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There will be no more Rental Law: What the contracts would be like and what the sector expects - Infobae
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No habrá más Ley de Alquileres: cómo serían los contratos y qué espera el sector
Para aquellos inquilinos que ya tiene acuerdos vigentes, la normativa no es retroactiva. El mercado se regirá por el Código Civil y Comercial. Además, se libera la posibilidad de hacer los contratos en todo tipo de moneda
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For those tenants who already have current agreements, the regulations are not retroactive. The market will be governed by the Civil and Commercial Code. In addition, the possibility of making contracts in all types of currency is released.
By José Luis Cieri
A man supports the weight of a house on his shoulders. This decision generated concern and attention in approximately 8,000,000 people who, on a monthly basis, allocate resources to pay for their homes (Illustrative image Infobae)
Among the measures announced by President Javier Milei in the package of laws revealed during his first national broadcast, the scope of the controversial Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) was explained . This intends to repeal around 300 laws and modify as many others to deregulate the economy and the relations of civil society. Among these modifications, the repeal of the Rental Law, approved in June 2020 and recently reformed, stands out.
Generally speaking, if a decree repeals a law, this does not have retroactive effect unless expressly specified . In other words, the changes will not affect contracts that are already in progress, which usually have a duration of three years with a semiannual update.
The repeal of the regulations that govern rentals could cause controversies in the future, everything remains to be seen. President Milei in his speech nominated the Repeal of the Rental Law as number one: “So that the real estate market works smoothly again and so that renting is not an odyssey,” he said.
Long-term housing agreements would once again be governed by the Civil and Commercial Code of 2015. This means that they would have a duration of two years, with semiannual updates previously agreed between the tenant and the owner (although also, which would be established in the contract .
Juan Martín Luciani Otaño , lawyer and specialist in Horizontal Property, told Infobae that “The controversial law that is taking its last steps ended up favoring the owners, who increase the rental amounts due to the low supply and high demand, also increasing the requirements. to rent, when in reality the intention was to benefit the tenant.”
This year, rents overall saw an increase of more than 300% year-on-year .
Main axes
The DNU stipulates the following:Article 256: Replace article 1198 of the National Civil and Commercial Code approved by Law No. 26,994 and its amendments with the following:
Article 1199: Payment and update currency. Rents may be established in legal tender or foreign currency, at the free discretion of the parties. The tenant may not demand that payment be accepted in a currency other than that established in the contract.
In the event that no deadline has been established, in cases of temporary location, it will be up to the one established by the uses and customs of the place where the leased property is located, (ii) in the lease contracts for permanent housing, with or without furniture, it will be two (2) years and (iii) for the remaining destinations (such as rental of offices or premises) it will be three (3) years.
In summary, the market will be governed by the Nation's Civil and Commercial Code, which was reformed in 2015. In addition, the possibility of making contracts in all types of currencies such as pesos, dollars and euros, among others, is released.
“The parties may agree to adjust the value of the rentals. The use of any index agreed upon by the parties, public or private, expressed in the same currency in which the rents were agreed will be valid. If the chosen index stops being published during the term of the contract, an official index with similar characteristics published by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses will be used if the price is set in national currency, or one that fulfills the same functions in the country that issue the agreed payment currency,” it was detailed.
Another aspect that comes with the repeal of the previous law is that contracts no longer must be registered in the AFIP.
Opinions
According to experts, the appropriate action would be the total repeal of Law 27,737, which came into effect on October 18, 2023, and the partial repeal of Law 27,551, promulgated on July 1, 2020. In the latter, specifically in its Article 14 provides for the repeal of Articles 7 and 10 of the Convertibility Law, which prohibited agreeing on indexing clauses in contracts. However, it is crucial to maintain the beneficial provision of repealing the prohibition on indexing contracts, contained in Law 27,551.Enrique Abatti (h.) , lawyer specialized in real estate law and director of the Chamber of Property Owners of the Argentine Republic, maintained that “if Law 27,551 is completely repealed, this beneficial provision would be lost, so it should be maintained and applicable. to all contracts through other legislation.”
“Article 765 of the National Civil and Commercial Code should also be modified, which establishes that foreign currency is one thing and is not equated with legal tender, which makes it impossible to agree on rents in foreign currency,” Abatti added.
What happens to the agreements already signed?
The changes will not affect contracts that are already in progress . An expert in Real Estate law from the Argentine Real Estate Chamber (CIA) highlighted to Infobae that “contracts entered into during the period of validity of the DNU will have future effects, but not retroactively. It is essential to analyze the text once published and its scope.”
Changes are coming again in the way of signing future housing rental contracts. They will be again with a period of two years (Photo: Getty)
The central points that generated an unprecedented supply shortage are the deadline and the way of updating. Although there are other less resisted aspects. “The principle of free contracting between the parties is essential to strengthen confidence in the investor and the owner, encouraging them to allocate their properties to the traditional market again,” the CIA indicated.
Between caution and expectations
From the real estate market they maintain that returning to two-year contracts is something that groups of owners demand (they even advocate express eviction) and the majority of sectoral chambers, but not the entities that defend tenants.Iván Ginevra , head of the CIA, said that “we must see how the repeal is proposed taking into account how the modifications will be implemented, since there are several laws that overlap like patches to the Civil Code and a simple repeal would not solve the problem of access to housing. It should also be noted that as a chamber we do not have official information about it and we were not summoned to give our opinion, so we do not know what we are going to find.”
There are also positive expectations for what is to come in the traditional rental market.
Flavio Galli , CEO of the Tueroc Group, expressed that “its repeal would favor supply, providing more options to tenants and creating a freer market between tenants and owners. He also suggested that developers could be incentivized to go out and build buildings to rent housing exclusively.”
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