Since I discovered back in January that it's impossible to get a rental contract unless you can prove a very high monthly salary, I've been a little puzzled by this guideline. Surely the people who are looking to rent a house or flat are the ones who can't afford to buy a home for themselves. Yet the new rules mean that only the relatively rich can afford to rent a place to live in. This week, I discovered the reason for this perplexing situation.
A long time acquaintance, whose good friend has two apartments to rent, asked her friend if she would waive the "must prove a salary" requirement and allow me to view the apartments... but the friend explained to her why that's not possible:
After losing so much money during the pandemic, it's now common for home owners to have an insurance policy to cover them if tenants default on the rent... or to ask prospective tenants themselves to take out a "seguro de impago de alquiler" - an insurance policy that covers you if for any reason you are unable to pay your rent (which is what happened when people became unemployed during the pandemic.) So now, it's usually the insurance companies that are insisting on proof of salary, refusing to insure the property or insure the tenant unless prospective tenants can prove that their monthly salary is thousands more than the actual rental contract.
In other words, the only hope of my finding a flat or house to rent is if the owner has not committed to one of those insurance policies or is not requiring that the tenant takes out a "seguro de impago de alquiler." That's not very common nowadays, as home owners are seeking to protect themselves from the negative experiences of losing money during the pandemic.
And so it leaves me with huge questions about the way forward: if renting is really becoming an impossible housing solution for me, that leaves buying as the only option for the future. Is that what I should be pursuing? But it's completely impossible until we see a breakthrough with the insurance company of our home in Scotland.... and even then I would still need a miracle to be able to find something here.
It's good to have an explanation of why all doors seem closed... but knowing the reasons is still not opening any doors for me as we swiftly move towards the middle of this month in temporary accommodation.
What sort of miracle should I be trusting for?
