Despite the general clamour for villas this year, we still have a few offering their traditional discounts for booking before Easter. Casa Juan Vich 1 and 2 are a perfect example…
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A new law came into force in 2012. It was called the ‘Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos’, also known as LAU (Urban Leases Act). This law allows holiday rentals to be permitted for any building, subject to specific requirements. The Balearic Tourism Law allows for the commercialisation of tourist accommodation in properties and for heavily fining those who rent properties without the required ETV (Estancia Turistica en Viviendas) tourist license. This legislation only covers detached and semi-detached villas, it does not extend to apartments.
Vicente Torres, the Director of the Balearic Tourist Board, recently had this to say: “It is not that difficult to obtain an ETV license. Yes, it takes a long time to obtain the official permit as we are coping with a backlog. We are actually now working on the 2013 permit requests. However, that should not be a problem, because from the minute you hand in the documents you are allowed to rent out your house for touristic purposes.
The difficulty for many property owners is not the Tourist Board, the problem arises when needing to register your property as a business. You will need to obtain a DRIAT (Declaración responsable de inicio de actividad turística) at the town hall. For this declaration you need to show that your property and all that is within your premises, has been built legally. Before handing over the declaration the town hall will sent an inspector to check that all is correct. If you have built exactly what is on the papers, than you can start your business. The costs of the registration is a one-off fixed tax of € 600 which needs to be paid. It does not matter whether your property is big or small or how many beds you have.
It is said that this has come about because of pressure from the hotel owners who claim to lose money because of websites like Airbnb that offer private homes as holiday rentals. Every year this creates a decrease in housing for the people that come to Ibiza to work. There are doctors who can’t work in our hospitals, teachers who can’t work in our schools and seasonal workers who can’t afford to live in Ibiza, because there are simply no affordable houses or rooms left.
This is one of the main objectives of the ETV permit application. We had to regulate the increase of holiday rentals. Next to this, there are many people with property on this island. They frequently use our facilities, yet never pay taxes on their rental income. We have now started to look into this more and more. Yes, we do have inspectors checking these websites and we do have inspectors looking at social media channels to stop the illegal rentals, but this is not because of pressure from the hotels.
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The popularity of Ibiza as a holiday destination continues to rise year on year with 1 ¼ million visitors in August alone – not bad for an island with barely 130.000 inhabitants!
Unfortunately for those inhabitants, as tourist numbers inexorably rise, so do the prices for food, accommodation and everything else – but, hey, that’s the price you pay for living in paradise…
So, theoretically, everybody should be happy? It seems, though, that the island’s hoteliers are not happy. While arrivals to the island appear to have increased this year by 5% overall, the hotel sector finds itself looking at almost static growth. Nowadays it seem that, for a variety of reasons, the island’s summer visitors are increasingly opting for a villa instead.
This shift in accommodation preference has not gone unnoticed by the island’s authorities, whose job is to make our visitors feel at home, in accommodation of their choice – and ideally return to the island on a regular basis.
To this end the process of approving villas for tourist rental has accelerated enormously this year, and new officially registered villas are coming to the market almost every week.
This is good news for visitors, because competition controls prices. Few villas here have dared to raise their prices over the last couple of years, but even fewer are complaining, as their occupancy levels reach new heights too – as anyone who left it late to try and book for either July or August this year will testify.
Our message is simple – if you want to enjoy the luxury of a villa on Ibiza next summer, make sure that you ask us to conduct your search and make that booking before you miss the bus!
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Dear both, just to let you know we had a really good week holiday!! Thank you for looking after us. Looking forward to coming back soon. Greetz Nathalie & family
Sent from my iPhone
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Hi Suzy
Just a quick note to say thanks again for your help.
The villa was fantastic & the car was perfect.
We are now back in UK with some lovely memories.
Alastair.
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Hi Richard,
Thanks for the car booking. It’s a pleasure to work with you.
See you in Ibiza.
Norbert
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Hi Suzy and Richard,
We had a great time at Can Lluquinet in Ibiza. The villa was fantastic, it was so peaceful. I would definitely recommend it to friends. Neus and her family were so friendly and it was nice to know they were there should we require anything. The villa was well equipped and spotlessly clean.
Thanks to both of you too as it was reassuring that I could phone you for advice when we got lost. We did not know Ibiza at all and we came off the dual carriageway too early when we saw a roundabout at the top of an off-slip that said Saint Joan. This evidently took us to Ibiza Town where all signposts for Saint Joan vanished! Thanks for your help in getting us back on track.
We hope to visit Ibiza again soon, as we liked it so much.
Kind regards,
Helen Devoy
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We had a great week at Cas Ferrer. Really liked the house. We will probably like to rent the house again for 2 weeks next July. I will probably confirm that early next year.
Thank you for the great service.
Regards
Michelle
