Revisiting Tourist Rentals in Mallorca

With the arrival of summer and the holidays rentals’ season, it is relevant to revisit the issue and offer a few comments arising from new developments. Indeed, the case is never closed and new details must be added to our knowledge base as the administration and courts work through, and implement, the laws we have been given by our better politicians.

If you have been following my series of articles on touristic and non touristic lets, you will remember that a touristic let (a short term rental with services) can only be done with a license, and licenses can only be obtained for detached houses, semis, and some other analogous housing (eg townhouses in villages). The rest of property types (flats, terraces, more than three detached houses in one plot etc) cannot get licenses and therefore if you want to do short term rentals in them you cannot do touristic ones and thus you have to do them under the tenancy act, without services, with a suitable contract and being mindful of how and where you run adverts and with the general logistics of the operation. In other words, it is legal to rent out any type of property for any period of time, but it has to be done properly and with specific contracts.

Now, if you plan to do a touristic let, it is imperative that even before you actually get to rent your house, that you obtain a license. Just in the past couple of weeks there has been a court ruling in the administrative courts whereby a property owner has been found guilty of engaging in a touristic rental without seeking the touristic license to do so. In this particular case, the house (detached) was advertised with services, it had no license, and crucially it had not yet got to the stage of being rented out.

This is an obvious ruling, but an interesting one nevertheless, for it solidifies what we already knew, that services are one of the elements that convert a short term rental into a touristic one. Yet is also has important consequences, as property owners can be made responsible for not having a touristic license even if the house has simply been advertised. This liability also extends to agencies, which can be held accountable for the lack of licenses of the houses they have in stock. In general terms, if the agency is based overseas, the target of Turismo will be the property owners. If the agency is local, both the property owners and the agency can be fined.

As you can tell, these issues are complex ones, because of the ambiguity of the law and the many grey areas its application affords. Whilst this should not put you off exercising your constitutional, legal and human rights of disposing of your property as you see fit, you should first clearly understand the implications of renting in the Balearics, so stay tuned for more on this.

For more information please contact Will by email: will.besga@icaib.org