Salvation Government Imposes Lease Contract Regulations
The Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), the political arm of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) that administers much of the Idlib governorate, is attempting to address the issue of rising rent in areas under its control by imposing so-called “emergency solutions.”
The SSG issued Decree No. 121 on February 02 to adopt a group of measures that would not be applied retroactively. Under the new decree, lease contracts must be documented with the SSG’s Ministry of Justice, while courts may consider lease contracts documented by the notary public to be executive deeds. The decree also sets the lease term at one year before it may be renewed. Monthly rental payments must also be explicitly stated in the lease contract in either Turkish lira or US dollars, while the one-time commission fee paid to real estate brokers may not exceed half of one month’s rent. The February decree entitles lessors to evict tenants at the end of the lease term. If lease contracts are not properly documented, they may be settled through the court.
The SSG formed a real estate committee in November 2021 to undertake two tasks. First, it sets the real estate rental values according to the monthly income levels of residents, most of whom are displaced, including those who were forcibly displaced to Idlib from formerly opposition-controlled areas elsewhere in Syria. Second, it identifies solutions to the issue of documenting lease contracts. To this end, the committee met with a wide cross-section of tenants, lessors, and real estate brokers. While Decree No. 121 adopted the committee’s recommendations regarding lease contract documentation, it did not heed its recommendations for rental prices. Informed sources told The Syria Report that large property owners and some real estate investors close to the SSG were opposed to rental ceilings.
Opposition-held parts of northwestern Syria have been witnessing a major housing crisis since regime forces recaptured former opposition territory in northern Hama governorate and the southern parts of the Idlib governorate in 2018 and 2019. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced during the military escalation to northern Idlib and neighbouring northern Aleppo governorate, where those without the means to rent houses now live in camps. Those who were financially able to do so rented homes in urban areas. Monthly rent for an 80-square-metre apartment in Idlib city is now about USD 100, while rent can be as high as USD 150 in Sarmada and Dana, towns close to the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing.
An ongoing currency crisis in opposition-held areas and the collapse of both the Turkish lira and the Syrian pound has caused issues between lessors and tenants. Many property owners have turned to raising rent, whether they are in TL or still in SYP, to suit the current exchange rate without any controls in place to protect tenants’ rights. To solve this problem, Decree No. 121 obliges both the lessor and the tenant to adopt a rental value mutually agreed upon, set in either USD or TL, for the year-long period of the lease contract. The adoption of a unified model for lease contracts, as well as their official documentation with the SSG’s Ministry of Justice, is useful in resolving contract-related disputes between lessors and tenants.
The head of the SSG met with the real estate committee at the end of 2021, stating afterwards that the SSG praised the assistance that international NGOs and civil society organisations had provided in handing over more than 9,200 housing units to residents in need. The housing units had been part of the SSG’s ongoing solution to the housing crisis, he added. He said that the SSG had tasked several technical committees with conducting studies to expand zoning plans and grant licences to establish new housing cooperatives and accommodate increasing demand for housing.
A correspondent for The Syria Report raised doubts over the SSG’s statement, pointing out that certain investors close to the SSG are not required to obtain construction permits and that their construction work has not halted in order to wait for the expansion of zoning plans. These privileged investors mainly include owners of urban expansion projects at the outer limits of Sarmada and Dana. For instance, New Sarmada City, a residential project on the outskirts of Sarmada in northern Idlib governorate, is located outside the town’s zoning plans. The project is being implemented by the Al-Raqi Construction Company, whose director is the former commander of HTS and previously held the position of “Emir of Aleppo.”
An photocopied image of Decree No. 121
Source: Facebook of the Prime Minister’s Office of the Syrian Salvation Government