FELETTI called a meeting to deal with the RENTAL CRISIS / Argentina News

Rental crisis: Roberto Feletti called a meeting to address the problem

11 representatives of tenants, owners of rental homes and urban planners will participate in the meeting

For iProfessional

02/12/2022 – 8:45 p.m.

The Secretary of Commerce convened for this Wednesday at 11 a.m. representatives of tenants, owners of rental homes and urban planners to listen to the different positions regarding the situation of the value of rentals in the City of Buenos Aires, where 38% of families they rent.

“The cost of housing has been placed in a place that eats up such a part of the family income that it becomes unsustainable,” Secretary of Domestic Trade Roberto Feletti said today.

Approach to the problem

After indicating the call to the table “for hear all positions“, and to “highlight some ideas that we will take to Congress if necessary”, Feletti described that today “the owner who offers his property does not receive a reasonable rent for the invested capital”, while covering that rent “the tenant does not you can afford it.”

Feletti did not rule out changes to the current rental law

Given this scenario “we must increase the real estate supply and ensure a point of contact in the rental value that is payable, that is profitable and that is a task of the State,” said the official in dialogue with AM750 radio.

“We -added Feletti- cannot be having, as seen in CABA, an indifferent government that stimulates real estate income”. and added that in the City “an enormous advance of resources applied to the construction of houses that later remain empty and end up expelling the middle and lower sectors to the other side of General Paz” is observed.

Feletti did not rule out any changes to the current rental law, which “has projective issues for tenants”; nor measures such as the “rise in idle housing”.

Other possible measures are “the reduction and the incentive to offer”, a modification in the update index “so that the salary component has more weight”, and even a reduction from one year to six months for the update.

All of them make up “a set of issues that we are evaluating,” said Feletti to clarify that the Secretariat “is going to raise the cost of idle housing” at the table with market players.

He insisted that “we have to balance” and stressed: “Maybe we have to see what happens with an empty city and people sleeping on the street.”

How often is the rent updated?

Despite the criticism surrounding its sanction and the problems that arose after its launch, the reality is that the so-called “new Rental Law” is in force. In this context, many tenants have doubts about what are the deadlines that correspond to the application of increases in fees.

A publication of Law in Shoes details the modifications that were implemented by law to the contractual relationship and that today govern rentals.

The new law makes it explicit that the minimum rental term is now three years.

What happens if they do it for one or two years? It is worth three, and it can be legally demanded that it be respected.

However, Law in Shoes clarifies that there are exceptions in which the three-year term does not run. They are the following:

• Headquarters of an embassy, ​​consulate or international organization, and that destined for the residence of its foreign diplomatic or consular personnel.
• Room with furniture that is rented for tourism, rest or similar purposes. If the term of the contract or consecutive contracts exceeds three months, it is presumed that it was not made for those purposes.
• Save things.
• Exhibition or offer of things or services of a fairground.
• Nor does the legal minimum term apply to contracts whose purpose is the fulfillment of a specific purpose expressed in the contract and which must normally be fulfilled in the shorter agreed term.

The rental value must be modified once the one-year period has elapsed.

What if the contract says that it is updated every six months? That is not legal and therefore it is not valid, the term of one year applies.

Rentals: Fee adjustments can only be made once a year.

How the increase is calculated

To determine how much the rental fee should increase, the ÍIndex for Lease Contracts (ICL).

The ICL is made up of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the Average Taxable Remuneration of Stable Workers (RIPTE).

With the ICL, it is sought that the increases remain at a midpoint between what general inflation has advanced in a year and the wages of registered workers in a dependency relationship.

Simply to calculate it we must enter the Central Bank page, indicate the start date of the contract and the date on which the one-year term expires.