Knives out in tourist areas for reduced rents

In the trenches are property owners and tenants, in many tourist areas of the country, on who is and is not entitled to a rent reduction, based on recent legislative interventions.

According to reports of Panhellenic Federation of Property Owners, owners of dwellings which they let to employees of tourist accommodation establishments, and who are not in work stoppage, and subsidised as unemployed, complain that the tenants have arbitrarily proceeded with a rent reduction.

Also, according to POMIDA, professionals of various categories are also claiming a reduction in rent for the rent of their homes.

Apart from this, in the grey area of paying rent in black, the landscape remains even more blurred, as the settlement of the dispute is left to the good faith of both parties, since, as is obvious, these cases are not covered by the law.

In many cases, disputes have triggered tensions that have even led to the threat of eviction. Thus, POMIDA clarifies that in the context of measures related to the dispersion of the coronavirus, beneficiaries of partial exemption from the payment of rent for leases of a main residence are:

“1. Tenants of a tenancy of a principal residence, in which the tenant is an employee or spouse or the other party to a partnership agreement of an employee of an enterprise referred to in par. 1 of Article 1 of this Act, of which he has the temporary suspension of the employment contract due to the measures to avoid the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 are exempt from paying 40% of the total rent for the months of March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2020, and for January, February and March 2021, as applicable. For the purposes of the preceding subparagraph, the employee is required, regardless of whether he or she or his or her spouse or the other party to a civil partnership is contracted as an employee, had an employment relationship with the undertaking at the time of the entry into force of the specific and exceptional measures of suspension or temporary prohibition of operation for preventive or repressive reasons related to COVID-19 coronavirus.

As stressed by POMIDA, it is absolutely clear that this regulation, like all previous ones, concerns exclusively workers under suspended employment contracts and does not apply to those in a subsidised unemployment scheme or any other category of workers or non-workers.

Also, this regulation does not apply to freelancers, traders and all kinds of self-employed persons, because the latter are entitled to a reduction exclusively in the rent of their separate professional establishment (shop, office, workshop, etc.), and not their main residence, even if they declare it as the tax domicile of their business, or as a mixed use, since the primary use in these cases is always that of the residence.

Similarly, it is stressed that, this regulation does not apply to any other category of residential leases other than the primary residence of suspended employees, and not to a secondary or vacation home, or temporary residence of any person.

Therefore, concludes POMIDA, in all these unforeseen cases of partial rent exemptions for residential leases and student leases, the rent reductions are illegal and tenants owe the full rent to their landlords.