After first ‘old rent’ hikes, tenants fear next rent rise will be worse

Landlords across the country have already hiked rent for tenants in “old rent” homes and commercial units. 

The hike was the first concession permitted to landlords by the new law, passed earlier this year, that sets in motion steps that will eventually end the rent-controlled tenancies, fully liberalizing Egypt’s rental market.

Tenants and tenant representatives tell Mada Masr that fights and disputes — including physical altercations — are already increasing as landlords move to raise rents and seek to reacquire underutilized properties. 

Now, residential landlords are waiting impatiently for the government to finish a survey of old rent properties across the country, data it has promised to collect before implementing a second round of higher rate increases based on income categories to be assigned to each neighborhood. 

But the surveys — which a local official involved in the process tells Mada Masr are haphazard and reductive — could make the coming round of rent hikes much worse, with tenant representatives anticipating that many households will be moved into rental brackets disproportionate to their quality of housing.

Under Law 164/2025, which came into force in August, rent for residential properties is to  be increased at intervals over the coming seven years, after which the landlord is free to evict the tenants and set rent value as he desires. 

The first step was a nationwide rent increase to a minimum of LE250, as per the law. 

One tenant, Mahmoud, says that even this initial increase sparked friction between him and his landlord. After he tried to negotiate the LE250 rent increase with the landlord of his father’s old rent apartment in Cairo’s Zawya al-Hamra neighborhood, the landlord retaliated by filing a false police report accusing him of attempting to demolish the apartment.

The police eventually dismissed the report against Mahmoud but, since then, he has had to confront the landlord each month to make sure he does not further increase the rent on his father, he tells Mada Masr.

As for commercial old rental units, the law dictated an immediate fivefold increase of rental rates across the board, with rates set to increase annually by 15 percent for a grace period of five years before landlords are free to pursue complete liberalization and eviction.

Tenants like Imam, who rents an upholstery shop in a tight alleyway in Mohandiseen, had his rent increased from around LE500 to LE2,500 in September due to the law’s rules on commercial properties, he tells Mada Masr. Imam previously explained to Mada Masr that the original LE500 rate was already a great pressure on his family and his business.

While renters like Imam and Mahmoud struggle against the sudden change in their situation, landlords said they feel that the law and the government are finally on their side. Mostafa Abdel Rahman, who heads the old properties landlord association that has been organizing for nine years, stresses landlords’ support for the new law in conversation with Mada Masr, arguing that it has eased tensions between landlords and tenants caused by the rent control system and created space for many to agree on rental values acceptable to both parties.

But the rosy outlook was not shared by Sherif al-Gaaar, head of the Tenant Association, a non-governmental organization which represented old rent tenants in parliamentary consultations. Gaar points to the accelerating instances of violence and assault between landlords and tenants, including a story that has made the rounds in the media of landlords assaulting an elderly man in Suez while attempting to evict him. The same man was later offered an apartment in compensation by the pro-government Nation’s Future Party.

The next round of rental increases is set to spark even more conflict. Local surveying committees under instructions from the governorate are working to designate an income category to areas in each governorate: luxurious, middle-income or economic.

Old rental housing units in areas designated “luxurious” are to be raised twentyfold to a minimum rate of LE1,000, middle-income tenfold to a minimum rate of LE400, and economic tenfold to a minimum rate of LE250, followed by a 15 percent annual increase.

But even with the extension, the survey process has been flawed and reductive, according to a Housing Directorate official in Cairo. 

The official heads the surveying committee for one of the capital's districts. They say that so far, the survey process has entailed the collection of available tax data, with each committee working independently to request data for old rent properties registered with the Real Estate Taxation Authority for each district, before compiling all the data. 

This process leaves out “over 50 percent of apartments and shops rented under the old rent system,” the official said.  

“We have no data on apartments not registered for property taxes, and we treated them as if they didn't exist, so we cannot determine the true number of units rented under the old rent control system,” they continue. “There are many units in low and middle-income areas that are completely outside the scope of the scan.” 

Without field surveys, the process will be blind to old rent units that are not registered for tax, like the vast majority of Egypt’s housing units. This means that the value of rents for each area will be based on incomplete survey results, and could lead to unfair increase rates in each neighborhood. 

A former district head in the Giza Governorate echoes the concern, saying that “the idea of surveying the number of apartments rented under the old rent system by forming specialized committees is impossible.”

Tenant groups anticipated this would happen, based on the rent increase plan laid out in the new law. Representatives who spoke to Mada Masr say that the blanket rent increases by area are bound to jeopardize thousands of households, as they do not consider the class and architectural complexity of neighborhoods in the capital and other inner city areas.

“If you look at an area like Mohandiseen, you might say, for example, that this whole area is luxurious. But you have low-income areas in Mohandiseen, you have side alleys, you have buildings on the main road, apartments of 100 square meters and apartments of 50 square meters [in the same area],” says Gaar. 

He continuesd, questioning the law’s logic: “how can you impose a LE250 increase on everyone, and then impose another huge increase three months later? The whole decision is bizarre.”

With such blanket categorization of neighborhoods, a room in a narrow alley might end up being asked to pay higher rent than company premises on a main street in the same city, lawyer and long-time tenant representative Ayman Essam tells Mada Masr. Essam also notes the mechanism ignores existing differences in rental rate based on when contracts were signed, including how the date of the original rent contract would affect the increases unfairly. 

Under the umbrella of ‘old rent’ is a series of different laws and amendments issued from 1947 to 1981, each introducing different pricing mechanisms and fixed rates according to the state of the economy and inflation of their time, meaning that rent control started at different price caps according to the year the tenancy began. “Someone who rents a small apartment in an economic area since the 1990s, starting at LE150, will have to pay LE1,500, while someone who rents a 300-meter square apartment in Zamalek since the 1960s, starting at LE5, will pay the minimum LE1,000,” he explains.

Urban researcher Yahia Shawkat previously raised the same concerns, arguing that increasing rents requires deeper area-by-area studies that take into account the complicated nature and history of each property.

Absence of the up-to-date data on old rent properties was also one of the hot topics of the parliamentary debates around the old rent law before it passed, with opposition MPs highlighting the government’s ill-preparedness to offer updated statistics on the number of tenants.

Nevertheless, survey results have been announced over recent days in quick succession for all of Giza, Daqahlia, Minya, Kafr al-Sheikh, Qena, Luxor and Aswan, with the Cairo Governorate official confirming that the rent increase categories “will be applied once at the national level, as happened in the reconciliation of building violations law.”

This implementation will take place in February, as per a decision by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbuly earlier this month to extend the work of the survey committees for another three months.

Landlords are already impatient at the delay of rent increases they have been awaiting for years, says Abdel Rahman.

They are also calling on the government to meet their own ambitions for data collection. The new law allows landlords to seize and sell properties immediately, whether residential or commercial, if it can be proven that the tenant has not used the unit for over a year, or that they own a similar property to the one they rent.

To facilitate this, Abdel Rahman said that landlords want the government to order the electricity, water and gas companies to share with them any records proving which old rental properties have been unused.

Tenants, meanwhile, are left to pursue their cause in the courts. Tenant representatives like Essam and Gaar and families renting old rental properties have launched numerous lawsuits before administrative and civil courts challenging the constitutionality of several articles of the law, including the articles on rent increase mechanisms, formation and work of the surveying committees, the grace period before evictions and the fast-tracked eviction mechanism. 

The tenant groups seek for their lawsuits to make their way to the Supreme Constitutional Court, and acquire a ruling that could force the government to reconsider these articles, as both explained.

Such a ruling, however, is unlikely to come before tenants face their next round of rental hikes in March.