Rental costs in Spain: who pays what, by law

The right-hand column is the one that decides: some costs can be shifted to the tenant with a valid clause, and others admit no clause at all.

The general costs of maintaining the building — its services, taxes, charges and liabilities — that are not capable of being individualized may be agreed to fall on the tenant. But that agreement is only valid if it is in writing and states the annual amount of those costs as at the date of the contract.

Both requirements are cumulative, and the second is the one almost never met. The standard clause — "community fees and IBI shall be borne by the tenant" — is in writing, yes, but states no amount. Without that figure you cannot know what you are committing to, and the agreement fails what the statute requires.

In buildings under horizontal property rules those costs are the ones attributable to the dwelling by its participation quota. In buildings not under that regime, the ones assigned to it by surface area. It is worth having the contract say which of the two criteria applies.

Costs for services individualized by meters fall on the tenant in all cases. Electricity, water and gas on their own meter are yours with or without a clause, because they measure exactly what you consumed.

That is the logic of the provision: what can be individualized is paid by whoever consumes it, and what cannot is only transferred by a valid agreement. A building with central heating and no individual meters falls into the second group, not the first.

Check whose name the supply contracts are in. If they remain in the landlord's name and are billed on to you, you are paying for consumption you can neither verify nor query directly with the utility company.

Estate agency costs and the costs of formalizing the contract fall on the landlord. The statute admits no exception and draws no distinction between a private landlord and a company: if you are charged agency fees to rent a home, that charge is contrary to the rule.

This covers the commission of the agency that showed you the flat and handled the transaction, and the cost of drafting the contract. It does not cover services you contracted yourself, in your own interest, which are a different matter.

If you have already paid, you can claim it back. Keep the invoice or the transfer receipt together with the contract: those two documents establish what was charged and on what basis.

The landlord must carry out, without any right to raise the rent for it, every repair needed to keep the property in habitable condition, unless the deterioration is attributable to you.

What falls to you are the minor repairs required by ordinary wear and tear. The boundary is not the price but the cause: a washer or a cistern mechanism is wear; a boiler that dies or structural damp is maintenance, however cheap the fix turns out to be.

Two practical rules almost nobody applies. If maintenance work cannot reasonably be deferred and lasts more than twenty days, the rent must be reduced in proportion to the part of the property you are deprived of. And you may carry out urgent repairs yourself to prevent imminent damage, after notifying the landlord, and demand the cost back immediately.

Passing costs on is not a blank cheque. During the first five years of the contract, or the first seven if the landlord is a legal entity, the amount you pay under that heading may only be increased by agreement, annually, and never by a percentage more than double the one by which the rent may rise.

Taxes sit outside that cap. If the municipality raises the IBI by 20%, your share rises with it, because the limit is aimed at management and service costs rather than at taxes.

That cap is one of the reasons the statute requires the clause to fix the annual amount as at the date of the contract: without a starting figure there is no way to check whether an increase respects the limit.

Find the costs clause and check whether there is a figure beside each item. If it says "community fees and IBI payable by the tenant" and stops there, ask for the annual amount to be added: this is not an outlandish request, it is what the statute requires for the clause to be valid.

Check too that items which admit no agreement — agency fees, formalization, maintenance repairs — have not been folded into a list of costs. They tend to appear under neutral names such as "management costs" or "maintenance".

And ask for the actual figures from the last year: community fee statements and the most recent IBI bill. The landlord has this information, and it turns an abstract clause into a number you can add to the rent to see what you will really pay each month.