I'm not your lawyer and don't know the specifics of your case, this is not legal advice, I'm just commenting on the generalities of the law.
Like someone else mentioned, there's no such thing as a 1-year lease. Leases over 3 months (even if they're "renewals") are considered to be extended to the legal minimum of 3 years. The only exception is if you were moving for a specific purpose (think a temporary job posting in the country) and this was explicitly spelled out in the lease. Even then, it's a fairly gray area and courts are restrictive in its application. Nikad might be referring to commercial real estate companies renting out units directly, but as a general rule I'm fairly confident in saying that unless the landlord is operating the unit as a hotel, with proper permits, they're going to have a hard time arguing that a tenant living there for over 3 months doesn't constitute a long-term lease.
Rental law is tricky in Argentina, so I'm just gonna spell out the platonic ideal of what the law expects to happen in these cases, even though reality doesn't match up.
The law gives lease payments the biggest consideration. It expects the tenant to pay every month in full, without any discounts for any reason. The corollary to this is that the tenant gets to break the lease whenever with a fairly minor penalty, while landlords have fairly high minimum lease terms that they cannot get out of.
Missed lease payments can be enforced by the landlord through what's called "acción ejecutiva", which is essentially a summary judgement. You show the judge proof that you asked the tenant to pay, proof that you didn't receive any money, and you can get a judgement in 0-2 months if your lawyer does everything right. No other evidence is allowed except proof of payment or failure to serve.
For this kind of summary judgement, the fact that your landlord isn't keeping up its end of the bargain is not an excuse. That sort of issue needs to be brought up in a separate trial, with evidence and hearings, etc.
In theory this is bad for you but, like I said, this is the platonic ideal.
First of all, a quick summary judgement requires that the lease be notarized. Many landlords don't do this, either because they're cheap, or because they know the terms of the lease are unenforceable, or because the lease is not reported for tax purposes and they want to minimize exposure.
If the lease isn't notarized, the landlord needs to get you to court so that you explicitly recognize that you did sign the lease. This is a fairly slow process and can take 2-3 months, if not more.
Notarized or not, most likely the landlord is not reporting the lease for tax purposes and starting a summary judgement process now requires AFIP to be notified before anything else, so it gets sketchy for them. A fairly clear indicator of this is whether the landlord is invoicing you or not.
What does this mean for most tenants? That unless the landlord has done everything right, they have very little incentive to start any sort of legal proceedings against tenants, especially if it's for a small amount of money, even though technically the law favors the tenant in this case since it's a fairly simple proceeding.
Knowing this gives you a fairly high amount of leverage to negotiate with them, not in the sense of threatening them, but in the sense that you know that their threats are emptier.
In my experience, landlords are lazy and the best approach is to offer to fix whatever is wrong yourself and take it out of the rent. Ask them if they have their own contractor you can call so they know that they're getting a good price.
Finally, you signed a lease with the landlord, not the real estate agent. The agent has no legal authority to agree to anything or to threaten you with anything. If they won't put you in touch with the landlord, then you should remind them that there is an address for the landlord in the lease where you can send a carta documento.
Of course, if the issue is a gas leak that goes unfixed after multiple requests then you have good grounds to break your lease without penalty, but I'd also argue that that's not somewhere where you want to live, anyway.
Good luck.
Like someone else mentioned, there's no such thing as a 1-year lease. Leases over 3 months (even if they're "renewals") are considered to be extended to the legal minimum of 3 years. The only exception is if you were moving for a specific purpose (think a temporary job posting in the country) and this was explicitly spelled out in the lease. Even then, it's a fairly gray area and courts are restrictive in its application. Nikad might be referring to commercial real estate companies renting out units directly, but as a general rule I'm fairly confident in saying that unless the landlord is operating the unit as a hotel, with proper permits, they're going to have a hard time arguing that a tenant living there for over 3 months doesn't constitute a long-term lease.
Rental law is tricky in Argentina, so I'm just gonna spell out the platonic ideal of what the law expects to happen in these cases, even though reality doesn't match up.
The law gives lease payments the biggest consideration. It expects the tenant to pay every month in full, without any discounts for any reason. The corollary to this is that the tenant gets to break the lease whenever with a fairly minor penalty, while landlords have fairly high minimum lease terms that they cannot get out of.
Missed lease payments can be enforced by the landlord through what's called "acción ejecutiva", which is essentially a summary judgement. You show the judge proof that you asked the tenant to pay, proof that you didn't receive any money, and you can get a judgement in 0-2 months if your lawyer does everything right. No other evidence is allowed except proof of payment or failure to serve.
For this kind of summary judgement, the fact that your landlord isn't keeping up its end of the bargain is not an excuse. That sort of issue needs to be brought up in a separate trial, with evidence and hearings, etc.
In theory this is bad for you but, like I said, this is the platonic ideal.
First of all, a quick summary judgement requires that the lease be notarized. Many landlords don't do this, either because they're cheap, or because they know the terms of the lease are unenforceable, or because the lease is not reported for tax purposes and they want to minimize exposure.
If the lease isn't notarized, the landlord needs to get you to court so that you explicitly recognize that you did sign the lease. This is a fairly slow process and can take 2-3 months, if not more.
Notarized or not, most likely the landlord is not reporting the lease for tax purposes and starting a summary judgement process now requires AFIP to be notified before anything else, so it gets sketchy for them. A fairly clear indicator of this is whether the landlord is invoicing you or not.
What does this mean for most tenants? That unless the landlord has done everything right, they have very little incentive to start any sort of legal proceedings against tenants, especially if it's for a small amount of money, even though technically the law favors the tenant in this case since it's a fairly simple proceeding.
Knowing this gives you a fairly high amount of leverage to negotiate with them, not in the sense of threatening them, but in the sense that you know that their threats are emptier.
In my experience, landlords are lazy and the best approach is to offer to fix whatever is wrong yourself and take it out of the rent. Ask them if they have their own contractor you can call so they know that they're getting a good price.
Finally, you signed a lease with the landlord, not the real estate agent. The agent has no legal authority to agree to anything or to threaten you with anything. If they won't put you in touch with the landlord, then you should remind them that there is an address for the landlord in the lease where you can send a carta documento.
Of course, if the issue is a gas leak that goes unfixed after multiple requests then you have good grounds to break your lease without penalty, but I'd also argue that that's not somewhere where you want to live, anyway.
Good luck.
