Rent control is canceled in Paris for leases signed between 1er July 2019 and June 30, 2020: so decided the administrative court of Paris on July 8, 2022. The consequence is that the owners who would have been attacked by their tenant, because they had not respected the framework of the rents in a lease signed during this period, cannot be condemned and have to pay compensation.
This decision follows an appeal by the National Union of Real Estate Property (UNPI), an association that represents landlords. The latter had attacked the decree of May 28, 2019, issued by the prefect of Paris, fixing the level of reference rents according to the geographical sector, the date of construction of the accommodation and its size. This reference rent is then used to calculate the authorized ceilings: rents cannot exceed more than 20% of the reference rent.
In its decision, the first chamber of the administrative court of Paris agreed with the UNPI which considers that the categories of housing and the geographical sectors covered by the decree were determined on the basis of too old data. Indeed, to fix the reference rent, the prefect bases himself on the reports of the Observatory of rents of the Paris region (OLAP) which observes sector by sector the level of Parisian rents.
However, OLAP had provided elements stopping in 2017, the court considered that this did not allow a sufficiently fair analysis of the market to set reliable reference rents two years later. The purpose of the framework is, in fact, to limit the most glaring abuses: the maximum rents must therefore be determined in a realistic manner in relation to the market.
No change for other cities
For the moment, the decrees concerning the framework for the years 2021 and 2022 are not impacted by the court’s decision and the other cities which practice rent management are not affected either.
The system will therefore remain in place in Lille, in the agglomeration of Plaine Commune and that of Est Ensemble, but also in Lyon, Villeurbanne, Montpellier as well as in Bordeaux from July 15. “We will continue to attack the decrees wherever possible because we believe that the framework is counterproductive: it discourages landlords from renting their accommodation with increasing difficulties in finding accommodation in the private rental stock”warns Christophe Demerson, president of the UNPI.
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