This is a very old post, but I came online to get some advice/commiserate on building problems! If anyone else comes searching on the forum looking for advice, I just want to state for the record that if at all possible, DO NOT SIGN A RENTAL AGREEMENT LIKE THIS! Pay your rent to the owner, and the expenses to the administracion. If at all possible, ask for proof that the expensas are up to date.
Most standard rental agreements from non-criminal owners usually to native renters involve the renter paying expensas (building fees) directly to the administracion of the building. These are the fees that pay for upkeep, the bug people, the building supers, and in some buildings the hot water and heat, etc. Even though this renter was not legally responsible and not at risk of being kicked out, you don't want to be in this person's situation! Each month when the expensas (building fees) come to the door, everyone in the building knows that YOU in Apartment 8 B or whatever, are in the apartment and not paying your expenses. Imagine how your neighbors might feel/act towards the person who is usually scapegoated by the administration as the reason they can't pay for a broken tile or broken pipe...even if it is not your fault!? This is definitely not the OP's fault since they entered into an agreement in good faith, but it should be pointed out that the owner renting is actively and knowing participating in borderline criminal behavior, and so it obviously does not behoove anyone to get into a contract with someone like this.
Even though, the foreigners from unnamed South American country who rent in our building and have a 70,000 peso debt in collections and insist it is not their fault because of the way their rental agreement was, in a way, it's hard not to (emotionally) blame them, because why would they have signed such a dumb agreement!? Did they not ask around to find out how renting works, especially being fluent Spanish speakers? So these are my neighbors, and even though I am not rude to them, I don't go out of my way to be nice to them or even to speak to them, knowing there is a giant hole in my apartment wall (along with kitchen ceiling that crackles into my pasta pot, two floor tiles the plumbers removed 2 months ago and haven't replaced) that can't be closed supposedly because of debtors like them. Even if it is NOT your/their fault, you are still part of screwing everyone else in your building. Don't put yourself in that situation, especially as a foreigner who wants to make nice with your Argentine neighbors!
You don't have much leverage per se as a foreigner renter because you don't have a garantía, unless you have a nice real estate-owning friend willing to put his or her apartment up as collateral for your rental agreement. But your "leverage" is that you are often more desirable to some owners who want to a) make more money off their rental properties by renting them furnished to foreigners (standard rent for a nice empty apartment may be 4000 pesos, while to a foreigner for a furnished apartment it could be 8000 or more pesos, more easily evade taxes on ALL that rental income by doing it outside of normal inmobilario channels, c) are often perceived as less risky because you don't know your legal rights as a tenant.
So just be super nice and insist that you will pay the expensas to the administracion, the ABL to the city (if they ask you to pay the ABL), and the rent to the owner and that that should be in the contract, as it should be.
