Everything you need to know about leasing shared apartments.
It is increasingly common for housing leases to include more than one tenant, thus holding the title of co-tenant, in what colloquially it is known as “shared flat” 1 . For cases of family housing, the Urban Leasing Law (LAU94 and RR.DD. later) 2 and the Family Code (in Catalonia CCC, Llibre II) already provide different solutions to the new realities that the family unit must face, so, here we we will focus on that co-lease that does not involve a family unit, but on the formed by people who for reasons of friendship, studies, work, etc. decide to share your place of habitual or temporary residence in the same house.
That being the case that the LAU is not about in a specific way, the co-lease condition must refer to what the Civil Code (CC, Art. 1137). In the beginning, two conditions must be distinguished with respect to the figure of co-tenant, either joint or solidarity.
A simple way to be clear about what each one refers to one is to relate the commonwealth with proportionality or part and solidarity with the totality. Thus, in the case of joint co-tenant, he / she will only respond to the party lessor in the proportion that corresponds 3 ; by cons, when it comes to solidarity co-tenant responds individually to the leasing party for all agreed in the lease, regardless of what, where appropriate, They can do the rest of co-tenants.
Contracts will be considered formalized with joint co-tenants when expressly with respect to the object of the contract is agreed or acted with the / as co-tenants in a differentiated way. For example, collection by parts of the total income, concrete allocation of housing units, collection separately from the bonds received, individualized collection of supplies, difference in duration according to co-tenant, in specifically, when the leasing party deals with the lease object in particular with the co-tenants some of the aspects of the contract.
We can intuit the multiplicity of scenarios that can be derived from a lease with joint co-tenants when they are not aware of it and the party landlord has assumed that it is solidarity solidarity. In our opinion, it should always be specified in the lease agreements of housing , unless otherwise evident, that the co-tenants do so solidarity.
Omitting such a specification may lead to consider them joint or have to justify that they are not, plus all the associated problems that entails. In subsequent writings, we will analyze and expose some specific cases of co-lease, both joint and several, that require clear criteria and concise to solve the different problems that may arise, especially when the The will of the co-tenants does not follow the same criteria regarding the request or option of the action to be exercised.
1 Do not confuse with the case of room rental.
2 LAU94, Art. 12.
3 The general case would calculate the proportion based on the number of co-tenants.
