Faced with the legal vacuum surrounding the rental of furnished apartments and housing, fifteen deputies from the Assembly of People’s Representatives filed a legislative initiative to regulate this activity. Their project provides for the establishment of specifications approved by the Minister of Tourism, in order to structure a sector deemed today anarchic and source of numerous disputes.
According to the text, the donors must provide detailed information on their identity, the rented property and the applied rents, which will be supervised by an official price grid. Rental contracts would not fall under conventional real estate law, and donors would be subject to strict tax obligations, in particular the holding of a register numbered and controlled by the administration.
Each contract must be reported without delay to the local security authorities. The revenues generated must be declared, under penalty of heavy fines: 20,000 dinars for exercise without authorization, and 5,000 dinars in the event of contractual irregularities.
The bill also provides for sanctions against fraudulent practices, such as the dissemination of false announcements or the misleading presentation of housing. In the event of serious offenses, justice may order the final closure of the establishment and the termination of current contracts.
For the authors of the initiative, it is urgent to respond to observed excesses: uncontrolled increase in rents, proliferation of unsanitary housing, damaged the tranquility of residents, but also security risks linked to the use of these dwellings by criminal or terrorist networks. They also point out an important lack of tax gain for the State, due to the development of a parallel economy fueled by undeclared intermediaries.
