2023-12-23 06:59:10
The Minimum Living and Mobile Wage in Argentina is 156 thousand pesos. A commercial employee earns a basic salary of 397 thousand pesos, a teacher in the province of Buenos Aires $265 thousand and a police officer reaches $290 thousand. None of them would be in a position to pay rent in the main cities of the country, where a basic home for a typical family costs between 300 and 600 thousand per month.
Article 14 bis of the National Constitution establishes that the State must guarantee all citizens, among other rights, the right to access decent housing. In Argentina, not only are there no mortgage loans, but the eight million Argentines who rent – according to data from the last national census – are experiencing a dramatic situation that is becoming increasingly worse with the passage of time.
Currently, the lack of supply, the abuses of real estate agencies and the unscrupulous conditions of many owners force tenants to have to accept any conditions for fear of eviction or the possibility of ending up on the streets. “No rental value at the moment” is the most common response from real estate agents, at a time when prices change day by day.
According to the latest census data, a total of 31,412,314 (68.9%) people live in their own private homes and 7,925,280 (31.1%) rent. Before Javier Milei’s Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU), which will end with a single stroke of the pen the rental law passed last October when it comes into force, the market imposed illegal conditions of all kinds. From setting a monthly price in dollars to signing one-year contracts with the condition of previously resigning to renegotiate the rental amount.
The situation for tenants – it is clear – is not going to change immediately, basically because most real estate companies have not respected the law for a long time. The repeal, among other things, implies that the new contracts are governed by the provisions of the National Civil and Commercial Code. For example, the term of the lease agreement must be set by the parties without a minimum legal term. It might be a year, two or three. Whatever the owner decides, of course.
As for the amounts, there will be absolute freedom to establish the rental price imposed by the market, the currency and even adjustments for inflation, which from this Thursday may be monthly.
Currently, real estate agencies charge a commission equivalent to two or three months’ rent, a property guarantee and two pay stubs. They also invoice for stamp and contract expenses.
“If you rent, yes or yes you have to work and, if the rent increases on our salary, and we even have the misfortune of losing our job, the decision will be whether we eat or have a roof over our heads. I don’t think that is the solution for 8 million Argentines,” Maximiliano Vittar, a representative of the National Tenants Movement, stated, without hiding his concern, in radio statements.
In the same direction, Vittar added: “The DNU does not express the dialogue and consensus that there must be to arrive at solutions that do not further harm the situation of the tenants.”
“The decree modified so many people that it would be a mistake to make a claim by sector. “We have to unite and converge with social, student and union organizations to challenge the Government and the political leadership as a whole to build something that does not generate a setback or that pushes us, particularly, to the streets,” the reference of the tenant sector, in radio statements.
Tenants who live in the city of La Plata, for example, have to face expenses that average 600 thousand pesos just to enter. A two-room apartment in the center averages 200 thousand pesos and a house on the outskirts is around 400 thousand pesos. How many families can face these values?
In the provincial capital, furthermore, the offer is so limited that finding a sign with the word “rent” is more difficult than parking your car in the Microcentro, in the middle of rush hour. “There is so much demand that it is not worth placing an advertisement because the property is generally rented within a few hours,” they acknowledge from one of the main real estate agencies in the “City of Diagonals.”
In any case, from the real estate sector they not only view favorably the DNU imposed by Javier Milei, but they trust in its prompt reactivation (see separate).
“The agents accept the conditions demanded by the owners, knowing their illegality, in order to obtain their commission. If before most of the ads on search sites such as Zonaprop or InmoBúsqueda required payment in dollars and contracts for one year, the repeal of the new rental law will only serve to worsen the situation of tenants,” says Andrés R., “an employee who has been looking for a new home for his family in La Plata for more than two months because the owner of the apartment announced that he no longer wants to rent it,” he concluded.
“They asked me for a letter of recommendation.”
L.N.
Andrea B. said that the owners of a rental apartment demanded a letter of recommendation from their employers. “In 20 days I have to leave where I am renting. He had identified a department, the reports had already been done and they had gone well. This week I signed a contract, but on Friday the girl from the real estate agency told me that the owners cannot afford my pay stubs,” she said from her X account (formerly Twitter).
“They asked me for letters from my employers to certify my income. After having signed it, having paid for the reports, having asked people to prioritize those letters they asked me for over their work, following asking my guarantor for a place in his agenda to go and sign the contract, the owner called the real estate agent to tell him that he will not rent the apartment. They can’t play with people’s lives like that. It’s ridiculous. It is not enough to have a formal job, nor to have a CABA guarantee, nothing is enough,” she said.
Gabriela S., for example, as a couple and a 17-year-old daughter, was asked for 380 thousand pesos in initial rent and a monthly increase according to the Government’s inflation index. She responded that according to the rental law it was semiannual. She responded: “This is a private contract and the rental law does not count. That was from the previous government. If you don’t want raises, 400 dollars a month in tickets and we’ll save ourselves the problem.”
The vision of the real estate sector
C.C.
Contrary to what many tenants believe, the president of the Real Estate Chamber, Iván Ginevra, assured that the repeal of the law “will benefit everyone.” “The effect will be immediate. It will be noticed shortly in the same way that the effect was negative as soon as the last law was passed in October,” he told PERFIL.
For Ginevra, “the last modification of the law ended the supply, and prices became more expensive.” “Informality increased and I believe that the DNU will be very positive for the market,” she said finally.
For his part, and in the same direction, Claudio Vodánovich, general secretary of the Real Estate Development Study Foundation (FEDI) and member of the Association of Owners, Consortiums and Consortiums of Argentina (Apcra), assured this newspaper: “ On the one hand, we see the measure positively in that it will be possible to re-close a rental contract between the parties, which was what had been working before the sanction of these last two disastrous rental laws. Previously, the market was supplied and managed reasonably well between supply and demand. And these items were precisely the main problems that arose from the modifications that were promoted following the enactment of those laws, which broke the market,” he stated forcefully.
“With a high degree of inflation and the uncertainty that was generated in the sector as a result of these regulations, telling the owner to wait twelve months to update a value became illogical,” said Vodánovich, in his talk with PERFIL.
Especially if you take into account that there was no price in the Argentine economy that was depressed for a year. With the repeal of the law, the Civil Code once once more establishes the conditions for signing a rental contract. A rental contract for at least two years and the parties can freely agree on possible staggering. And obviously what is somehow ratified and clarified is that contracts can be made not only in pesos, but also in some type of foreign currency, especially the dollar.
The impact will be very positive in the sector,” he concluded.
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