Right to Housing law, which seeks to expand the information published in rental advertisements in areas of high demand tension, so that from now on it is revealed from the beginning whether the owner is a large holder (that is, who owns five or more properties).
