In its bill on purchasing power which will be discussed at the beginning of July, the government provides for a ceiling on the increase in rents of 3.5% over one year. Details from Charlie Cailloux, legal counsel for Particular to particular and the PAP.fr website.
franceinfo: Charlie, this is a new rent control measure!
Charlie Pebbles: Yes, and this time it doesn’t just concern tight areas but all empty and furnished rentals, throughout the territory. We talked about it in a previous column: through indexation, each year, the owner can increase the rent to take inflation into account.
However, this inflation could reach 5% or even 6% by the end of the year. 5% increase on a rent of 800 euros, that’s almost 500 euros more per year, that’s a lot!
So the government is proposing to limit the increase to 3.5%?
Exactly ! Owners will be able to increase to keep up with inflation but not beyond this percentage. And at the same time, for tenants with modest incomes, housing aid will be increased by 3.5%.
For the moment, we are at the stage of the bill, we have to wait for the discussion in Parliament to know if the measure will be adopted. In any case, as it stands, it satisfies neither the tenants’ associations, which are calling for a pure and simple freeze on rents, nor the landlords’ associations which are also facing an increase in their charges, and which are seeing work obligations in the years to come.
We will therefore follow the parliamentary debates! About the fight against prohibitive rents, two new cities will now apply rent controls!
Absolutely, it’s Montpellier since July 1, and Bordeaux from July 15. For all new contracts, landlords must respect rent ceilings (it’s a price per m²), as is already the case in Paris, Plaine Commune, Est Ensemble, Lille, Lyon, Villeurbanne.
In addition, the framework for rents will now be much more controlled: on the one hand, rental advertisements must mention the details of the rent (the applicable ceiling, the rent requested and any additional rent), the tenant may very simply check that the proposed rent is within the nails. What can also make the regulation of rents more effective is that the power of control and sanction can be delegated to town halls, town halls which have organized themselves to hunt down excessively expensive rents.
Until now, the tenant was alone with the landlord (in a context of housing shortage, it’s complicated to alienate the landlord), now the town halls will carry out checks, a priori, from the stage of the announcement.