Panama Law Against Short Term Rentals



Posted: Friday, September 18, 2009

by
Panama Legal

Executive Summary The Panama Government has pass a new law, Resolution 52 dated August 13, 2009 and published it. This law makes it a crime to rent out your apartment for less than one year. One would think this is unconstitutional, but hey this is Panama.

Why Such a Law This law was passed to help the hotel industry suffering from occupancy rates of about 35% (estimated only), but in any event low. There were a lot of speculative condo sales in Panama in last few years. Some of these condos were even set up as pseudo hotels for rental having hotel type services in them. They were not legally structured as hotels because the owners would live in them for months at a time and have clear title to the unit, mortgages etc. Well now renting your condo out for a week or a month is illegal. Imagine that as hard as it is to imagine. We are not talking about a certain condo project blocking short-term rentals. These buyers were already given permission to do short term rentals when they bought the units. This is a Panama Government law applying to every residential dwelling in the nation.

Implications Those making a tidy living off of short-term rentals of these investment units just took a bad hit, big time. So they came to Panama and invested thinking what a nice place it was. I could come here a few months of the year and use these short-term rental agencies to rent my unit out the rest of the time so I can get some income to offset my investment. Whoops now that they have your money, kaboom. The worm has turned. The hotel industry being politically active has gotten a protectionist law to be passed which is anything but free competition and in most countries would be unconstitutional and illegal. This puts those out of business trying to rent their condos. Well heck you can only sell the condo once and once it is sold, well it is over so do what is best for other than the foreigner who in good faith invested there.

The OECD Tax Treaties How do you think the foreign investor will finish with the OECD, Panama and Tax Treaties?

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