When will a house / apartment be available for rent?
- A house / apartment is available for rent, when the two parts involved agree on the respective terms, one to grant use of his/her property, and the other to pay the arranged price for the use of said property.
How are the different parties of a rental contract denominated?
- The party paying the rent is known as the tenant, or lessee, while the party that owns the property and receives the rent is called the landlord or lessor.
Is it necessary for rental contracts to be written on paper to be valid?
- The law does not require a written contract to exist, but this is required if any of the parties wishes to prove that said contract was in fact agreed on by both parties.
Can the payment of the rent be arranged to be paid in any currency?
- No. Payments must be done in the legal currency that, as the law of Convertibility states, is either in Pesos or Dollars. The initial price for the rent has no legal restrictions, in the same way as the expenses, Taxes and other costs.
What are the maximum and minimum terms?
- The minimal rental term depends on what the property is going to be used for. If it is intended for living, the minimum term is 2 years (24 months); for any other purpose (commercial, Industrial, etc.) the minimum term is 3 years (36 months). According to the above, any rental contract agreed to a shorter term will be specified as such between the two parties taking part in the rental, but considered as formulated by legal terms.
The following are exempted from the above terms:
- Contracts written for embassies, consulates, and other international organisms. These do not have a minimum established by the law.
- Furnished properties intended for tourism. These properties have a maximum of 6 month rental contracts.
- Any property intended for the keeping of animals, vehicles, or other objects are free of minimum terms of use.
- The contracts for small markets and fair stalls have no minimum rental terms.
- Properties that have government or autarkic entities as tenants do not have to follow the regular minimum rental terms established by the law.
As for the maximum term, the law stipulates that rental contracts can not be written for more than 10 years.
And what happens if the rental contract expires, and the tenant does not move out?
- When a contract expires and the tenant keeps using the rented property, an automatic renovations of the contract is not issued. Instead the tenant will be able to stay in the property as long as he/she keeps paying rent and following any special clauses in the contract, or until the landlord wants the property to be returned. After the contract expires the landlord might ask anytime he/she wants for the tenant to leave the property.
- This is not the case in short term rentals intended for tourism, when, if the tenant remains in the property after the contract has expired, an extra cost will be charged for each day that they remain.
Are payments always agreed to be paid monthly?
- Yes, this is a requirement established by law.
Can the two parts agree on special clauses to adjust the rent?
- No, the law of Convertibility prohibited any kind of changes in the amount that the contract states.
What is the difference between the guarantee and the deposit?
- The guarantee is another contract (separate from the regular rental contract), in which a person (the guarantor) agrees to take complete responsibility of the tenant, in the case the that he/she can not comply with them. The deposit, on the other hand, is an amount of money that the tenant leaves the landlord as a way of assuring that he, The tenant, will follow all the rules and obligations that the contract specifies, and otherwise money can be taken out of the deposit to fix it.
Can there be an agreement on payments in advanced?
- The landlord is prohibited by the law to ask for payments in advanced for periods greater than 1 month. Also, the amount of the deposit can not be greater than 1 month of rent for each year that the contract is written. The violation of any of these will authorize the tenant to ask for refunds of every payment exceeding the maximum that can be asked in advance. The prohibition does not cover a property that aren´t meant to be used as a home.
Can the collection of the goodwill be agreed beforehand?
- The collection of goodwill, belonging to properties destined for commercial or industrial use, is not prohibited. For properties intended as living quarters, on the other hand, it is not allowed.
Can the tenant terminate the contract before the agreed term?
- In the "Ley de Locaciones Urbanas" (Law of Urban Leases), the chapter "Locaciones de Inmuebles destinados a Vivienda" (Rental of properties destined to be living quarter), it states that the tenant can terminate the contract only after the first six months of the signing of the contract have passed. And he/she must notify the landlord with a minimum of sixty days advance. The law also states that if the tenant does this during the first year of the rental of a property, the landlord can collect a month and a half of rent as indemnification. If the contract is broken after more than one year of occupying the property, the indemnification will be of just one month of rent.
What happens in the event of the landlord´s death?
- If the landlord dies, the rental contract is still valid, and can be continued. The rent will instead be collected by the heirs of the landlord, or anyone else that can prove that they were part of the landlord's family.
What happens if the warranty is bought?
- In these cases it is likely that the property in question is mortgaged. In the event the tenant doesn´t comply with the contract, the risk of not being able to collect rent increases.
How can it be determined if a warranty is bought or not?
- To know if a warranty is bought you must go to the "Registro Nacional de la Propiedad Inmueble" (National Registry of Real Estate Properties) and complete a form (form Nº 5) called "Solicitud sobre frecuencia de informes requeridos respecto de inmueble determinado" (Request over required report frequency regarding a determined property), you will then be informed about the amount of domain certificates that have been asked for, for any given property in the past 90 days. If several certificates had been asked for, it is very likely that the warranty has been bought. The domain certificate also informs if a property is mortgaged or not. The request can be done by a regular civilian, but he/she needs approval from an Attorney or Public Auctioneer. The request can be done in two ways: Simple (The report will be obtained after 8 days) or Semi-urgent (that takes 2 days).
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