The Tenancy Law vetoed this month by the president drew attention to the lack of consistency in landlord/tenant relations in the country.

Now tenants and landlords are both paying close attention to any new bill created to regulate this relationship.

In a trip around southern Quito, this newspaper found in a survey of rental properties that only four out of ten tenants had contracts legalized at the Tenancy Board. The rest had only had signed standard contracts sold at corner bazaars, or had a verbal agreement with their landlord.

María Chicaiza, the owner of a home in La Ferroviaria said that three years ago she decided to legalize her contracts after a tenant left without paying for rent or utilities, and left the unit in poor repair.

Sonia Torres, who administers a property in El Pintado, says she hasn’t needed to put on paper the verbal contracts she has with her tenants because they’re all people she knows or referred to her by friends or family.

At the Pichincha Third District Court, less than 50 contracts a day get legalized. So far in 2013, only 2,500 rental contracts have been legalized in this city of more than 2 million people. Jurist Joselo Pérez says that most people who legalize their contracts with renters do so because they’ve had a bad experience with a tenant, or they are a commercial landowner, or they have a relative that is a lawyer.