Decree 28/2016 concerns the regulation of furnished tourist accommodation that is marketed and promoted for the purposes of attracting holidaymakers with the aim of making a profit. It applies to apartments, penthouses and standalone properties that meet the following requirements:
- The property is rented out for the purpose of generating income
- The rental period is less than two months, i.e. qualifies as a holiday let
- The property is residential by nature. Rural properties are excluded from this as they fall under their own set of regulations (art. 48, Law 13/2011, 23rd December, and Decree 20/2002, 29th January, Tourism in Rural Environments and Active Tourism)
- The rental property does not form part of a group of three or more dwellings located in the same or adjacent buildings, as these are considered to be dedicated ‘tourist apartments’ and are also subject to their own regulations (Decree 194/2010 of April 20)
Homeowners who advertise their properties on the Internet with online booking must register the property via an application form that can be downloaded from the Junta de Andalucía’s website. The property may not be offered for rent until it has been duly registered and issued with a VFT number. This number must be displayed on all website advertising – in fact Airbnb has just announced that all properties offered for rent via their website must also have this number in place. This comes into effect in September of this year. Furthermore, owners must take care to modify the details in the Register as necessary.
If an owner is found to have marketed and rented out a property without registering it, the penalties for doing so are on a rising scale of up to €150,000. As only 20,000 properties are currently on the register in Málaga, a province that is said to have around 103,500 such units of accommodation, the Ministry of Tourism will be on the lookout for people who break the rules.
Finally, owners must also pay attention to the new tax regime for declaring income from short-term rentals, in particular model 179, headed’Quarterly informative declaration of property leasing for touristic purposes’, which enters into force on July 1st 2018 (Royal Decree 1070/2017 of December 29th).
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