“I can rent a house where I live?”. This is one of the doubts that, with a certain frequency, arises among property owners wishing to rent them to third parties. On the other hand, at first glance one might think that maintaining residency could guarantee some advantages, such as from a tax point of view. In reality, this possibility is not guaranteed.
In fact, the law does not allow one false residence: the latter must correspond to the place where you usually live. For this reason, if you decide to rent the apartment, it will be necessary to move your residence elsewhere. It is also necessary that the renewed residence is correctly reported in all written agreements with the tenant, for this purpose it is useful to make use of tools for guided creation of a rental contract.
Do you have to change residence when you rent a house?
As mentioned at the beginning, many property owners wonder if it is always necessary change residence when renting a house. However, again as already specified, this possibility is not contemplated either in our legislation or in the rental agreements, as can also be verified by the pre-compiled rental agreement templates.
To understand why it is not possible to maintain residence in the property that you are going to rent, it is first necessary to understand the difference between residence, domicile and dwelling.
What are domicile, abode and residence
It is thearticle 43 of the Civil Code which establishes the nature of domicile, abode and residence:
- For domicilemeans the place where a person establishes the principal place of business and interests;
- there mansion this means the place where the subject usually stays, for example during a trip or a temporary move;
- there residence it is the place where the subject has his habitual residence, or where he resides in a stable and voluntary manner.
Because you cannot maintain residence on the rented property
Having specified the distinction between domicile, residence and residence, it is logical to ask why it is not possible to reside in the property rented to third parties. As we have seen, article 43 of the Civil Code requires that the residence corresponds to place where the subject usually lives, in the main line it therefore overlaps the main house. Obviously, granting the same home to third parties prevents it from being used in a stable and continuous manner, so much so that the main rental contracts provide for its mandatory change.
There are, however, other elements to take into consideration: for example, why is residence so important?
What is residency for?
Residence is not an abstract concept, nor the mere testimony of the place where one usually lives. This institution has in fact important fiscal, administrative and judicial consequences, since:
- It is used for the release of registry documentssuch as the Identity Card;
- it is essential for the assignment of health, social or public services, such as a general practitioner, school enrollment and much more;
- it is essential for theregistration on the electoral liststo employment offices and so on;
- it is indispensable for the determination of some tax chargessuch as the determination of IRPEF, IMU, TARI, municipal surcharges and much more.
In theory, consequently, a person could therefore try to evade his tax obligations by maintaining residence in municipalities with the most advantageous taxation, despite habitually living elsewhere. And there is a risk, therefore, of committing the crime of ideological falsehood in a public act.
What happens if you don’t change your residence after renting
As a rule, it is necessary to communicate the change of residence within 20 days of moving to a new home. But what happens if you don’t change your residence within these timeframes?
For each change request, the landing municipality has up to 45 working days to verify the change of residence. In case of failure to modify and communicate, following checks – for example, a judicial officer who is unable to serve documents due to unavailability – you risk being deleted from the registry listslose health care and incur fiscal and criminal problems, such as the aforementioned crime of ideological falsehood in a public document, as per article 483 of the Penal Code.
How to rent a house without changing residence
Are there any cases in which it is possible to rent a house without changing residence? Generally speaking, it is possible maintain residence on the rented propertyonly when the rental concerns a portion of the same.
For example, the owner of a property who decides to rent one or more rooms to third parties is not required to notify the Municipality of the change of residence. However, the condition established by article 43 of the Civil Code must always be respected: the property must be used as a habitual residence, i.e. it is necessary to live there permanently and continuously.
Can the landlord prevent the tenant from moving residence?
On the other hand, an owner can object to the tenant request to transfer your residence to the rented apartment? Regardless of whether the tenant lives with the landlord – in fact, to rent a single room – or takes possession of the entire property, the change of residence cannot be opposed.
The tenant is in fact required to choose his usual residence, the one in which he will live permanently, and consequently he will have to notify the Municipality even if the owner does not agree. Furthermore, the tenant is not even required to consider the opinion of the landlord himself, nor to specify this will in the rental contract.
Likewise, the owner can take action against theformer tenant who opposes the transfer of residence to his new home, reporting it to the Municipality Registry Office, which will proceed with its cancellation.
