The decrees return
Four days after Congress rejected the housing decrees, the Council of Ministers approved them again on Tuesday 6 October, with technical adjustments. The package contains 21 measures and arrives with Parliament already dissolved due to the calling of general elections for 29 November, so the Permanent Delegation of Congress must now ratify them.
They are two texts. The first, Royal Decree-Law 29/2026, has been in force since 8 October. The second, Royal Decree-Law 28/2026, on contract renewal, would come into force on 15 November, but only if ratified.
What changes for tenants
- Extraordinary extension. Tenants with habitual residence contracts ending before 31 December 2028 may request an extension of up to two years, provided the conditions of the decree are met.
- Limits on increases. Until the end of 2027, in certain updates, if the rent already exceeds the maximum of the state reference index it cannot be raised. In other cases provided, if landlord and tenant cannot reach an agreement, the increase cannot exceed 2%.
- Income tax deduction. A state deduction of 10% is created for rental of habitual residence for taxpayers with a taxable base below €33,007.20 annually. It can reach up to €1,163 per year for the lowest incomes and decreases progressively from €23,007.20.
- Seasonal and room rentals. Temporality must respond to a real and verifiable cause and, in general, cannot exceed twelve months. Chaining temporary contracts will not serve to avoid habitual rental guarantees. And the sum of room rents in a property cannot exceed the rent that would correspond to the full flat.
- Evictions. Vulnerable groups are protected against evictions until 2030.
The second decree, if ratified, would allow contracts to be extended, once the first five years have been completed (seven if the landlord is a company), for new periods of five or seven years under the conditions set by the regulation.
For landlords there are also tax incentives, such as reductions of up to 100% of net income in certain new contracts where rent is lowered. The Government has also announced the "Tu Casa" programme, with loans of up to €50,000 for first-time home purchases and a budget of €10 billion.
The comarca in figures
According to the latest Population and Housing Census from the National Statistics Institute (INE), from 2021, Marina Alta had 13,388 households in rental properties, 17.9% of its 74,960 main dwellings. In 2011 there were 10,037, so rental increased by 33% in a decade.
Dénia (3,072 households), Xàbia (2,304) and Calp (2,217) account for 57% of rentals in the comarca. Calp is where rental has the most weight: 22.5% of its main dwellings.
According to census analysis carried out by La Marina Plaza, at least 30,930 people live in rental properties in the comarca, almost 6,000 of them aged 65 or over.
These figures mark the potential scope of the new measures, not the number of beneficiaries. Not all contracts or all tenants will meet the requirements of each measure, and there is no statistic available to know how many households do. It should also be noted that in Marina Alta no municipality is declared a stressed area, the status that allows the strictest price controls of the Housing Law to be applied.
The vote on 16 October
Everything now depends on the Permanent Delegation, which will vote to ratify the two decrees on 16 October. If a decree is not ratified, it is repealed.
Arithmetic favours the first. The PNV has announced it will support it, which guarantees its ratification against the PP, Vox and Junts, which together hold 34 of the 69 seats in the body. It will reject the second, so that text currently lacks a majority and would lapse.
It is the second opportunity for measures whose rejection in Congress left two faces in the comarca, in an area where buying a house in Xàbia requires 69% of family income and a month before the general strike for housing on 11 November.
Editorial note: this information replaces an earlier version whose headline gave the impression that all 13,388 rental households in the comarca would benefit from the measures. That figure is the total of rental households, not the number of beneficiaries.
