Landlords and tenants alike are anxiously waiting to see how the new rent law, which restructures the relationship between landlords and tenants, will be applied.
President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi ratified the new law, 165/2025, earlier in August. It states that residential units rented prior to 1996 must be vacated and handed over to the landlord after seven years, while commercial contracts are set to expire after five years.
Both landlords and tenants have turned to legal experts for guidance as tenants are anxious about losing their homes and some landlords cannot wait to repossess their apartments.
Lawyer Sameh Samir explained that according to the new law, starting in September all units rented prior to 1996 will see an initial rise in the rent by LE250. Meanwhile, a committee formed in each governorate will survey areas where residential properties are located to determine the new rental value of each unit.
Their work is expected to take between three and six months. They will classify the areas where rental properties are located as upscale, middle, or economic, in order to determine the minimum rental value for a seven-year period.
The classification will be based on factors like geographical location, building condition, quality of local services (water, electricity, and sewage), and transport.
Landlords can retrieve their properties sooner if they can prove in a court of urgent matters that a tenant has left a unit closed for more than a year or owns another property. In this case, an eviction order can be issued.
Samir said that this provision is the best aspect of the new law, as it will allow landlords to benefit from apartments that have been left vacant. He added that the law is fair with respect to rent increases and the eviction of tenants hanging onto closed units.
However, he said it was unjust when it comes to the stipulation that tenants vacate their homes after seven years, arguing that this contradicts the contract signed between the landlord and the tenant. Older contracts stated that the tenant was to rent the apartment for life, and the Constitutional Court order has extended the lease to the next generation of the original tenant.
Samir said that many tenants had paid key money before starting to pay the monthly rent. “For example, in 1992 the key money for an apartment that could be bought for LE50,000 averaged around LE35,000,” he said, adding that this issue is not mentioned in the new law.
Before the new law, when a tenant left an apartment, the landlord gave the key money back to the tenant.
Michel Halim, representative of the tenants of residential and commercial units in the National Dialogue at the House of Representatives, argued that the law would become fair to all parties if the provisions terminating tenancies after seven years for residential units and five years for commercial units were repealed.
“Any increase in the rental value must also be legal rather than market-driven, while also taking into account the circumstances of tenants,” he said.
If the rent for a property under a contract signed in the 1990s ranging between LE100 and LE300 were to rise 20-fold, as stipulated in the law, it would reach LE5,000 to LE6,000, a sum many pensioners cannot afford, and this would lead to their eviction for inability to pay, he added.
Rental contracts signed after 1996, whether commercial or residential, are exempted from the provisions of the new law.
Nader Sobhi Suleiman, representing a group of tenants, said that tenants should exercise self-restraint and pay the new amount of LE250. “After the survey committee issues its decision, you can challenge the law’s constitutionality in court regarding the clause on eviction. Each tenant should appeal individually,” he advised.
“We have no objection to the law if the tenant owns another property or if they leave the rented property unused. We also do not object to revising the rental value or to extending the contract to the first generation — the spouse or one child living with the tenant at the time of death — for a minimum of one year,” he added.
He noted that before the Constitutional Court order limiting the extension of the rental contract to the first generation, older rental contracts extended it through two generations after the original tenant.
“My mother is 74 years old, and I, her unmarried son, live with her in our apartment in the Beni Sweif Governorate. My father rented the apartment in the 1970s, when the rent was set at LE6. At the time, $1 was worth LE0.25, and one gram of gold cost LE0.23,” Suleiman said.
“Landlords have already begun to harass tenants as though they were already being forced out of their homes,” he complained.
The Ministry of Housing has announced it will start receiving tenants’ applications requesting alternative housing in early October for three months, in implementation of Article 8 of the new law.
It said that applications should be uploaded through a dedicated website or posted at post offices countrywide. The website will allow people to submit applications, complete documentation, and finalise procedures for securing alternative units.
The ministry is also expected to provide alternative housing under the Social Housing and Mortgage Finance Support Fund. A dedicated unit will be established to receive tenant applications submitted via the platform and post offices. The unit will prepare a statement listing the number of applicants, classify and prioritise them, and determine the number of units needed for eligible categories within six years of the law’s issuance.
Minister of Local Development Manal Awad said that the governorates have identified 1,298 land plots in urban areas suitable to build alternative housing for tenants whose contracts will end after seven years. The plots cover a total of 61.2 million square metres and are scheduled to be handed over to the Ministry of Housing, Utilities, and Urban Communities to begin the implementation of the housing projects, she said.
Ziad Bahaa-Eldin, an economist and a former deputy prime minister, recently wrote that the new law was not grounded in publicly available studies or data to assess whether it fulfilled sound social objectives. He added that it imposed a single framework on a highly complex issue, without accounting for varying circumstances.
He warned that the law could trigger a wave of lawsuits, not after seven years as claimed, but starting as early as next month when tenants are required to start paying LE250 more per month and then again after three or six months when the survey committees issue their decisions classifying housing units into three categories on which the new rental value will be determined.
More lawsuits will be filed throughout the seven-year period as landlords attempt to establish grounds for early eviction, and again at the end of the period when contracts expire, he said. He also noted that the law fails to address the issue of key money, for which many tenants had paid substantial sums.
He stressed, however, that he was not calling for the law to be repealed. Instead, he reiterated his support for the principle affirmed by the Constitutional Court: the full restoration of property rights to owners free of restrictions that deprive them of economic benefits.
Bahaa-Eldin made suggestions that could render the relationship between the tenant and the landlord more balanced.
They included postponing the imposition of the LE250 additional rent until after the property classification is completed, conducting an assessment of the number of beneficiaries of social-protection programmes, such as pensioners, the elderly, and low-income tenants without alternative housing, and establishing a national fund to support social-protection beneficiaries, financed from the social housing budget without requiring new resources.
At the same time, he said it was important to gradually abolish rent controls and fully restore landlords’ rights.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 28 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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