New Rental Guarantee Law Generates Uncertainty Due to Lack of Clear Procedures

The new rental guarantee law generates uncertainty due to lack of clear procedures

The new regulation on rental guarantees for housing aims to protect, but its wording opens a scenario of legal uncertainty. The norm requires specific conditions to activate insurance coverage, but does not establish how to prove them effectively, delegating this critical task to the regional administrations. 🏛️

A requirement with an undefined procedure

For the guarantee insurance to cover the owner, the tenant must be under 35 years old or be in a vulnerable situation. The central problem is that the law does not specify a clear, unique, and automatic method for the tenant to prove that they meet this last requirement. This gap forces each autonomous community to design its own system, many of which do not yet work or do not even exist.

• The law is retroactive from January 1, but the lack of protocols makes it inapplicable in practice for many cases.
• The economic risk is transferred to the owner, who depends on the tenant managing a procedure that may not exist.
• Tenants seeking this protection may be unable to access it due to undefined bureaucracy.

It seems the law expects the tenant to pull a certificate out of a hat that no administration has finished designing.

Uncertainty for owners and tenants

In reality, for contracts prior to the law or after January 2025, the insurer may refuse to pay if no valid accreditation is presented. This creates a paradox: the burden of proving the condition falls on the owner, who cannot demonstrate something that legally the tenant must manage. Additionally, the tenant could refuse to provide data, relying on data protection laws, which completely blocks the process.

• The owner faces the uncertainty of depending on administrative procedures that may not be defined.
• The absence of a uniform mechanism generates legal insecurity for both parties to the rental contract.
• Until the regions activate their protocols, the guarantee promised by the law remains suspended.

An uncertain and costly outcome

The scenario could lead to courts having to declare, case by case, a tenant's vulnerable condition. This means a collapse for the justice system and a cost in time and money for those involved. Moreover, if a judge finally declares a person vulnerable, the State would be in the position of having to approve aids that it previously could have denied, in a sort of a posteriori recognition. In short, the norm, as it stands, creates more problems than it solves, leaving those it should protect in limbo. ⚖️