CHAPTER III. Of the rent.
Article 17. Determination of income
1. The rent will be that freely stipulated by the parties.
2. Unless otherwise agreed, the payment of the rent will be monthly and must be made in the first seven days of the month. In no case may the landlord demand the advance payment of more than one monthly rent.
3. Payment will be made in the place and by the procedure agreed by the parties or, failing that, in cash and at the rented home.
4. The lessor is obliged to deliver the receipt of the payment to the tenant, unless it has been agreed that it is carried out through procedures that prove the effective fulfillment of the obligation of payment by the tenant.
The receipt or supporting document that replaces it must contain separately the amounts paid for the different concepts that make up the entire payment and, specifically, the income in force.
If the landlord does not deliver the receipt, all the expenses incurred by the tenant will be on his account to record the payment.
5. In the lease contracts, it may be freely agreed by the parties that, during a specified period, the obligation to pay the rent may be totally or partially replaced by the tenant's commitment to reform or rehabilitate the property under the agreed terms and conditions. At the end of the lease, the lessee may in no case request additional compensation for the cost of the works carried out on the property. Failure by the lessee to carry out the works in the agreed terms and conditions may be cause for termination of the lease and the provisions of section 2 of article 23 will be applicable.
Article 18. Rent update
1. During the term of the contract, the rent may only be updated by the lessor or the tenant on the date on which each year of the contract is in force, in the terms agreed by the parties. In the absence of an express agreement, no update of income will be applied to the contracts.
In the event of an express agreement between the parties on a mechanism for updating monetary values that does not detail the reference index or methodology, the income will be updated for each annuity by reference to the annual variation of the Competitiveness Guarantee Index on the date of each update. , taking as the reference month for the update the one that corresponds to the last index published on the date the contract was updated.
In any case, the increase produced as a result of the annual update of the income may not exceed the result of applying the percentage variation experienced by the Consumer Price Index on the date of each update, taking as the reference month for the update the one that corresponds to the last index that was published on the date the contract was updated.
2. The updated rent will be due from the tenant from the month following the one in which the interested party notifies the other party in writing, stating the percentage of alteration applied and accompanying, if the tenant requires it, the appropriate certification from the Institute National Statistics.
The notification made by note on the receipt of the monthly payment of the preceding payment will be valid.
Article 19. Rent increase for improvements
1. The performance by the lessor of improvement works, after five years of the contract, or seven years if the lessor is a legal entity, will entitle him, unless otherwise agreed, to raise the annual rent by the amount resulting from apply to the capital invested in the improvement, the legal interest rate of the money at the time of completion of the works increased by three points, without exceeding the increase of twenty percent of the rent in force at that time.
In order to calculate the capital invested, the public subsidies obtained to carry out the work must be discounted.
2. When the improvement affects several farms in a building under the horizontal property regime, the lessor must distribute the invested capital proportionally among all of them, applying, for this purpose, the participation fees that correspond to each of them.
In the case of buildings that are not under the horizontal property regime, the invested capital will be distributed proportionally among the affected properties by agreement between the lessor and the tenants. In the absence of an agreement, it will be distributed proportionally based on the area of the leased property.
3. The rent increase will take place from the month following the one in which, once the works have been completed, the landlord notifies the tenant in writing of the amount thereof, detailing the calculations that lead to its determination and providing copies of the documents of the resulting in the cost of the works carried out.
4. Without prejudice to the provisions of the previous sections and the compensation that may be applicable under article 22, at any time from the beginning of the lease contract and prior agreement between the lessor and the tenant, improvement works may be carried out in the rented home and increase the rent of the contract, without this implying the interruption of the mandatory extension period established in article 9 or the tacit extension referred to in article 10 of this Law, or a new start of the computation of such deadlines. In any case, the scope of the improvement works must go beyond compliance with the duty of conservation by the lessor referred to in article 21 of this Law.
Article 20. General expenses and individual services
1. The parties may agree that the general expenses for the adequate maintenance of the property, its services, taxes, charges and responsibilities that are not susceptible of individualization and that correspond to the rented house or its accessories, are borne by the tenant.
In buildings under the horizontal property regime, such expenses will be those corresponding to the leased property based on its participation fee.
In buildings that are not under the horizontal property regime, such expenses will be those that have been assigned to the leased property based on its surface area.
For its validity, this agreement must be in writing and determine the annual amount of said expenses on the date of the contract. The agreement that refers to taxes will not affect the Administration.
Real estate management and contract formalization expenses will be borne by the lessor, when he is a legal entity.
2. During the first five years of validity of the contract, or during the first seven years if the lessor were a legal entity, the sum that the tenant has to pay for the concept referred to in the previous section, with the exception of taxes, It may only be increased, by agreement of the parties, annually, and never in a percentage higher than double that in which the income can be increased in accordance with the provisions of section 1 of article 18.
3. The expenses for services available to the leased property that are individualized by means of counting devices will in any case be borne by the tenant.
4. The payment of the expenses referred to in this article will be credited in the manner provided in article 17.4.