0. Introduction.

On December 19, 2018, the Royal Decree-Law 21/2018, of December 14, on urgent housing and rent measures, which has come to modify, among other rules that we will explain in another article , the Urban Leasing Law and the Horizontal Property Law.

However, said Royal Decree-Law has been repealed by Congress, so that the regulation we indicate has only been in force between December 19, 2018 and January 23, 2019.
1. Modifications introduced in the Law of Urban Leases.

As a summary, the fundamental changes that were introduced were:

a) The period of mandatory minimum extension, which is established in 5 years, instead of the 3 that had been in force until now, unless the lessor will be a legal entity, in which case the mandatory minimum extension will be 7 years.

b) The tacit extension, which was previously 1 year, will now be 3 years

c) A maximum limit is established for the additional guarantee that the lessor may request, whose maximum amount will be two monthly payments, either through a deposit or bank guarantee, and unless it is a long-term contract

d) The costs of real estate management and formalization of the contract will be borne by the lessor when this is a legal person, except for the services that have been contracted at the direct initiative of the lessee.

e) The transfer of housing for tourist use is excluded from the scope of the Urban Leasing Act, without now considering that these assignments are only those that are marketed through tourist offer channels. These transfers of housing for tourist use will be governed by their specific sectoral regulations that are applicable to them.

f) There are other modifications that we will explain below, which are equally important, but which require an explanation in greater detail.

Before starting, and with regard to the changes introduced by the Royal Decree-Law not validation that we are going to indicate, we must anticipate that they affect the lease contracts concluded from December 19, 2018 until the 23rd January 2019. Contracts prior to this date will be governed by the regulations prior to these modifications, unless both parties, by mutual agreement, decide to govern their contractual relationship under the new regulation provided that this is not contrary to the provisions legal.