The single registry for short-term rentals (tourist, seasonal, or room rentals) will be effectively implemented this coming July 1st, once the transition period has ended, and to date, 199,686 applications have been received, mostly for tourist rentals.
Of these, 90,046 have been approved, 17,596 denied, and 92,044 are pending verification by the Association of Property Registrars. The applications are mostly for tourist rentals (156,938) and are mainly concentrated in the provinces of Malaga, Gran Canaria, Alicante, the Balearic Islands, and Barcelona.
More than 125,000 applications in the last month
In the last month alone, more than 125,000 applications have been made, according to the Ministry of Housing.
This registry, which came into effect on January 2nd, seeks to tackle fraud in these modalities and illegal tourist apartments. All of this in a context marked by the housing crisis that Spain is experiencing due to the lack of supply to meet a growing demand, the consequent escalation of prices, and difficulties in access, especially for young people and the most vulnerable.
With its implementation, Spain thus becomes the first country in the European Union to implement this European regulation.
The new rule operates on tourist rentals, seasonal rentals, room rentals, or other properties, such as boats, that allow short-term accommodation and involve financial remuneration, provided they are offered through online platforms.
What the new regulations establish
In response to European regulations, this coming month, the new regulation will begin to operate in Spain, which establishes that all homes intended for tourist or seasonal use must have a registration code to operate legally.
The single registration procedure is articulated through the Property and Movable Property Registry, which is responsible for providing owners - when the requirements are met - with a code without which they cannot market the property on online rental platforms.
The application must be accompanied by the cadastral reference and the exact address of the accommodation, the rental model, the number of people who can use the property, and compliance with the requirements established by each autonomous community for this type of service.
Once validated, the owners of these accommodations will receive an identification number that they must make public on the online platforms where they promote their rental services.
Once July begins, accommodations that do not have this registration code will not be able to remain active on the platforms.
The platforms are obliged to ensure that landlords identify their properties with this number in their applications, to guarantee that landlords can include it in the advertisements and that it is visible; to carry out random and periodic checks and report when they are negative, or to collect and transmit monthly activity data per unit.
The transmission of data by online short-term rental platforms to the digital single window for leases - which centralizes the procedures related to the registration and consultation of data - is monthly. In the case of small platforms and microplatforms, the data will be transmitted at the end of each quarter.
For their part, landlords are obliged to obtain a registration number, communicate it to the platforms, provide the required information, respond to information requests, and update if there are changes.
Each property can only have one registration number per category and type of lease
