Cláusulas abusivas en contratos de leasing habitacional en Colombia: ¿un mal necesario?

This paper analizes the presence of abusive clauses in housing lease contracts in Colombia today. The contractual imbalances, still prevailing in private law, manifests itself in a very strong form in the clauses of Housing Lease Contracts. That is because, in order to obtain the desired loan (wich would allow lessees to provide to their families a housing solution), lessees must agree to pay disproportionate charges that do not correspond to their (inexistent) ownership rights that proceed from the Lease Contract. Among others, lessees must agree to pay the derived costs corresponding to the initial registration of the acquisition of the property; this is absurd because the owner of the property will, in fact, be the finantial entity, and not the lessee. In adittion, lessees must fully pay the costs of the insurance policies that protect the physical integrity of the property. In the event of a claim, the terms of such insurance policies award the finantial entity with 100% of the compensation. Even though, finantial institutions do not provide 100% of the funds needed to buy the property. In other words, in the case of materialization of the risk covered, the finantial entity receives 100% of the deducible payment. However, to acquire the property, the finantial institution did not pay 100% of its total value, nor they make the corresponding payments of the insurance policies. To conclude, prospect lessees must peacefully agree to this abusive kind of contrats. If they do not, their desired credit will be denied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]