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SymbolicBlogNoticiasThe recipes to adapt the ‘coliving’ to the regulations of Spanish law

The recipes to adapt the ‘coliving’ to the regulations of Spanish law

17 May
Symbolic Monday May 17th, 2021 0

The ‘coliving’ is a trend in Spain within the real estate market. However, given this exponential boom in recent years, ‘coliving’ does not have an adequate fit in our legal system for several reasons.

The first, because this figure has no place in the LAU. Second, because this LAU exclusion takes us to the general and unspecific regime of the Civil Code, which generates legal insecurity for the user. And, finally, because if, as it derives from its own concept of ‘coliving’, other services are added to residential provision, it is beyond the scope of civil regulation.

The very nature of ‘coliving’ entails offering services of a diverse nature that are alien to the pure residential relationship, such as laundry, catering, regular cleaning of the room or the organization of events. By definition, if to the (civil) provision of residential stay, regardless of the name we give it, we add any of these services or others that occur to us, we will find ourselves in a lodging, a figure that the Civil Code regulates in an anachronistic way since it dates late 19th century. And this is the question. Once the accommodation contract of the Civil Code has been exceeded due to the existence of a special regulation, tourism, its scope belongs entirely to the administrative territory, so any complementary service added to the residence will lead us to the latter.

This is the situation that every promoter of a ‘coliving’ wants to avoid. For this, one of the solutions that are considered (and that I do not endorse) is the creation of a two-headed structure, by which a company offers, via rent (civil), residential provision, and another (in theory outside and independent) provides accessory services. In this way, they “flee” from tourism regulation, its fiscal implications and greater regulatory (administrative) pressure.

Using the legal imagination we could enable a solution. Based on the fact that in order to rent (under the LAU) we need a habitable “room”, that is, autonomous, not a simple room, an entire building or part of it could be enabled, which does not have a horizontal division and is a single registered farm. This could be physically divided into rooms as technically and commercially we want. And from here we jump to its rental, but not for each room, but for the entire building of the ‘coliving’ to each user, who would enjoy a private use quota for each of the divisions. This contract would be by adhesion for each user on the integrity of the whole, granting exclusive uses in specific rooms and other common or shared rooms. It would be a kind of co-lease. It is complex, but possible.

We must be aware that this solution would entail serious management and control difficulties, as well as the requirement of an internal regulation that regulates the relations between users, without forgetting the need for a very fine delimitation of the nature of the contract.

And if we add the possibility of offering other services outside the residential area? We run into the initial problem. The answer, therefore, is the same and fraud is the danger.

Another solution, also theoretical, is to project the figure of ‘coliving’ on a somewhat diffuse urban use, but which, by its nature, is very approximate by concept: the “community residential”. Having to pay attention to how this use is conceived in the various land laws of each autonomous community, it is revealing that ‘coliving’ is significantly similar to student residences.

Taking Madrid and its PGOU as an example, this use is conceived in a general way, as a typology of residential use (which is a safeguard to one of the main obstacles of this figure) where, jointly, people reside in the same building to which a common bond unites. In them there are private rooms and common living elements. Therefore, this use does not necessarily require that its users be students or older, but rather its characteristic element is the existence of a link – any one – between the residents. Therefore, this possibility remains open, of course, without having to be ruled out. We must not confuse the residences with the colleges, this being a more complex issue with which we would enter into the land of land of character or endowment use.

All this is a purely theoretical exercise that would require an in-depth analysis. However, and this is essential, not all that glitters in the ‘coliving’ world is gold, at least in Spain. It will be a matter of finding the veto until the Administration does not make use of its regulatory function because, if this “business” proliferates, it will fall by its own weight and due to the need for public order, an ‘ad hoc’ regulation of an administrative-tourist nature that regulate the ‘coliving’, as happened with tourist homes.

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