Argentina: rental market overview

Argentina is Brokik's first market outside Europe, and its tenancy law is unusually deregulated by comparison. The Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia (DNU) 70/2023 repealed the tenant-protective Ley de Alquileres 27.551 outright (art. 249 DNU), and in July 2024 the Ley Bases (ley 27.742) consolidated that deregulation at ordinary statute level — it is no longer just an emergency decree a court could easily strike down. Residential leases signed from 29 December 2023 onward are governed by the Código Civil y Comercial (CCyC), arts. 1187–1226, in the text resulting from the DNU; contracts signed before that date keep running under the old regime they were signed under.

Written form is mandatory for any real-estate lease (art. 1188 CCyC), but almost everything else is left to the parties: the contract term is freely agreed, and if the parties don't set one, a residential lease is presumed to run two years (art. 1198) — a sharp break from the old law's mandatory three-year minimum, which the DNU removed entirely. Brokik's Argentine template is built for that freedom: it lets the landlord and tenant set their own term, currency and indexation basis, rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all clause that Argentine law no longer requires.

The security deposit (depósito en garantía) has carried no statutory ceiling since the DNU reform — a real change from the repealed Ley 27.551, which capped it at one month's rent. In practice, landlords typically ask for one to two months' rent, and the amount and currency are freely agreed between the parties; the deposit can just as easily be denominated in pesos or in US dollars.

Because the DNU also removed the old law's fixed refund mechanism, the contract itself has to spell out how and when the deposit is returned, including whether its value is updated in line with the final rent. Brokik's template treats this as a clause to configure rather than assume, and pairs it with a handover protocol (acta de entrega) so that any deduction from the deposit has a documented, dated starting point to point back to.

Under art. 1221 CCyC as rewritten by the DNU, a tenant can walk away from an Argentine lease at any time, for any reason, simply by giving written notice and paying a single flat indemnity: 10% of the rent installments still outstanding between the date of notice and the contract's agreed end date. There's no minimum period the tenant has to wait out first — the old law's six-month threshold before this right kicked in is gone. Because this indemnity exists for the tenant's benefit, the parties can agree in the contract to reduce it further in the tenant's favor, though never to raise it.

The landlord's position is the mirror image: there is no landlord-initiated notice-without-cause right at all. A landlord can only end the lease early for the tenant's own breach — non-payment of rent, misuse of the property, or breach of another contractual obligation (art. 1219 CCyC). Once the agreed term simply expires, the lease ends on its own; anything else requires proving the tenant's fault.

Argentine law doesn't make a written handover protocol (acta de entrega, sometimes called inventario) a formal condition of a valid lease, but the Código Civil y Comercial leans on it indirectly: the tenant must keep the property in the condition received (art. 1206) and return it in that same condition, ordinary wear and tear aside (arts. 1207 and 1210). Without a signed record of the property's condition at move-in, there is no reliable baseline to compare against at move-out — which is exactly what most deposit disputes in Argentina turn on.

Brokik treats the acta de entrega as standard practice for every Argentine tenancy, even though it isn't a statutory prerequisite: condition, fittings, and meter readings recorded once when the tenant moves in and again when they move out. It's the single easiest way for a landlord to make a deposit deduction stick — and, just as often, the easiest way for a tenant to get a deposit back in full.

Beyond the deposit and termination rules, Argentina's regime keeps a light regulatory footprint by European standards. There's no requirement to register the lease with AFIP under the old RELI registration scheme — that obligation was eliminated for contracts signed from 29 December 2023 onward (RG AFIP 5545/2024); registration remains available only as an optional step tied to certain tax benefits. There's likewise no federal requirement for an energy-efficiency certificate when renting a home: Argentina runs a voluntary national labeling scheme, and the handful of provinces that do mandate an energy label (for example Santa Fe) apply that requirement only to property sales and notarial transfers of ownership, never to a rental.

Party identification follows the local standard rather than a European one: individuals are identified by their DNI, and businesses by their CUIT. Brokik's Argentine template reflects both realities — no EPC field forced into the contract, and identity fields that match what an Argentine landlord or tenant actually carries.