Short-term holiday lets in your building: what you can do

Plenty of small buildings now have one or two flats rented out by the night. Sometimes nothing happens and the neighbours barely notice. Other times they do: suitcases at all hours, the front door left open, the pool full of people nobody knows, bins put out at the wrong time. If the subject has come up in your building, it is worth tackling it calmly and in order, because there is quite a lot you can do, and some things you cannot.

Separate day-to-day nuisance from the bigger debate

Before raising anything at the meeting, it helps to tell two different things apart.

One is everyday coexistence: noise at unreasonable hours, careless use of shared areas, badly managed rubbish, damage to the lift or the entrance hall. That can happen just as easily with a long-term tenant or with an owner, and the association has tools to react without having to argue about whether the flat is a holiday let or not.

The other is the activity itself: a flat being used for short-stay rental. That debate is a different one, and it touches on regulations, not just on getting along.

Mixing the two usually ends in a tense meeting with no useful decisions. It is worth handling them separately.

What you can do about the nuisance

When the problem is behaviour, the route is the usual one:

• Write down what happened, with date and time, and no adjectives. A simple log is worth more than ten complaints recalled from memory.
• Put it in writing to the owner, who is the association's point of contact even if whoever is inside changes every week.
• Remind everyone of, or approve, clear rules for the shared areas: pool hours, use of the lift, where and when the bins go out, how many people may use the facilities.
• Repair the damage and pass the cost on to whoever is responsible, where that can be evidenced.

House rules that are well drafted and properly approved solve more cases than you would expect, because they give everyone a framework to lean on without singling anyone out.

How much room the law gives you

Spanish horizontal property law allows the owners' meeting to adopt agreements about holiday letting in the building: from setting conditions on it to limiting it. It also allows for these flats to take on a larger share of the communal costs, given the heavier use they make of the entrance, the lift, the cleaning or the facilities.

This is ground that has been shifting, and it also overlaps with regional and local rules: many places require licences or registration, and some restrict the areas where the activity is allowed. That is why you will not find article numbers or specific majority thresholds here. The sensible thing is to check the wording in force at the moment you are about to decide and, if the matter is a tense one, to get advice before the meeting rather than after it.

Two things that always hold true:

• An agreement of this kind looks forward. It does not normally undo situations that are already established, so it is better not to promise that in the notice of meeting.
• The agreement takes full effect once it is properly documented and registered. Minutes sitting in a drawer protect very little.

Taking it to the meeting properly

This is where many associations come unstuck, and it is usually the easiest part to fix:

• Put the item on the agenda with specific wording, not a vague "discuss the holiday lets". If the item is badly framed, the decision may come to nothing.
• Circulate the information beforehand: what is being proposed, what it means for costs, what the applicable rules say.
• Listen to the owner concerned. There is usually room for agreement (quiet hours, house rules for guests, a contact number that actually answers) without going any further.
• Draft the minutes precisely: what exactly was approved, with what scope, from when, and who is responsible for processing it.
• Notify the agreement to every owner, including those absent, and keep proof of that notification.

If the conflict drags on

If, after the agreement and the warnings, nothing changes, there are formal routes to demand that a disruptive activity stops. These are processes with their own deadlines and requirements, and that is where a professional should look at your specific case. Arriving with tidy correspondence, clear minutes and a proper incident log makes a real difference to your starting position.

Even so, most of these cases in small buildings are settled earlier: with clear rules, a conversation and a well written agreement. Keeping notices, minutes and communications tidy and available to everyone is the boring part, but it is what holds the rest up. That is exactly what Dommiva is built for.