utilities when letting

[rosiehill]

hi I want to rent out an apartment in the costa de antigua area and the agent tells me normal practice is for me to pay first 50 eur of tenant's monthly utils.

Never heard of this before and seems bit of hassle in terms of admin etc. Anyone any thoughts on it?

[Logitechtom]

From looking for at adverts for rental properties, it looks pretty standard practice. Most rental properties include the first 50 or 60 euro for utilities - anything above that the tenant pays.

Tom.

[chollis]

This is fairly standard practice for agents, but not necessarily for private landlords renting out themselves. Normal for landlords to pay the council taxes and community charge and tenants to pay the water and electric. You can put the utilities in the tenants name, but our preference as as landlords is to have an advance monthly payment on top of the rent each month, us pay the bills, and then adjust this against the actual bills of which our tenants are welcome to copies. Hope that helps.

[Lexeus]

I have experienced both systems. It has traditionally been fairly common for the landlord to include say â,¬50/month for services in the rental price, and the rental contract will state that you are liable for any water/electricity charges that cost more than â,¬50/month. I think perhaps historically there was a risk of the property building up services debt from a bad tenant, but nowadays I am told water/electricity bills are in the name of a person rather than the property it self, but even now my landlord has the bills in their name and I just pay the stated invoice.

[chollis]

If the landlord pays the bills (which means that you can not pay them) he can have water and electricity cut off if the tenant doesn't pay the rent.
[/quote]

If the bills are in the landlords name it is unlawful for the landlord to not pay the bills even if the renter has not paid the rent. If a landlord does this the tenant can denounce the landlord who will be fined by the courts. Tenants rights are quite extensive under Spanish laws.