Davood Beigi-Nejad, Vice President of the Tehran Real Estate Consultants Association, says that rent in some areas of Tehran has increased by more than 50%.
Beigi-Nejad told the regime’s ILNA news agency that while the “point-to-point inflation rate is 47%” and “annual inflation is 37%,” landlords are unwilling to limit rent increases to 25%, as mandated by the government.
Previously, despite the Iranian regime setting a 25% ceiling on rent increases nationwide, Iranian media reported a 43% rise in rents and the failure of the government’s directive policy in the rental market.
On July 27, the state-run Donya-e-Eqtesad newspaper addressed this issue, writing: “Last month’s housing rent inflation was 1.7 times what the officials had set.”
Reports indicate that housing rent inflation from late June to mid-July has surpassed the annual inflation rate of 39%. Several experts attribute this record-breaking rent inflation to the recent surge in housing prices and persistent high inflation levels.
The newspaper Donya-e-Eqtesad criticized government policies in this market, writing that since 2020, “unprecedented government intervention in the rental housing market’s transaction mechanisms” has acted as an inflationary stimulus in this market.
The newspaper referred to the rent ceiling, which, according to the Vice President of the Real Estate Consultants Association, landlords circumvent in various ways.
On July 24, Samaneh Moharami stated that in some housing contracts, antiques and Bitcoin are exchanged instead of the national currency because landlords do not want to get involved in court due to the rent ceiling.
Meanwhile, the newspaper Ham-Mihan wrote in its Saturday, July 27 issue that a look at rental and sale listings shows “cases of rent in dollars have also been heard in districts 1 and 2 of Tehran.”
The newspaper wrote that taking coins and dollars is not very common, but sometimes this happens between the owner and the tenant, and they write the contract by hand themselves.
Ham-Mihan emphasized that the prevalence of renting with foreign currencies or valuable metals is to circumvent the rent ceiling law and avoid taxes.
These events in the housing market come as last summer, the Parliament Research Center reported an increase in the number of income deciles being pushed out of the housing market, stating that deciles one to three absolutely, and deciles three to five and even part of the sixth decile, “relatively” cannot afford to secure housing for themselves.
