There is no doubt that tenant´s behaviour is a big issue in many communities. Owners are always facing with unknown people that usually are owner´s tenants, relatives or friends.

          In order to have some control about the people that are getting into the community and using the communal services. It is not rare to see people that have nothing to do with the community, getting illegal access and using the pool.

Every community takes its own system to avoid the access of strangers and to get some control of the apartments that are rented and so on, but at the end there is not a perfect way, unless the community has some specific rules about it in its statutes and have an enclose community with some security guards controlling every access and every movements inside the community in order to execute the community rules. 

          Unfortunately, very few communities can enjoy this possibility, so it is the president and the administration, and sometime the concierge or even the gardener, the ones who have to do their best.

          This need to have control on the properties rented is even more important as the new rules for touristic apartments has allowed the communities to charge to these apartments up to 20% more, so now it is not only important to know who the tenants in a property are to have some control on their behaviour but also in order to get the fees approved by the community. This increase will not be for all the properties rented but only for the ones that have the legal qualification of touristic apartments which makes everything even more complicated.

          Many owners require the president and administrator to ask to the owners for their letting contracts with the tenants, or to prove that the ones who are using the property are relatives or friends without paying any money. The president or the administration can ask the owner for this document, but the community should know that these owners required are not obliged to give to the community neither a copy of their private contract, nor a certificate saying that the people using the properties are friends or relatives and do not pay any rent.

          The only thing the community can legally do is trying to get the information from the Junta de Andalucía about the properties that are registered as touristic apartments, and it is not still clear how this information could be provided efficiently by the Junta de Andalucía. Anyway, with this information the community will not know who the tenant at every particular time is.

          In addition, if the property is not registered in the Junta de Andalucía but is rented for short term, if the owners does not voluntary inform to the community, nothing can be done.

In many cases, some owners require to the president or administration to get this information and blame them for the lack of control in the community and the tenant´s behaviour, but as mentioned before, nothing can be legally done to force the owners to release a copy of their letting contract. Some owners are proposing to charge the owners the 20% increase in their fees if they do not prove that his property is not a touristic apartment, but this would be completely illegal.

Unfortunately, the new law approved by the government regarding touristic apartments does not resolve most of the real community problems, so, apart of its bad literacy and lack of a clear meaning, only refers to a little problem with some tenants and not with the problem in full.

          This new Law only refers to the use of the property as touristic apartment with the conditions and requirements expressed in the Decree 28/2016 of the Junta de Andalucía, so this new rules will only affect to the rentals that are promoted and advertised through typical tourist channels, for example a travel agent or a website with the possibility of making a prior reservation.

Owners who attract clients by other means are not affected, so the problem with tenants are still unregulated, and we should not forget that before having this kind of new channels for renting through the web, the communities were suffering the same problems with tenants every summer, so nothing has been resolved and, again, our government has lost the opportunity to put an end to the problems in communities. In this case, we can not blame the president or community´s administration, we could blame to people above them.