Responsible holiday making
Rent a holiday home in Spain - how to find legally registered ones.
Mar 27, 2007
Spain is vast and highly contrasting from Green Spain in the north which is as lush and damp as it sounds to the Costa del Sol in the south, with over 300 days of sunshine a year.
Wherever you decide to go and however you travel your destination is holiday home you stay in. This can make or break your holiday and can be an awesome time-consuming marathon on the internet. Without the internet it’s seemingly impossible these days to get the information.
In this high-tech age we all expect to see photographs and many of them of the houses we’re perusing, so where to start?
How to pick your holiday home in Spain
There are thousands and thousands of houses, villas and apartments for rent. The majority, of course, are on the coastal strips. To legally use and rent out by advertising a house for tourist rentals, the house should be registered by the Junta de Andalucia.
This government body has legislations to be fulfilled such as rooms sizes, ceiling heights, wheelchair access and the like. The number of facilities is also an issue - a basic category dwelling needs a minimum of one complete bathroom for six people and for the superior category one bathroom for every four people.
The houses have to be checked and approved by government inspectors before being added to their list.
The majority of rental houses especially those owned by people not living in Spain are not legal, not taxed and the rental income is not going into the Spanish economy.
Where can you find accommodation that is legal, responsible and benefiting those that live work and pay their dues to the Spanish government? As mentioned previously Junta de Andalucia is the government's own website, which lists approved properties.
If you decide to rent privately, it's a case of renter beware.
The majority of the agencies on the web do not even visit the houses let alone bother whether they are legal or not. If you have to phone a booking reservation number, this should tell you that it is an agency. To advertise a holiday home on an agency it costs the house owner nothing but the agency usually pockets a further 20% of the price. Sometimes this is added on top of the normal weekly rent, so you pay 20% more. Occasionally the owner will this cost so they get 20% less.
Websites that advertise accommodation where you contact the owner yourself usually means the owner has paid a 6-month or yearly fee to advertise, so there are no commission increases and the owner receives the fixed-weekly price. Toprural.com is the one internet portal that only accept houses that are legally registered with the Junta.
Found one you like? Ask for even more details
Whenever you see an accommodation you’re interested in don’t be afraid to ask or for some more photos, find out which amenities are in the area, where the closest transport is and so forth.
As an owner of a holiday home, it's better that visitors have asked twenty questions and at the end decide it’s not really what they want rather than have a disappointed visitor and a unsatisfactory holiday.
Recommendations from others should also be checked out, one persons description may conjure up far more than was meant. Friends may be overselling the time they had not realizing you are thinking of going there too.
Spanish holiday home owners are very friendly and usually go out of their way to be helpful whether they can speak English or not. The Spanish love children and it’s not unusual to see children of all ages out with parents and grandparents until the early hours of the morning.
Holiday makers are welcome from abroad and the Spanish owners love the respect they have, and the fact they are not going to say five people are coming and cram in nine as the younger Spanish tourists tend to do!
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