Legal tip 399. Legals for rentals V. Maintenance works. Who pays them?
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 @ 12:18 PM
Within the rental life, two different kinds of works need to be differentiated: necessary or maintenance and improvements.
A. Maintenance works
The landlord needs to make all those repairs needed to maintain the house in habitable conditions unless the deterioration has been caused by the tenant, or the house has been destroyed by force majeure not chargeable to the tenant (fire, inundation, earthquake, etc.) and that causes the extinction of the contract. The landlord cannot increase the rents in these cases.
Little reparations due to wear and tear caused by the ordinary use of the house must be paid by the tenant.
If there are some needed repair works to be done in the house and they cannot be postponed until the letting period finishes, the tenant will have to tolerate them; if the works last more than 20 days, the tenant will have a right to the decrease of the rent proportionally to the part of the house which is not habitable/usable due to the work.
If there are works which are urgently needed in order to avoid serious and immediate damages, these can be carried out by the tenant, provided that is fully communicated to the landlord. The tenant will have a right for the reimbursement of the amount paid for these urgent works.
If the maintenance works have been ordered by the competent Authority and they make the house inhabitable, the tenant can suspend or cancel the contract with no compensation.
The contract suspension means that both the renting period and the rent obligation are stopped until the end of the works.
White village, Spain by today is a good day at Flickr.com