Free Puerto Rico Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Puerto Rico contrato de arrendamiento that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to the Codigo Civil de Puerto Rico de 2020, arts. 1331 to 1350, as corrected by Ley 122-2026.

Puerto Rico Codigo Civil 2020 2026 Acts Applied Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Puerto Rico residential lease agreement is not governed by a landlord-tenant act, because Puerto Rico does not have one and never has. Puerto Rico is a civil-law jurisdiction, and a lease is the nominate contract of arrendamiento in the Codigo Civil de Puerto Rico de 2020 — Ley 55-2020, arts. 1331 through 1350, which are 31 L.P.R.A. secs. 10101 to 10173. That Code took effect on 28 November 2020 under its own art. 1820, and under art. 1819 it repealed the Codigo Civil de 1930 outright. Almost everything written in English about “Puerto Rico landlord-tenant law” still describes the 1930 Code, and the lease chapter did not merely move: it shrank from more than forty articles to twenty, and several rules that still circulate as current were deleted rather than renumbered. Nothing about that structure is cosmetic. There is no implied warranty of habitability — there is saneamiento. There is no security deposit statute at all. There is no notice to quit. Entry is not a landlord right with a notice period; it is a tenant obligation conditioned on justified cause and seven days’ notice. And on 23 June 2026, six weeks before this page was verified, Ley 122-2026 corrected a drafting inversion that had, on the face of the Code, required a written lease for terms of six years or less.

Complete the fields below to generate a Puerto Rico residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. Every field you fill is written into the document, and the generated lease cites the controlling Civil Code article at each point — including the three questions no imported template asks: whether saneamiento is reinforced, what deposit deadline the contract creates where the law creates none, and whether the dwelling sits inside a Regimen de Propiedad Horizontal. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening. Pair the signed lease with a Puerto Rico move-in / move-out checklist, which is your evidence of the state in which the premises were delivered under art. 1345(a) and must be restored under art. 1346(i).

The Civil Code — and specifically the Civil Code of 2020, not the one almost every English-language source is still describing. Puerto Rico has no Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, no uniform act, and no consumer statute governing residential tenancy. The lease is a nominate contract in a code, and it lives in Libro Cuarto, Capitulo VI — El Arrendamiento, arts. 1331 through 1350 of the Codigo Civil de Puerto Rico de 2020, enacted as Ley 55-2020 and codified at 31 L.P.R.A. secs. 10101 to 10173.

Art. 1331 defines it: by the contract of arrendamiento, the arrendador binds himself to cede temporarily to the arrendatario the use and enjoyment of a thing in exchange for a certain price. The price is the canon or alquiler. Those are not decorative labels — they are the words the Code uses, and a lease drafted in the vocabulary of landlord, tenant and rent is a translation of a document the court will read against a Spanish text.

Three other bodies of law sit alongside it. Eviction is not in the Civil Code: it is the desahucio chapter of the Ley de Procedimientos Legales Especiales, arts. 620 to 634, being Titulos XVI and XVIII of the Codigo de Enjuiciamiento Civil de 1933 and codified at 32 L.P.R.A. secs. 2821 to 2838. Costs and attorney fees come from Regla 44.1 of the Reglas de Procedimiento Civil de 2009, at 32 L.P.R.A. Ap. V. And the general contract articles — adhesion contracts at arts. 1247 to 1249, penalty clauses at art. 1257, saneamiento at arts. 1261 to 1270, mora and interest at arts. 1159 to 1169 — do far more work in a Puerto Rico tenancy than any equivalent does in a United States state. Our Puerto Rico landlord-tenant laws guide maps the whole structure.

Because the renumbering was total, and because the 2020 Code deleted rules rather than moving them. This is the single most important thing on this page, so it is worth being precise.

The Codigo Civil de Puerto Rico de 1930 carried the contract of arrendamiento at arts. 1432 and following, codified at 31 L.P.R.A. secs. 4011 to 4092. Art. 1819 of the 2020 Code is the clausula derogatoria: “Se deroga el Codigo Civil de Puerto Rico de 1930, segun enmendado.” Art. 1820 is the vigencia clause: the Code begins to govern one hundred eighty days after its approval on 1 June 2020, which is 28 November 2020. Every one of those old sections is now marked Derogado.

The replacement is not a re-lettering. It is a compression from more than forty articles into twenty, and here is what it changed:

• The fifteen-day holdover renewal is gone. Art. 1456 of the 1930 Code (31 L.P.R.A. sec. 4063) said that if the tenant remained in enjoyment for fifteen days with the landlord’s acquiescence there was tacita reconduccion for the periods fixed by two other sections. Art. 1335 of the 2020 Code has no holdover period and no renewal length at all: the lease simply continues on the same terms until a party notifies its will to resolve. Nearly every English-language Puerto Rico page still prints the fifteen days.
• The four grounds of eviction became three. Art. 1459 of the 1930 Code (sec. 4066) gave the landlord four: expiry of the term, falta de pago, infringement of any condition, and improper use. Art. 1348 of the 2020 Code gives three, and the nonpayment ground now requires two consecutive periods.
• The landlord’s duty to give a receipt for every payment is gone. It was art. 1444(4) (sec. 4051), added by Ley 220 of 1942. It was not carried into art. 1345. Meanwhile art. 1346(j) still obliges the tenant to deliver proof of payment — so the party who must prove payment is the one with no statutory right to a receipt.
• The forty-day repair abatement is gone. Art. 1448 (sec. 4055) reduced the rent proportionally where an urgent repair lasted more than forty days. The 2020 Code has no such provision.
• The presumption that the tenant received the property in good condition is gone (art. 1452, sec. 4059), and so is the rule making the tenant liable for deterioration unless he proves absence of fault (art. 1453, sec. 4060).
• A seven-day inspection notice was created that never existed before. The 1930 Code contained no entry provision whatever. Art. 1346(h) is new law.

There is exactly one situation in which the old numbers are the right ones, and it is worth knowing. Art. 1813 (31 L.P.R.A. sec. 11718) provides that the dispositions of the 2020 Code are not applicable to contracts in course of execution and in force at the moment it took effect. A lease running on 28 November 2020 continues under the 1930 Code. Art. 1812 adds that acts and contracts validly made under the earlier legislation produce their effects under it. So the 1930 articles are not fiction — they are the governing law of a small and shrinking class of long tenancies, and citing them for a lease signed today is simply wrong.

No, unless the term is longer than six years — and that answer changed six weeks before this page was verified.

Art. 1342 states the rule: libertad de forma. The contract of arrendamiento requires no special formality whatever for its validity, except where the object is an immovable and the parties intend to record it in the Registro de la Propiedad so that it has effect against third parties. An oral Puerto Rico residential lease is valid and enforceable between the parties. The claim, repeated on several ranking pages, that all Puerto Rico rental agreements must be in writing is not law.

Art. 1343 is where it got complicated. As enacted in 2020 it read that where the arrendamiento of an immovable is agreed for a term no mayor de seis (6) anos — NOT MORE than six years — it must be in writing. Read literally, that imposed a writing requirement on precisely the short leases art. 1342 had just freed from formality, and it flatly contradicted the article immediately before it. It also cut against art. 1245(b), which requires a public or private instrument, for evidentiary purposes, for the lease of immovables of six years or more, and against the Registry Act, under which leases of six years or more are the recordable ones.

Ley 122-2026, approved 23 June 2026 and effective immediately on approval, reversed the phrase. Art. 1343 now reads that where the arrendamiento of an immovable is agreed for a term greater than six years it must be in writing. The Exposicion de Motivos of the Act says so in its own words: it calls the pre-amendment text a conflicto normativo that produced confusion among arrendadores, arrendatarios and lawyers, and in the qualification and recording process at the Registro de la Propiedad, and it restores the general principle of freedom of form for leases of short and medium duration.

One seam survives, and a practitioner should know about it. Art. 1343 now says “greater than six years”; art. 1245(b) still says “six years or more”. A lease of exactly six years therefore falls inside art. 1245(b)’s evidentiary requirement and outside art. 1343’s validity requirement. Art. 1246 lets either contracting party compel the other to grant the formality a valid contract needs, and to join an action for performance — so the practical answer for a six-year lease is to put it in an instrument and stop worrying about which article compels it.

One year. Art. 1333 provides that the arrendamiento of immovables is considered concluded for a term of one year, except where a different term has been agreed. That is a real gap-filler with real consequences, and it is nothing like the month-to-month default a United States reader expects. A Puerto Rico handshake tenancy is an annual lease.

Art. 1332 says duration may be determinate or indeterminate, and art. 1334 adds two rules that have no common-law analogue. The death of the arrendador and the alienation of the leased thing do not affect the agreed duration, absent contrary agreement — so a Puerto Rico lease survives a sale by force of the Code, without any recording requirement. And where the object is an immovable dedicated to housing, the relatives of the arrendatario who resided with him during the six months preceding his death, or a person who resided with him for the same time, may substitute him in the lease. That is a statutory succession right for a live-in partner, relative or carer, and no imported template contemplates it. It is one of several reasons the “other residents” field on this form matters.

It continues on the same terms until somebody says otherwise. Art. 1335 is the 2020 Code’s tacita reconduccion, and it is one sentence: once the agreed term arrives, the lease continues on the same contracted terms until either party notifies the other of its will to resolve the contract. A second sentence adds that in that case, obligations granted by a third party to secure the principal contract — a guarantor’s undertaking, for example — cease as to the continuation.

Notice what is absent. There is no fifteen-day holdover trigger, no requirement that the landlord acquiesce, and no fixed renewal period. The 1930 Code had all three. The practical effect is that a Puerto Rico fixed-term lease does not expire cleanly: it rolls on indefinitely, on identical terms, until a notification is given. The Code prescribes no length for that notification either, which is why this builder writes into the lease that it must be in writing and must state the end date.

The other practical effect concerns guarantors. A parent or employer who guaranteed a twelve-month lease is released as to the continuation by the second sentence of art. 1335. A landlord who wants continuing security has to obtain it afresh. See our Puerto Rico lease termination laws guide.

Because art. 1249(f) names it, and because art. 1335 makes it pointless. This is the clearest example on the page of a clause that is standard in imported templates and actively harmful here.

Art. 1249 lists the clauses that are especialmente anulables — especially voidable — in a contract celebrated by adhesion. Subsection (f) is: a clause that, on the adherent’s silence, prorogues or renews a contract of determinate duration. A landlord’s standard-form lease is the paradigm contrato de adhesion, as art. 1248 defines it: one where the accepting party is compelled to accept a predisposed content. So the “this lease renews automatically for a further twelve months unless the tenant gives sixty days’ notice” clause is precisely the clause the Code singles out.

And it buys the landlord nothing, because art. 1335 already continues the lease on the same terms without any clause at all. The correct Puerto Rico drafting is to say nothing about renewal and to state instead how the notification under art. 1335 must be given. That is what the generator on this page does, and it says so on the face of the lease.

Anything the parties agree, because Puerto Rico has no security deposit statute. This is the largest single gap between what circulates in English and what the law says.

The word deposito does not appear anywhere in the twenty articles of the arrendamiento chapter. There is no cap. There is no trust or escrow duty. There is no interest requirement. There is no itemization requirement. There is no return deadline. And there is no statutory penalty for wrongfully withholding a deposit — no double damages, no treble damages, no forfeiture of the right to withhold, none of the machinery a United States state supplies.

Several pages ranking for Puerto Rico rental questions state that a landlord may collect one month’s rent for a dwelling and two months for commercial premises, and that the deposit must be returned within thirty days. Neither figure has a source in Puerto Rico law. They appear to be a description of market practice presented as regulation, and in at least one case they sit next to a description of the repealed rent-control statute.

What the deposit actually is, in Puerto Rico terms, is a contractual fianza — a security given to guarantee performance. Its return is governed by the lease, by the general law of obligations, and by art. 15, which requires rights to be exercised and duties performed in accordance with good faith, and art. 18, under which the law does not protect the abuse of a right or its exercise contrary to the social order. Those two articles, plus the contra-proferentem rules at arts. 1247 and 1248, are what a court has to work with.

The consequence for drafting is direct and it is why this builder handles the deposit the way it does: if the lease does not create a return deadline and an itemization duty, the tenant has none. The form therefore makes the deadline a required choice and writes it into the PDF as an express contractual undertaking, with the reasons stated. Read the whole picture in our Puerto Rico security deposit laws guide, and document the condition at both ends with a Puerto Rico security deposit itemization.

No, and Ley 464 has been fully repealed since 1998. Because this question keeps producing wrong answers, here is the chain, read in the repealing statute itself.

Ley Num. 464 de 25 de abril de 1946, the Ley de Alquileres Razonables, imposed controls on residential and commercial rents. It was expressly temporary, tied to the emergency created by the Second World War, and it froze rents at their level of 1 October 1942. Its own art. 23 said its operative provisions would cease when the Legislative Assembly declared by concurrent resolution that the emergency had ended.

That never happened. Instead, Ley 57 de 25 de junio de 1995 repealed it on a staggered schedule. Art. 2 lifted it, after one year, from dwellings renting at one hundred fifty dollars a month or more and commercial premises at three hundred dollars or more. Art. 3 lifted it, after two years, at one hundred dollars and two hundred dollars respectively. And art. 4 provided that after three years from approval, the application of Ley 464 would cease completely as to every dwelling and commercial premises in Puerto Rico and that Act would be repealed in its totality. Three years from 25 June 1995 is 25 June 1998.

Two consequences follow, and both are worth stating plainly because they contradict material still in circulation. Puerto Rico has had no residential rent control for more than a quarter of a century. And the Departamento de Asuntos del Consumidor no longer has jurisdiction over residential tenancy, because the Reglamento de Inquilinato it administered fell with the Act that authorised it. A tenant with a rent or deposit dispute goes to court, not to an agency. Our Puerto Rico rent increase laws guide covers what follows from that.

The parties set it, and no notice is required by statute. Art. 1340 provides that the alquiler is agreed by the parties according to the value of the leased thing, or is determined on that same criterion by a third party they designate; and where that person will not or cannot determine it, the court determines it. That last limb is a genuinely civil-law solution and it has no American equivalent: a Puerto Rico lease can be valid with the price left to a designated appraiser, and a stalled appraisal is fixed by the tribunal rather than voiding the contract.

There is no rent-increase notice statute, no cap, and no percentage limit. What constrains an increase is the contract: during a fixed term the agreed canon binds, and altering it is a modification which art. 1344 requires to observe the same formalities as the original grant. Once the term has passed and the lease is continuing under art. 1335, a landlord who wants a different canon is in substance proposing a new contract, and the tenant’s remedy if he will not accept it is the same art. 1335 notification.

One more provision deserves attention because it inverts the American default. Art. 1341 says payment of the alquiler may be agreed for periods in arrears or in advance, and that in default of stipulation it is understood to have been agreed for periods in arrears. A lease that simply says “rent is due on the first” without saying whether it is for the month ahead or the month behind is, on the Code’s default, a lease for the month behind. The generator on this page forces that choice and prints the answer. If you serve a written increase, use a Puerto Rico rent increase notice and keep the proof of delivery.

No, but a court can cut one down. Puerto Rico has no late-fee statute, no percentage ceiling and no statutory grace period. What it has instead is a general civil-law doctrine that does more work than a cap would.

A late charge in a Puerto Rico lease is a clausula penal under art. 1257. The article lets the parties agree clauses whose purpose is to avoid partial breach or delay in performance of the principal obligation, and those clauses may consist of the payment of a certain sum, the loss of the benefit of the term, or any other penalty. Four rules then govern it:

• the agreed penalty corresponds exclusively to the breach or the delay;
• the creditor may choose to demand full performance or the penalty, and may accumulate both in the case of late performance;
• the penalty clause is interpreted restrictively; and
• the performance owed may be substituted by the penalty only if that was expressly agreed.

And then the control that matters: although the tribunal has power to temper penalties in cases of extreme economic disproportion between the penalty and the performance, it must otherwise recognise the binding force of the agreed clauses, and only in such cases may it substitute or moderate them. So Puerto Rico’s answer to an abusive late fee is not a cap but a proportionality test applied case by case — with the restrictive-interpretation rule and, in a form lease, arts. 1247 and 1249 pulling in the same direction. See our Puerto Rico late fee laws guide.

On the due date, without any demand — unless the landlord is himself in breach. This sequence is pure civil law and it is worth following carefully, because it decides when a late fee and interest actually attach.

Art. 1159 is the general rule: a person obliged to give or do something incurs in mora from the moment the creditor demands performance, judicially or extrajudicially. On that rule alone, a landlord would have to demand the rent before the tenant was legally late.

Art. 1160 removes the demand in four cases, and the second is decisive here: interpelacion is unnecessary where the obligation has a certain date for its performance. A lease that fixes a due day therefore puts the tenant in mora on that day automatically. That is why the due-day field on this form is not cosmetic.

Art. 1161 supplies the counterweight, and it is a real defence. In obligations with reciprocal performances, neither party incurs in mora while the other fails to perform or to offer to perform what falls to him. A landlord who has not performed his art. 1345 obligations — who has not delivered the dwelling in a state adequate for its use, or has not made a notified necessary repair within a reasonable time — is in a materially weaker position to say the tenant is in mora. Art. 1253 reinforces this with the excepcion de incumplimiento contractual: in contracts with reciprocal performances a party may refuse his own performance while the other does not perform or offer to.

Then art. 1169: where the obligation consists of the payment of a sum of money and the debtor incurs in mora, damages consist — absent a different agreement — of the agreed interest and, failing agreement, of the legal interest. The legal rate is the one the Oficina del Comisionado de Instituciones Financieras fixes for the payment of judicial judgments, and interest is computed simple and not compound. Because that rate is set administratively and moves, the lease this builder generates deliberately states no number: it states the mechanism, so a signed lease cannot go stale.

Five obligations, and the repair duty runs only after the tenant’s notice. Art. 1345 is short enough to read in full, and it repays it. The arrendador is obliged:

• (a) to deliver the thing to the arrendatario in a state adequate for its use;
• (b) to make or pay for the improvements necessary for that use;
• (c) to carry out the necessary repairs within a reasonable time, after the arrendatario has advised him of the existence of the fault;
• (d) to abstain from making improvements that diminish the agreed use; and
• (e) to receive the thing back once the arrendamiento has concluded.

Three things follow that a common-law reader will not expect. First, the standard is adequate for its use — the use the contract names — not compliance with a housing code. Puerto Rico’s Civil Code contains no list of essential services, no minimum-standards schedule, and no habitability definition. Second, the repair duty is conditional on the tenant’s notice and measured by a reasonable time, with no day count anywhere. The tenant’s written, dated notice is therefore the single most important document in any repair dispute; art. 1346(g) makes giving it a tenant obligation. Third, obligation (d) is a real restraint on improvement works: a landlord who renovates in a way that diminishes the agreed use is in breach, and under art. 1349(c) the tenant may resolve the lease or claim a proportional reduction of the canon for the period of the deprivation.

Note also what is not there. The 1930 Code’s fourth landlord duty — to subscribe and deliver a receipt for every payment, added by Ley 220 of 1942 — was not carried into art. 1345. Given that art. 1346(j) still obliges the tenant to deliver proof that he paid, and that art. 627 of the eviction chapter allows him no other evidence in a nonpayment case, the disappearance of the receipt duty is a serious practical problem. The generator on this page restores it as an express contractual undertaking. Our Puerto Rico habitability laws guide goes further into what “adequate for its use” has come to mean.

Twelve obligations, and two of them are unlike anything in a United States lease. Art. 1346 obliges the arrendatario:

• (a) to receive and use the leased thing;
• (b) not to vary the agreed use, even where the variation causes the arrendador no harm;
• (c) to conserve the thing and give it maintenance;
• (d) to make, at the arrendador’s cost, necessary repairs where these are urgent and have been notified to the arrendador;
• (e) to pay the alquiler punctually on the agreed terms;
• (f) to pay punctually the supplies, charges and contributions proper to the activity for which he uses the thing;
• (g) to advise the arrendador of any usurpation, disturbance or imposition of a servitude effected or attempted against the thing, and of any fault or condition requiring repair;
• (h) to permit the arrendador, for justified cause and on seven days’ prior notice, to inspect the leased thing;
• (i) to vacate or restore the thing at the end of the lease in the state in which he received it, save the deterioration proceeding from the passage of time and ordinary use;
• (j) to deliver to the arrendador proof of having complied with obligation (e);
• (k) to abstain from improvements that are conventionally prohibited, that alter the substance or form of the thing, or where the arrendador has justifiably demanded restitution; and
• (l) to tolerate improvements the arrendador must make that cannot be deferred until the contract ends.

Obligation (b) is stricter than it looks. Varying the agreed use breaches the article even where it causes the landlord no harm. There is no de minimis. A dwelling let for residence that becomes a workshop, a short-let, or a business address is in breach on the face of the Code, and under art. 1348(a) varying the agreed use is one of only three grounds on which the landlord may resolve.

Obligation (d) is Puerto Rico’s repair mechanism, and it is drafted as a duty rather than a permission. The tenant must make necessary repairs at the landlord’s cost where they are urgent and where he has notified the landlord. This is not an American repair-and-deduct right: the Code contains no rent-offset formula, no dollar ceiling and no waiting period. What it does mean is that an urgent repair is the tenant’s to arrange and the landlord’s to fund, and that the tenant who sits on his hands while a burst pipe destroys the property is in breach of obligation (c) as well.

Obligation (i) is the move-out standard, and it is the reason a condition report matters so much here: the tenant restores the property in the state in which he received it, and the exception is deterioration from the passage of time and ordinary use. Because art. 1452 of the 1930 Code — which presumed the tenant received the property in good condition — was repealed and not replaced, there is now no statutory presumption either way. Whoever documents the condition at delivery controls the argument at the end.

Seven days, and only for justified cause — and the rule is written the other way round from a United States statute.

Art. 1346(h) does not say the landlord may enter on notice. It says the tenant is obliged to permit the landlord, for justified cause and on seven days’ prior notice, to inspect the leased thing. Three consequences follow from that drafting, and no competitor page draws any of them.

First, the seven days and the justified cause are the conditions on which the tenant’s duty arises. Without a justified cause, or without seven days, there is no obligation to admit the landlord at all. Second, the trigger is inspection. Entry for other purposes — showing the property to a prospective tenant or purchaser, routine maintenance, contractor access — is not covered by art. 1346(h), and rests on whatever the lease provides. Third, art. 1346(l) is a separate and narrower access route: the tenant must tolerate improvements the landlord must make that cannot be deferred until the contract ends, which is the Code’s emergency and urgent-works provision.

Seven days is a long period by American standards, and it is deliberate. The twenty-four hours that English-language sources attribute to Puerto Rico is imported from mainland statutes; the 1930 Civil Code, which those sources are usually paraphrasing, had no entry provision at all. Art. 1346(h) is new law that took effect on 28 November 2020.

Because a lease may lengthen a period the Code sets in the tenant’s favour but should not shorten it, this builder offers seven, ten or fourteen days and nothing shorter. Serve the notice in writing with the cause stated — a Puerto Rico notice to enter does the job — and see our Puerto Rico landlord entry laws guide.

Puerto Rico has no implied warranty of habitability, and looking for one is the commonest analytical error made about its tenancy law. What occupies the same ground is saneamiento — the transferor’s liability for eviccion and for hidden defects — and it works differently in four respects that matter to a lease.

The rule. Art. 1261: a person who transmits a thing for value answers for eviccion and for the hidden defects of the thing even if he was unaware of them, and answers to the acquirer and to those who succeed him in the right. A lease is a transmission for value of the use and enjoyment of a thing, and art. 1349(b) confirms the link by making breach of the warranties relating to eviccion or vicios redhibitorios a ground on which the tenant may resolve the lease.

The defect. Art. 1267 defines the vicio redhibitorio: a hidden defect in a thing transmitted for value, existing at the time of acquisition, which makes the thing unfit for its destination or so diminishes its usefulness that the acquirer would not have acquired it, or would have given less, had he known. Three further things count as vicios redhibitorios: a defect the parties specially agree to be one, a defect the transferor guarantees does not exist, and the absence of the agreed quality. That last limb is quietly powerful in a lease: a dwelling advertised with air conditioning, a generator or a cistern that does not have one is missing an agreed quality. Art. 1268 excludes a defect the acquirer knew at the time, or could have known according to his aptitudes, judged against a duty to act prudently and with full knowledge of the circumstances.

The remedies. Art. 1263 gives a choice: correction or repair of the defects, delivery of an equivalent thing, or total or partial resolution of the contract. Total resolution proceeds only where the defect bears on an aspect determinative of the acquisition. In the case of a vicio redhibitorio, damages are available only where the transferor acted with dolo — a materially higher bar than the negligence standard a habitability claim usually runs on.

The clock, and it is short. Art. 1270: actions to claim for vicios redhibitorios prescribe in six months, counted from the delivery of the thing or from the last exchange of communications between the parties. Six months. There is no equivalent limitation in any United States landlord-tenant act, and it is the most perishable right on this page.

Eviccion itself is the other half. Art. 1264: there is eviccion where the acquirer is defeated, by final judgment or unappealable administrative resolution and by virtue of a right anterior to the acquisition, of all or part of the thing. Art. 1265: a mere disturbance of fact produces no liability unless it comes from the transferor, and neither does a disturbance caused by a legal provision subsequent to the acquisition. Art. 1266: to preserve the guarantee, the disturbed party must ask within the time to answer the complaint that the transferor be cited to collaborate in the defence — a procedural trap with a very short fuse.

Art. 1262 says the parties may suppress saneamiento; art. 1249(d) says a form lease probably cannot. The tension between those two articles is the most important drafting question in a Puerto Rico residential lease, and it deserves to be stated honestly rather than resolved by assertion.

Art. 1262 provides that the transferor is bound in the terms of art. 1261 even though nothing is expressed in the act, and that the parties may increase, diminish or suppress that obligation — a diminution or suppression being invalid where the transmitting party incurs in dolo. Read alone, that permits a lease clause disclaiming liability for hidden defects, subject only to the absence of fraud. There is no health-and-safety floor written into the article, and no residential carve-out.

The counterweight is not in the saneamiento chapter. It is in art. 1249(d), which makes a clause that excludes or limits the liability of the party that drafted it especially voidable in a contract celebrated by adhesion. A landlord’s standard-form lease, which the tenant is compelled to accept as a predisposed content, is an adhesion contract by art. 1248’s own definition. So the clause art. 1262 permits in principle is exposed in practice, in the exact situation where a landlord would want to use it.

Add to that arts. 1247 and 1248, which construe general clauses and adhesion contracts against the drafter and in favour of the party with less bargaining power; art. 15, which requires good faith; and art. 18, under which the law does not protect abuse of a right. The honest conclusion is that a suppression clause in a residential form lease in Puerto Rico is a fight, not a shield.

That is why this builder will not generate one. The choice it offers is between the full statutory saneamiento and a reinforced version in which the landlord expressly increases his obligation under art. 1262 — a power art. 1262 grants in both directions and which almost nobody uses.

Yes, unless the contract expressly prohibits it — and the landlord’s grounds of refusal are limited by statute. Art. 1336 runs the opposite way from most imported forms.

The default is permissive: where the contract of arrendamiento does not expressly prohibit it, the arrendatario may sublease the thing in whole or in part, without prejudice to his own responsibility to the landlord for performance of the contract. So a Puerto Rico lease that simply says nothing about subletting has permitted it.

Where consent is required, the article confines the grounds. The arrendador may refuse only where the assignee or sublessee does not have the same economic qualifications as the arrendatario, or where the activity or use they will make of the thing causes him economic harm. A refusal on any other basis — taste, inconvenience, a desire to reset the rent — is outside the article.

And then a reciprocity with no common-law analogue. Without prejudice to his rights against the tenant, the landlord has a direct action against the sublessee to collect the canones owed and for any other breach. Reciprocally, the sublessee has a direct action against the landlord to require performance of his obligations. A Puerto Rico subtenant is therefore not the stranger to the head landlord that a common-law subtenant is: he can sue for repairs directly.

Art. 1337 handles the case where the same thing is leased to more than one person: preference goes to the tenant who satisfies the requirements of the tercero registral; failing recording, to the first possessor; and where none has begun to possess, to the tenant whose title bears the earliest certain date.

On three grounds, and nonpayment needs two consecutive periods. Art. 1348 is exhaustive. The arrendador may resolve the contract where the arrendatario:

• (a) abandons or ceases to use the leased thing, or varies the agreed use;
• (b) breaches the obligation to conserve the leased thing, by himself or through a third party on his account; or
• (c) fails to pay the agreed alquiler during two consecutive periods.

Subsection (c) is the one that gets misreported. The 1930 Code’s art. 1459 allowed eviction for simple falta de pago, and that is where the widely repeated “one missed payment” rule comes from. The 2020 Code requires two consecutive unpaid periods before nonpayment becomes a ground of resolution under the Civil Code. On a monthly lease that means two months.

Subsection (a) is broader than a common-law reader expects, because it captures abandonment, non-use and variation of use in a single ground — and art. 1346(b) makes variation of use a breach even where it harms nobody. A tenant who moves out and stops using a dwelling he is still paying for is within (a).

The tenant’s side is art. 1349: he may resolve where the landlord (a) breaches the obligation to conserve the thing so that it is fit for the agreed use; (b) breaches the warranties relating to eviccion or vicios redhibitorios; or (c) deprives him of partial use by reason of improvements the landlord makes — and in that third case he may alternatively seek a proportional reduction of the canon for the period of deprivation. That alternative is Puerto Rico’s rent-abatement remedy, and it is confined to deprivation caused by the landlord’s own improvement works.

Only if the contract says so, or on an art. 1349 ground. Art. 1350 is one sentence: the parties may agree the anticipated resolution of the arrendamiento. That is the whole of Puerto Rico’s early-termination law.

There is no statutory buy-out formula. There is no local military-transfer termination right — the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act applies in Puerto Rico as it does in a state, and it is the only such right. There is no survivor termination right: Ley 54-1989, the domestic violence Act, gives a protection order rather than a lease remedy, and its art. 2.1 powers include provisional measures on the possession and use of the parties’ residence and an order that payment of the canones de arrendamiento or the mortgage on the principal residence continue while the order is in force. A landlord’s realistic exposure in a domestic violence case is therefore a court order about who may lawfully occupy the dwelling, not a statutory notice of early termination.

Because the Code supplies none of that, an early-termination option is a drafting decision. This builder offers one under art. 1350 and prints the agreed notice and charge on the face of the lease, so that both parties can see exactly what the exit costs. For the wider picture see our Puerto Rico breaking lease laws guide.

None. There is no statutory notice to quit in Puerto Rico, and that is a positive finding, not an omission.

The desahucio chapter — arts. 620 to 634 of the Ley de Procedimientos Legales Especiales, being Titulos XVI and XVIII of the Codigo de Enjuiciamiento Civil de 1933 and codified at 32 L.P.R.A. secs. 2821 to 2838 — was read here article by article in the government’s own consolidated text. It contains no pre-suit notice provision of any kind. The proceeding begins with the demanda. On the Civil Code side, art. 1335 requires only that a party notify the other of its will to resolve a continuing lease, and prescribes no period for doing so.

The “five business days for a month-to-month tenancy and thirty days for a year lease” that appears on multiple pages ranking for Puerto Rico rental questions has no source in either body of law. It reads like an imported summary of mainland notice statutes. Any notice period a Puerto Rico tenant actually enjoys before suit exists because the lease created it.

Two qualifications belong here. A landlord who wants to end a continuing lease still has to notify under art. 1335 — that is a termination step, not an eviction step. And if the dwelling is subsidised under a programme administered by the Departamento de la Vivienda, art. 632 requires the applicable programme regulations governing the eviction process to be complied with, and those regulations frequently do impose notice. Our Puerto Rico eviction notice laws guide goes through it, and a Puerto Rico notice of non-renewal is the right instrument for the art. 1335 step.

It is a summary procedure with very short clocks, and in a nonpayment case the tenant is allowed almost no evidence. Here is the whole sequence, from the statute.

Standing and defendants (arts. 620 and 621, 32 L.P.R.A. secs. 2821 and 2822). The action belongs to the owners of the property, their attorneys-in-fact, usufructuaries, anyone else with a right to enjoy it, and their successors. It lies against inquilinos and other arrendatarios, administrators, caretakers, porters and guards placed by the owner, and any other person holding material possession or enjoying the property precariamente — without paying any canon. That last category is how a Puerto Rico owner removes a permitted occupant who never had a lease.

The 2026 comunidad de bienes defence (Ley 95-2026). Approved 26 May 2026 and effective on approval, Ley 95-2026 added a second paragraph to art. 621: where the defendant claims the existence of a comunidad de bienes because he made contributions benefiting the shared immovable, he may present evidence to that effect and require that the desahucio be litigated by the ordinary route. The Act’s own statement of motives explains the target: people in a concubinato relationship who contributed to a home titled in the other partner’s name and who, under the old rule, could not raise it in a summary proceeding at all. It is a significant change and it appears on no competitor page.

Where it is filed (art. 622, 32 L.P.R.A. sec. 2823). Municipal judges of the Judicial Region in which the property lies have jurisdiction where the canon owed or the legal claim does not exceed five thousand dollars annually; in all other cases, the Tribunal de Primera Instancia of that Region. The procedure is identical either way.

The ten-day comparecencia (art. 623, 32 L.P.R.A. sec. 2824). The suit is promoted by a complaint drafted as the Reglas de Procedimiento Civil prescribe for an ordinary action. Once filed, the court summons plaintiff and defendant to a comparecencia to be held within ten days of the filing. Three protective duties attach at that hearing:

• where it is shown that the proceeding is against a family of proven economic insolvency, the court orders notice to the Secretaries of the Departments of the Family and of Housing with a copy of the complaint; those agencies evaluate the family’s socioeconomic condition, provide justified social assistance, and report to the court within a non-extendable thirty days;
• where the defendant is an elderly person or a person with a disability, the same notice goes to the Oficina del Procurador de Personas de Edad Avanzada or the Defensoria de las Personas con Impedimentos; and
• since Ley 31-2026 (6 March 2026), where the defendant is a veteran, notice must go to the Oficina del Procurador del Veterano, whose report is focused on eligibility for United States Department of Veterans Affairs pensions, compensation and housing vouchers and on the status of those applications.

Service and the warning it carries (art. 624, 32 L.P.R.A. sec. 2825). If the defendant is not found at the place of the suit or is not domiciled there, the citation is served on whoever is in charge of the care of the property in his name. On being cited, the defendant must be warned that if he does not appear in person or by lawful attorney-in-fact, the desahucio will be decreed without further citation or hearing.

Trial and judgment (arts. 625 and 626, 32 L.P.R.A. secs. 2826 and 2827). The trial is held on the day of the comparecencia. The parties state in order what serves their right and produce all their evidence on the spot. The judge renders judgment declaring the desahucio to lie or not to lie within a mandatory term of no more than ten days. Preliminary objections and every defence the defendant intends to raise must be pleaded when answering the complaint, and documentary evidence of both parties must be produced at the comparecencia.

The nonpayment evidence rule (art. 627, 32 L.P.R.A. sec. 2829). This is the harshest provision in the chapter and it deserves its own sentence. Where the complaint is founded on failure to pay the canon or agreed price, no evidence is admitted from the defendant other than the receipt or another document in which it appears that payment was made. Ley 95-2026 carved the single exception noted above for comunidad de bienes contributions, on a preponderance standard. The court may also, exceptionally and only at an interested party’s request, permit a money claim for the unpaid canon to be joined with the desahucio, without prejudice to the guarantees and terms of arts. 620 to 637.

Appeal (arts. 628 to 631, 32 L.P.R.A. secs. 2830, 2831, 2832 and 2835). The party against whom judgment falls may appeal under the Ley de la Judicatura de 2003, and the appeal must be brought within five days counted from the filing in the record of the notice of judgment. The defendant is not admitted to appeal unless he posts a bond in the amount the court fixes for damages and appellate costs — or, where the desahucio rests on nonpayment, deposits with the clerk the amount of the debt to the date of judgment. In a nonpayment appeal he must, moreover, deposit or bond every canon as it falls due.

Lanzamiento (arts. 632 and 633, 32 L.P.R.A. secs. 2836 and 2837). A judgment granting the desahucio orders the lanzamiento of the defendant from the moment it is final and firm, and the writ issues from the clerk on a party’s application. Where the court has determined the family’s economic insolvency, the judgment is notified immediately to the Secretaries of Family and Housing and the term for the lanzamiento is twenty non-extendable days from that notification. And the lanzamiento of a family of proven economic insolvency may not be carried out unless an official of the Department of the Family and of the Department of Housing is present, designated by the respective Secretary, to safeguard the family’s physical and emotional safety; the alguacil must coordinate that attendance with the nearest office. The lanzamiento itself is executed by the alguacil on the court’s writ.

A citation trap worth knowing. Arts. 635, 636 and 637 of the Ley de Procedimientos Legales Especiales were renumbered by Ley 129-2007 and left blank. A source that cites any of them for a rule of Puerto Rico eviction law is citing nothing at all.

No, and the reason is structural rather than statutory. Puerto Rico has no self-help eviction statute, no lockout penalty and no utility-shutoff prohibition of the kind many states enact. What it has is exclusivity: possession is recovered through the desahucio action, and the lanzamiento is carried out by the alguacil on a judicial writ under arts. 632 and 633. Where the court has found the family economically insolvent, the lanzamiento cannot lawfully proceed even with the writ unless government officials are present.

A landlord who changes locks, removes belongings or cuts services is therefore not committing a specified statutory offence — he is bypassing the only lawful mechanism for recovering possession, exercising a right abusively contrary to art. 18, and exposing himself to an ordinary damages claim and to the possessory remedies. The absence of a penalty statute makes the point more important to state, not less, and this builder writes the prohibition into the lease expressly so that both parties have a contractual term to point at.

None of its own. Exactly one, and it is federal.

Neither the arrendamiento chapter nor any other Puerto Rico statute imposes a disclosure duty on a residential landlord. To make that a finding rather than an assumption, the annual indexes of the Leyes de Puerto Rico for 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 were swept mechanically: each index was first proved gap-free — every act number present from one to the highest — and then every title was scanned for arrendamiento, alquiler, inquilino, vivienda, desahucio, condominio, deposito and Codigo Civil. That is nine hundred fifteen acts. Nothing in them creates a lease disclosure.

The federal lead-based paint rule is the whole list. Under 42 U.S.C. 4852d and 40 C.F.R. 745.113(b), a lessor of target housing must give a prescribed Lead Warning Statement, disclose known lead-based paint and hazards or state that he has none, list any available records and reports provided, and obtain the lessee’s acknowledgment of those items and of the federally approved pamphlet. Target housing, under 40 C.F.R. 745.103, is any housing built before 1978, except housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities and any zero-bedroom dwelling, unless a child under six resides or is expected to reside there.

Three details that matter specifically in Puerto Rico, and that no competitor carries:

• The disclosure must be in the language of the contract. 40 C.F.R. 745.113 requires the elements as an attachment to or within the contract “in the language of the contract”, and instances English or Spanish expressly. A Spanish-language Puerto Rico lease needs a Spanish Lead Warning Statement.
• The ten-day inspection opportunity runs to purchasers, not lessees. 40 C.F.R. 745.110 gives the ten-day period to a purchaser. A lease that grants a tenant ten days is granting something federal law does not require of a lessor — which is fine, but should be a deliberate choice.
• Renewals are exempt in defined circumstances. 40 C.F.R. 745.101(d) excepts a renewal of an existing lease where the lessor previously disclosed everything required and no new information has come into his possession, and “renewal” includes both renegotiation of existing terms and ratification of a new lease. Given how art. 1335 continues a Puerto Rico lease indefinitely, that exemption does a lot of work here.

The penalties are severe and are federal, not local: 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) makes a knowing violator jointly and severally liable for three times the damages incurred, and (b)(4) lets a prevailing party recover court costs, reasonable attorney fees and expert witness fees. That is, notably, the only prevailing-party fee entitlement that reaches a Puerto Rico residential lease at all. Build the attachment with our Puerto Rico lead-based paint disclosure form.

Everything else a template might carry — radon, mold, bed bug history, flood history, methamphetamine contamination, ordnance-proximity notices required in some western states, pending demolition, offender-registry notices, shared-utility formulas, landlord identification statements — belongs to other jurisdictions. This builder will emit mold, flood and radon blocks if you ask for them, and each one prints under a heading saying it is not required by Puerto Rico law.

Seven of them, and the list applies because a form lease is a contract of adhesion. Puerto Rico has no enumerated prohibited-provisions section of the kind the uniform acts carry. Its functional equivalent is art. 1249, and the register matters: these clauses are especialmente anulables — especially voidable at the adherent’s instance — rather than automatically void, and the article bites only on contracts celebrated by adhesion.

Art. 1247 sets the frame: general clauses are those contained in a form designed and drafted by one of the parties; they must be accessible to the party who did not draft them; and the contract is interpreted unfavourably to the drafter and in favour of the party with less bargaining power. Art. 1248 defines the adhesion contract as one where the accepting party is compelled to accept a predisposed content, and applies the same interpretive rule.

Then art. 1249’s list. Especially voidable are clauses that:

• (a) are not drafted in a clear, complete and easily legible manner, in Spanish or English;
• (b) authorise the drafter to modify the elements of the contract unilaterally;
• (c) prohibit or limit the adherent’s bringing of actions, restrict the defences or means of proof available to him, or reverse the burden of proof;
• (d) exclude or limit the liability of the drafter;
• (e) change the adherent’s contractual domicile without reason for it;
• (f) on the adherent’s silence, prorogue or renew a contract of determinate duration; and
• (g) exclude the jurisdiction of a regulating agency.

Run a standard imported residential lease against that list and the casualties are obvious. The automatic-renewal clause is (f). The disclaimer of liability for the condition of the premises is (d). The clause requiring the tenant to waive defences or accept the landlord’s ledger as conclusive is (c). A clause letting the landlord change the rules and fees at will is (b). And a lease that is only in English, given to a Spanish-speaking tenant in dense unreadable type, is exposed under (a) — which is why this builder asks what language the lease is in.

One further protection sits behind them. Art. 1258 allows annulment or revision of an onerous contract where a party fraudulently takes advantage of the other’s necessity, inexperience, cultural condition, economic dependence or advanced age and thereby obtains a disproportionate and unjustified patrimonial advantage — with a presumption of advantage-taking where the disproportion exceeds half the value of the promised performance. It has no equivalent in any United States lease statute, and it is exactly the doctrine a court would reach for against an exploitative tenancy.

Sometimes — and that is a genuine difference from the uniform-act states. Most United States landlord-tenant acts contain a blanket anti-waiver provision voiding any lease term by which the tenant gives up a statutory right. Puerto Rico has no such provision.

What it has is art. 14: rights conferred by law may be renounced, provided the renunciation is not prohibited, is not contrary to law, morals or public order, and does not prejudice a third party. Around it sit art. 15 (rights must be exercised and duties performed in accordance with good faith), art. 16 (acts executed against imperative and prohibitive laws are null, unless another effect is established), and art. 18 (the law does not protect the abuse of a right or its exercise contrary to the social order).

So the analysis of a waiver clause in a Puerto Rico lease is not “does the act forbid it” but a four-step question: is renunciation of this particular right prohibited; is it contrary to law, morals or public order; does it prejudice a third party; and — if the lease is a form — does it fall within art. 1249. That is a more nuanced and less predictable test than a flat anti-waiver rule, and it is another reason the clauses in a Puerto Rico lease deserve individual attention rather than wholesale importation.

Costs follow the winner; attorney fees follow bad conduct. Puerto Rico’s fee regime is unlike any of the patterns found in the states, and a lease clause is not its source.

Regla 44.1(a) of the Reglas de Procedimiento Civil de 2009 provides that costs are granted to the party in whose favour the suit is resolved, or in whose favour judgment is rendered on appeal or review, except where otherwise provided. That happens by force of the rule. No clause is needed and none is required.

Regla 44.1(d) governs attorney fees, and it turns on conduct rather than outcome: where any party or its lawyer has proceeded with temeridad o frivolidad — obstinacy or frivolity — the court must impose on the responsible party, in its judgment, a sum for attorney fees that the court considers to correspond to that conduct. The obligation is mandatory once temerity is found; the amount is discretionary. Where the Commonwealth, a municipality, an agency or an instrumentality has proceeded with temeridad, the court must likewise impose fees except where expressly exempt by law.

Regla 44.3(b) adds a second consequence: the court also imposes on the party that proceeded with temeridad interest at the rate the Junta has fixed and which is in force when judgment is rendered, running from the accrual of the cause of action in every money-collection case, and from the filing of the complaint in a damages case.

Three practical consequences. A landlord cannot manufacture a fee entitlement by writing one into a form lease; the statutory route is untouched by contract. A tenant who wins a deposit claim does not automatically get fees, because winning is not temerity — though a landlord who withheld a deposit without any colourable basis and forced litigation is squarely in Regla 44.1(d) territory. And the only prevailing-party fee entitlement that reaches a Puerto Rico residential lease at all is the federal one, at 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(4), for a lead-disclosure violation.

Because Puerto Rico neither requires nor prohibits a lease fee clause, this builder offers one — but only in reciprocal prevailing-party form, because a one-sided clause in a form lease runs straight into art. 1249(c), and it prints alongside a statement that Regla 44.1 operates regardless.

The Code allocates them by activity, not by meter. Art. 1346(f) obliges the arrendatario to pay punctually the supplies, charges and contributions proper to the activity for which he uses the thing. That phrasing does real work: it attaches to the tenant the running costs of his own use, and leaves with the landlord the burdens attaching to ownership.

Three Puerto Rico specifics belong in a lease here. The cuota de mantenimiento in a condominium is an owner’s obligation to the Consejo de Titulares, so if the parties intend the tenant to bear it, the lease must say so expressly — it is not “a charge proper to the tenant’s activity”. Storm resilience is a real allocation question in this jurisdiction: generator fuel, cistern maintenance and storm shutters are exactly the kind of terms that belong in the additional-provisions field rather than being left to argument after a hurricane. And electricity and water accounts are opened in the tenant’s name in most Puerto Rico tenancies, which brings in a 2026 statute nobody else mentions.

Ley 27-2026 gives every new residential customer of the Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados the option to prorate the payment of the acometida applications required to begin receiving water and sanitary sewer service, over a term that may not exceed six months. The Act’s own statement of motives says the connection charge is frequently too onerous for people of moderate means to pay at once. Where the tenant is opening the water account at move-in, that option is his — and a landlord who knows it exists can stop a tenancy from failing at the first bill.

If the dwelling sits in a Regimen de Propiedad Horizontal, the building’s own documents can restrict the lease — and the threshold is ninety days.

The Ley de Condominios de Puerto Rico, Ley 129-2020, defines an arrendamiento a corto plazo at art. 2(g) as any lease for a term of fewer than ninety consecutive days. Art. 40, codified at 31 L.P.R.A. sec. 1922l, then sets the rule: unless the escritura matriz or the reglamento contains an express prohibition or establishes a minimum lease term, short-term leases of apartments in a horizontal-property building may not be prohibited.

The reglamento may nevertheless regulate how such leases are conducted, including requiring a minimum number of nights, and may impose a special monthly fee on owners who lease short-term, capped at the amount of the maintenance fee. The administrator must report properties subject to short-term lease contracts to the Centro de Recaudacion de Ingresos Municipales annually.

The practical rule for anyone using this builder is simple. An eighty-nine-day lease of a condominium apartment is a short-term rental that the building may lawfully forbid; a ninety-day lease is not. If the dwelling is a condominium, read the escritura matriz and the reglamento before signing, and record in the lease that the tenant must comply with both. The form on this page asks the question and the generated lease prints the answer either way.

Puerto Rico’s own civil rights act is narrower than the federal Fair Housing Act in its list of grounds, and stronger in its remedy.

The Ley de Derechos Civiles de Puerto Rico, Ley 131-1943, at 1 L.P.R.A. sec. 13, provides at subsection (c) that no person holding the right to sell, lease or sublease a vivienda may refuse to grant an option to sell, to sell, to lease or to sublease it to any other person or group of persons on grounds of political matters, religious matters, race, colour, sex, or for wearing protective hairstyles and hair textures regularly associated with particular racial and national-origin identities. That last ground was added by a recent amendment and has no counterpart in the federal Fair Housing Act. Subsection (d) makes it illegal to publish or circulate advertisements or notices establishing limitations or requirements as to those characteristics as a condition of acquiring housing — which reaches rental listings directly. Section 6 defines vivienda as a building or any part of one destined for the dwelling or lodging of human beings.

The remedy is the part nobody reports. Under 1 L.P.R.A. sec. 14, a deliberate violation, or one committed by false reports or any subterfuge, is a misdemeanour punishable by a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than five hundred dollars, or imprisonment of not less than thirty nor more than ninety days, or both. And any person injured may bring a civil action for damages in which, if the action prospers, the court shall impose — in addition to compensation for the damages caused — a further award of punitive damages. Mandatory punitive damages on a successful housing-discrimination claim is a strong remedy and it is stated in the statute itself.

What Ley 131-1943 does not name is equally important: national origin, disability, familial status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and source of income are absent from the list. Those are reached, so far as they are reached, by the federal Fair Housing Act, which applies in Puerto Rico as it does in a state. The correct advice to a Puerto Rico landlord is therefore to comply with the federal list and with the protective-hairstyle ground the federal list omits. Screening decisions should be documented and consistent — see our Puerto Rico tenant screening laws guide and our Puerto Rico pet and assistance animal guide.

The Puerto Rico search results are the worst we have audited in this series, and the reason is structural. The two deepest pages for Puerto Rico rental questions are machine-generated question-and-answer articles carrying, between them, zero statutory citations. Below them sit template marketplaces with a Puerto Rico label on a generic form. One of them — on the page it serves for Puerto Rico — answers the questions “Does Texas have a standard lease agreement?” and “What makes a lease invalid in Texas?”.

Here is the audit, claim by claim:

• “Puerto Rico landlord-tenant law is the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos.” No Puerto Rico act of that name exists. The governing text is arts. 1331 to 1350 of the Civil Code of 2020.
• Citations to 31 L.P.R.A. secs. 4011 to 4092, or to arts. 1432 to 1473. Those are 1930 Code numbers, repealed since 28 November 2020.
• “All rental agreements must be in writing and signed by both parties.” Art. 1342 requires no formality at all; art. 1343, since Ley 122-2026, requires writing only above six years.
• “The lease is automatically renewed if the tenant holds over fifteen days.” That was art. 1456 of the repealed Code. Art. 1335 has no such trigger.
• “One month’s rent for a dwelling, two months for commercial premises.” There is no deposit statute in Puerto Rico at all.
• “The deposit must be returned within thirty days.” There is no statutory deadline.
• “Rent increases require thirty days’ notice.” No Puerto Rico statute requires notice of a rent increase.
• “Ley 464 controls rents” or “DACO handles rental disputes.” Repealed in its totality on 25 June 1998 by art. 4 of Ley 57-1995.
• “Five business days’ notice for month-to-month, thirty days for a year lease.” The eviction chapter contains no notice provision of any kind.
• “Landlords must give twenty-four hours’ notice to enter.” Art. 1346(h) sets seven days and requires justified cause.
• “Nonpayment of rent lets the landlord terminate.” Art. 1348(c) requires two consecutive unpaid periods.
• “A landlord must give a receipt for every payment.” That duty was in the repealed Code and was not carried forward.
• “Puerto Rico recognises an implied warranty of habitability.” It recognises saneamiento, with a six-month prescription and a dolo threshold for damages.
• “A tenant cannot sublet without consent.” Art. 1336 permits it unless expressly prohibited, and limits the grounds of refusal.
• “The prevailing party recovers attorney fees.” Regla 44.1(d) awards fees for temeridad, not for winning.
• Citations to arts. 635 to 637 of the eviction chapter. Renumbered by Ley 129-2007 and left blank.
• “Tenants get ten days to inspect for lead paint.” 40 C.F.R. 745.110 gives that to purchasers.

That is seventeen distinct errors, and every one of them is checkable against a text we have named. The pattern behind them is a single failure: reading a translation or summary of the 1930 Civil Code and presenting it as current law.

Every figure above was read in Spanish, in a primary source, on 6 August 2026. The Civil Code came from the Oficina de Gerencia y Presupuesto’s official compilation of Ley 55-2020, three hundred eighty-five pages, carrying a revision stamp of 17 July 2026, downloaded and extracted from its own text layer. The eviction chapter came from the same office’s compilation of the Ley de Procedimientos Legales Especiales, stamped 2 June 2026. The Reglas de Procedimiento Civil came from its compilation stamped 28 May 2026, the Ley de Condominios from the one stamped 31 May 2026, and the Ley de Derechos Civiles from the one stamped 13 July 2026. The three 2026 acts were read in their enacted text, not in any summary.

One official source turned out to be stale, and it is worth recording. The government’s consolidated text of the eviction chapter, revised 2 June 2026, incorporates Ley 95-2026 — approved 26 May, a week earlier — but does not incorporate Ley 31-2026, approved on 6 March. The word veterano does not appear anywhere in that thirty-five-page file, and the amendment notes under arts. 623 and 632 stop at 2011 and 2007 respectively. A June revision that carries a May act but not a March one is a reminder that a currency stamp is a claim, not a guarantee. This page states the veterans notice from the enacted act.

Three things we could not verify, stated plainly. First, Puerto Rico case law was not read. The Civil Code of 2020 is five years old and the Tribunal Supremo’s interpretation of arts. 1335, 1346(h) and 1348(c) is still developing; everything here comes from the statutory text. Second, municipal ordinances were not swept — Puerto Rico’s seventy-eight municipios legislate by ordenanza, nothing in the statutory sweep suggested a municipal rent or lease rule, but that is not proof none exists. Third, the compilation of Ley 131-1943 prints its own amendment note with a year that conflicts with the year in its header, so this page describes the protective-hairstyle ground without asserting the amendment date.

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