Charlie Cailloux, legal adviser for the Particular to individual site and the PAP.fr site today evokes a new law on rent ceilings.
franceinfo: Is it another new law on rent control?
Charlie Pebbles: Yes, this law is the 3DS law which was published last week in Official newspaper. It relates to differentiation, decentralization, deconcentration, and carrying various measures to simplify local public action, that is to say, 3DS. Concretely, it will allow local authorities to control and sanction, themselves, the respect of rent ceilings on their territory.
But yet, the sanctions already exist!
Yes absolutely! But currently, it is the prefectures (therefore the State) which are in charge of sanctioning the control of rents. The problem is that they do not really exercise control: they can impose a penalty of 5,000 euros but in practice, in Paris, only 10 fines have been pronounced since 2019, it is very little.
However, the town halls, which have chosen to apply the ceilings of rents are – they – very motivated to hit the owners who are out of the nails. This is the case of the town hall of Paris, which has long demanded to be able to police rents, and has already set up “patrols” to carry out these checks and give notice to recalcitrants.
Concretely, how can these checks take place?
Controls can now be carried out from the announcement stage, since the 3DS law imposes new mandatory information: in the cities concerned (Paris, Lille, Lyon, Est-ensemble and Plaine-Commune), owners will have to indicate the rent ceiling applicable to the accommodation, the basic rent and the possible application of a rent supplement, in order to be able to exceed the ceiling.
The tenant will be able to know immediately if the advertisement respects or not the framework. And it will therefore also be easy for the town halls to carry out checks and to get in touch with the owner.
Last point, the 3DS law also allows new cities to regulate rents?
Yes, this law allows interested cities to apply until November 23, 2022. This could particularly appeal to cities that have seen their real estate market tighten following the Covid-19 pandemic and the development of teleworking; one thinks for example of the coasts, the Basque Country could be added to the list.
In the cities whose application will be accepted, the rent control should not apply concretely, at the earliest, until the end of 2022/beginning of 2023.