electricity question.

A friend has been using his apartment for his own use but now want to rent it long term. The electricity bills currently come out of his bank account but when he gets a long term tenant he would like for the bills to go straight to the apartment and the tenant pay the bill in the bank. He thinks this will cut down on the worry of a tenant not paying the bills. Is this possible to do and can I help him or does he need to go to a gestoia? He lives in Ireland and I am helping him out from over here.

Any advice would be great!

Vicci Hi;

It seems to me that the existing contract is between your friend and Sevillana-Endesa (?); so far as I am aware this contract cannot be transferred to become the responsbility of a third party.

If anyone knows different please feel free to drop in shoot me down...I wont be offended!

Your friend could possibly set up a secondary private contract  between himself and the renter, have it drawn up professionally then signed and witnessed at a Notary Office, but this would be a private arrangement and I doubt it would be legally enforceable in any arguments about billing between your friend and Sevillana...best he could hope for would be a separate breach of contract case.

On thing that did come to mind however; one subscriber to this site, a guy called Max Kite sells a prepayment type of meter...might be worth thinking about. Here is a link to his site...He's relatively local in that he lives in Granada Province...and before anyone asks I have no connection with this gentleman!

Just a thought...

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The usual thing to do is for the tenant to change the bank account with the electricity company from the landlords to the tenants bank account, never had a problem with this.

Another common practice is for the rental contract to stipulate that the renter will pay bills for water, electricity + whatever else with the monthly rental payment following their presentation.   This only works if the owner is fairly local and can present the bills.  And commonly the bills are debited to the owner's bank account and the tenant pays the owner in cash. 

Hi

We run a rental agency and just arrange for the direct debit to be changed into the tenants name unless the owners really want to keep it debiting from their account. (If this is the case the tenant just pays them back) If you change the debit the actual electric contract stays in the owners name, just the bank details are changed. Alternatively we cancel the direct debit so the tenant just pays the bill in cash at the bank.  A good idea is to set up online access with Sevillana so you can continue to monitor the bills to ensure they are being paid by the tenant. You just need the latest electric bill to do this.  http://www.endesaonline.es/ES/Hogares/  is the site you need. Once set up you can actually change the debit online, request duplicate bills or stop paper bills and just receive them by email.

thanks for the replies everyone. I knew someone on here would know!

My friend just wants the bills to go to the house and the tenent to go to the bank and pay them so that we never have to face some of the issues I have read about on here with tenents not paying rent,bills etc.

LASIESTA is it really as simple as cancelling the direct debit and the bills just going to the house and being paid into the bank? That seems a little to easy!

Sorry it took so long to reply,I have not had any notifications of replies so I didn't know anyone had replied!

thanks again all

Hi Vicci,

Sorry I haven't replied sooner but I was back in the UK which was actually having beautiful weather!

With regards to the electric we have never had any problems cancelling the direct debit. Depending on what the postal service is like in your area it may be worth setting up the e-bill on their internet service. The bill will then be emailed to you which you can forward onto the tenant. That way the tenant can never say they never received the bill !

Good luck!