Old-rent law to be discussed in upcoming parliamentary round

CAIRO – 28 August 2018: Several law projects will be discussed during the upcoming parliamentary round; one of these laws is the controversial old-rent law.

The law is expected to regulate the relation between owners and tenants and is going to be discussed publicly for the first time, according to the parliamentary Housing Committee members’ statements to Egypt Today.

Several other draft laws proposed by parliamentarians regarding the old-rent law were terminated by the Parliament speaker, and were not referred to general discussion sessions as they contained controversial and non-consensual articles. However, this time the law seems to reach general discussions.

The old-rent law is considered one of the sever defects in the renting law in Egypt. Property owners complain about losing a lot of money as a result of being unable to change the rent value which was agreed and signed between owners and tenants many years ago and before issuing the new-renting laws. As real estate prices hiked severely, the property owners claim that the old rent is no longer compatible with the current value of the rented property.

According to the old-renting law, the old-rent contracts and the affiliated properties are inherited, and owners cannot change or terminate these contracts.

Here are several crucial articles that will be discussed

- The new law states that after the death of the tenant, his/her heirs have the right to remain in the property for no longer than five years. After that, the contract becomes null.

- The five-year deadline for the heirs shall be applied to the pending cases only before the promulgation of this law.

- If the rented property was customized for doing certain business, it will remain with the heirs for no longer than five years as long as the business activity will not be changed. Otherwise, the contract becomes null

- If the property tenants turned to own or rent other properties or apartments in the same governorate, their five-year deadline contract becomes null.

- The government will be responsible for providing alternative apartments for old- property tenants after the five-year deadline if their salaries are less than LE 1,200 monthly.