The Mieterschutz Lëtzebuerg / Association de défense des locataires de Luxembourg (Association for the defence of tenants of Luxembourg) has published an opinion on the bill on residential lease and its amendments that is now three years since becoming law.
While it welcomes certain provisions of the bill and the amendments made to it since 2020, it states that it believe that it requires improvement, adding that "this is not a good signal from the government on its seriousness in relation to the current catastrophic situation on the rental housing market".
The main points include the following:
While the chapter on colocations has become more balanced, they point out that it is always the interest of the owner that is primarily protected. To inform other roommates of a planned departure, they state that it should be sufficient that the departing roommate has informed them in writing against signature of the other roommates. As for the publication of an advertisement to find a substitute, they argue that sites specialising in accommodation advertisements such as “coloctoit.com” or “appartager.lu” must also be accepted as “media publishing real estate offers relating to the Luxembourg market”.
On the topic of roommates, they state that the law should include a legal provision concerning the resolution of conflicts between roommates in the event of non-compliance with the rules, or in the event of aggression. For example, they propose that a majority or two thirds of the roommates can decide to give notice to a roommate by respecting the usual rules. The notion of domestic violence should also apply in shared accommodation, even if this violence does not concern partners or married couples.
They argue that the fact that people have to write a letter to protest against the increase in rent by more than 10% within 3 months is unfair and not adapted to the knowledge of many tenants, who often also face language barriers. In the event of an increase exceeding 10% of the rent, they call that the tenant should be entitled to compensation.
On invested capital, they argue that there are fairer and more balanced methods of calculation and call for another method of calculation to be adopted than that provided for by the bill for old housing, or even that the Ministry of Housing choose one of the variants with lower coefficients proposed by LISER.
They also considers that the rent commissions must be reformed and "professionalised" so that they are more efficient and to make them comparable to a real mediation service between landlords and tenants. Currently, the draft law does not provide for any modification of the related articles.
They point out that rental guarantees should be immediately returned after an inventory of fixtures has been drawn up where there are no defects by the tenant, less normal wear and tear.
They acknowledge that certain pressure groups would prefer to completely scrap the reform due to disagreements, in particular on the calculation of the maximum rent. They believe that the best alternative is to pass at least all the provisions which go in the right direction and which already have consensus, and to postpone the questions relating to the calculation of the rent of existing housing in the next legislature in order to be able to establish a fairer calculation method supported by a greater number of stakeholders.
To conclude, their main message is calling on the government to get the parts of the reform of the rental lease voted on which there is consensus and which are necessary given the current situation of the rental market: they claim that not acting now and postponing the problem is irresponsible as a new, more modern and fairer tenancy law is needed now.
