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What you need to know about extra rent controls for 28 French towns

The Local France
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What you need to know about extra rent controls for 28 French towns
Photo: AFP

Rent controls that cap the amount that landlords can charge tenants have been extended to 28 towns and cities across France.

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The government has announced that there will be further controls on rent for anyone living in a zone tendue - any area that has a housing shortage.

Towns and cities including Ajaccio, Bordeaux, Grenoble, La Rochelle, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Nice, Strasbourg and Toulouse are all affected by the renewal of the government decree that prevents landlords from imposing big rent hikes on their tenants.

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Paris already has its own rent control scheme which was reintroduced in July after a court challenge saw it temporarily halted.

The controls apply to new contracts or renewal of contracts for both furnished and unfurnished properties and run from August 1st 2019 to July 31st 2020.

It means the landlord must respect a cap on how much he or she can increase the rent by, with different caps set by different areas.

The 28 areas affected are all classed as zone tendues, where there is a significant imbalance between the supply of housing and the demand for it - leading to difficulties in people finding a property.

You can enter your town or postcode to find out here if you are in a zone tendue by entering your town name or postcode.

There are certain exemptions to the controls, which include buildings that have been vacant for more than 18 months, the first rental of a building and any cases where the landlord can clearly prove that the previous rent of the home was under the market value or where the landlord has carried out a very significant amount of work on the building.

Many areas that are zone tendues also impose extra taxes of second home owners in a bid to rebalance the housing supply.

 

 

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