Egypt’s government has submitted a legislative amendment to Parliament, extending the transitional period for ending old rent contracts in residential properties to seven years instead of five.
The amendment seeks to gradually redefine the legal and financial dynamics between tenants and landlords.
House Speaker Hanafi Gebaly referred the draft to a joint committee from the housing, local administration, and constitutional affairs committees to study the bill and prepare a report for discussion in the plenary session.
The draft law maintains a five-year transitional period for properties rented by individuals for non-residential purposes. It requires tenants to vacate and return the property to the landlord at the end of that period.
The bill explicitly cancels all old rent laws upon the end of the seven-year transitional period. Afterward, all leases would be governed by Egypt’s civil code and subject to mutual agreement between landlord and tenant.
The proposed changes also increase the legal rental value of housing units. In premium areas, rents would rise to 20 times the current legal rate, with a minimum of 1,000 Egyptian pounds. In mid-level areas, rents would be multiplied by 10, with a minimum of 400 pounds. In lower-income areas, the minimum would be 250 pounds. For non-residential units, the increase would be fivefold, with annual 15% increases throughout the transitional period.
The draft law calls for survey committees to be formed in each governorate. These would classify areas into premium, mid-level, and economy zones based on criteria such as geographic location, building standards, public utilities, transportation networks, and health, education, and social services. The committees must complete their work within three months of the law’s implementation.
The law also allows landlords to request eviction if tenants—or their successors under extended leases—leave the unit vacant for over a year without justification or if they own another property suitable for the same purpose.
Tenants would be permitted to apply for a state-provided residential or commercial unit, either for rent or purchase, before their contract expires. Priority would be given to vulnerable groups. Those who apply must sign a declaration committing to vacate the old unit upon receiving a state allocation.
Previously, the heads of the engineers’ and doctors’ syndicates warned that the government’s earlier proposal—setting a five-year transition before ending old leases—could trigger a “social explosion” and jeopardize the stability of millions of Egyptians.
In a separate warning in early May, Cassation lawyer Entessar Elsaeed, who chairs the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law, cautioned that the law could disproportionately harm women. She told Al Manassa it “would pit tenants against one another and threaten social peace.”
Legal and political pressure for reform had been building in the past months. In November 2024, Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that fixed rents under Law 136 of 1981 were unconstitutional, urging Parliament to act to rebalance landlord-tenant relations.
One year earlier, in October 2023, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi publicly backed reform, citing nearly two million unoccupied units left unused after the original owners had died—a byproduct of the outdated rent law.
