POMIDA: The rental agreement for closed apartments is a trap

How completely unacceptablewithout real benefit to the economy and society, and designed to condemn attempts to solve the housing problem to fail, deviations from Article 9 of the draft law of the Ministry of National Economy are being considered,

which was submitted to parliament for a vote under the title “Tax relief for 36 months for individuals on rental properties that have been declared vacant or have been made available for short-term rentals”.

In his statement Panhellenic Federation of Property Owners (ΠΟΜΙΔΑ) notes that “Astonishingly, dozens of comments from those who participated in the preliminary discussion were completely ignored and the article was presented to Parliament in its original unacceptable form, resulting in a complete reversal of the momentum of this exceptional social measure announced by the Prime Minister at TIF, with the main “beneficiaries” tenants, as the only measure that can quickly “bring houses to market”given that a huge array of urban residential premises will remain outside of this regulation, because:

1. A three-year “vacancy” of housing remains a conditionwhile it is necessary to determine one year or maximum two years for a three-year tax break.
2. Three-year short-term rental housing remains a conditionwithout any reason and in complete contradiction to common sense, instead of establishing that it is sufficient to obtain A.M.A. (Property registration number for short-term rentals) even a day before the announcement, as promised by the Prime Minister on TIF. This almost completely eliminates any fully renovated apartments that could have hit the rental market right away, since three years ago the number of AMA apartments was miniscule compared to what we have today. Additionally, anyone who continues to hold A.M.A. in his apartment for three years, is obviously happy with his short-term rental income and will have no real intention of making the property available for long-term rental. Therefore, the three-year “experience” provision in short-term rentals should be eliminated entirely. “The provision for an initial three-year lease should be removed as extremely anti-social.”.
3. Remains outside of regulation Due to the requirement to enter into only three-year leases for primary residences, a large number of tenants who have the most pressing housing needs, especially in the islands and regions, such as teachers, country doctors, police officers, border guards and many other categories of government employees and private workers in tourist sites, construction sites, etc., who are only interested in annual rentals. Therefore, the provision for an initial three-year lease must be eliminated as highly anti-social, because without reason deprives tenants of housing, and owners of tenants!
4. Most homeowners, realizing that if they spend money on upgrading and renting out housing, then this regulation will become a real “trap” for them, and they will find themselves real “hostages” of their tenants, remaining outside the scope of this regulation, which, instead of tying a 36-month tax exemption to housing, who, even having signed a lease for three years, can either leave the housing for their own reasons without any practical consequences for themselves, or fail to pay rent, blackmailing them, and ultimately be evicted from the housing, because, as the provision states, if housing for any reason becomes empty, the exemption ceases to apply not only for the future, but even for the year in which it became empty. In order not to create complete uncertainty and complete denial to owners, the 36-month tax benefit must be clearly and exclusively related to each dwelling and not to the identity and intentions of the original tenant, regardless of the possible – forced by the owner – change of subsequent tenants during the general period in 36 months.

The result of the above adjustments, unfortunately, confirms the correctness of the observation ΠΟΜΙΔΑ that in a country where there is virtually no social housing, the legislator should be much more concerned about how to solve the serious social problem of tenant housing that this supply-based regulation is aimed at ΠΟΜΙΔΑand not on how “better control” tax benefits so as not to lose a few euros, which could ultimately lead to the complete abolition of this measure.

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