This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal, tax or investment advice. Rules change and individual situations differ. Always confirm the current position with a qualified professional before acting.
Every summer a short decree appears in the Journal officiel that most French landlords never read, because it concerns a tenancy regime older than the Fifth Republic. Décret n° 2026-712 of 29 July 2026 sets the maximum rent increase for homes still governed by the law of 1 September 1948 at 0.78 percent, backdated to 1 July. If you have never met a loi de 1948 tenant, this is the article that explains why a Paris flat can be advertised at half the price of its neighbour and still be a bad deal. If you own one, it tells you what you may charge this year, what you may not, and how the regime ends.
What a loi de 1948 tenancy is
The law of 1 September 1948 was written for a country short of a million homes, and it did two things that still bite. It froze rents on the pre-war housing stock at levels the State would revise by decree. And it gave the sitting tenant a droit au maintien dans les lieux, a right to stay indefinitely once the lease ran out, with no new contract needed. The regime applies to homes built before 1 September 1948 in communes of more than 10,000 inhabitants and their neighbours, and, since the reform of 23 December 1986, only where the tenant was already in place on that date. Nobody has been able to enter it for forty years, so it is dying out one funeral at a time. The Insee counted 114,000 such homes in 2013, about one percent of rentals, down from around fifteen percent of the rental stock in the early 1970s, and the number today is smaller still. What survives is concentrated where the old buildings are: Paris and its inner suburbs, Lyon, Marseille, and the centres of the larger provincial cities.
The lease itself is barely regulated. It need not be written, it has no minimum term, and its content is whatever the parties agreed decades ago. What the law controls is the rent, through a classification of every home into a category by comfort and equipment, from II A at the top to IV at the bottom, category I having left the regime long ago. Each category carries a prix de base per square metre of surface corrigée, a notional floor area weighted for the state of the property, its fittings and its position. The product of the two is the valeur locative, the legal maximum rent. The decree published each summer revises those prices and sets the percentage by which existing rents may rise towards them.
What the 2026 decree says
From 1 July 2026, rents on homes in categories II A, II B, II C, III A and III B may be increased by at most 0.78 percent, and only until they reach the valeur locative for their category. The same rate applies to the flat-rate rents fixed under article 34 of the 1948 law. Category IV, the lowest grade, homes in very poor condition, gets no increase at all. The rate last year was 1.40 percent, and the pattern is not a coincidence. The decree tracks the first-quarter indice de référence des loyers, the same index that governs ordinary rent revisions. That index rose 1.40 percent in the first quarter of 2025 and 0.78 percent in the first quarter of 2026. The decree was published on 31 July with effect from 1 July, so the increase applies to the July rent even though the text arrived a month late.
| Category | Paris agglomeration: first 10 m², then each further m² | Elsewhere: first 10 m², then each further m² |
|---|---|---|
| II A | €14.11 / €8.37 | €11.52 / €6.87 |
| II B | €9.70 / €5.20 | €7.94 / €4.32 |
| II C | €7.44 / €3.93 | €6.06 / €3.26 |
| III A | €4.49 / €2.38 | €3.68 / €2.06 |
| III B | €2.66 / €1.38 | €2.19 / €1.15 |
| IV | €0.26 / €0.12 (no annual increase) | €0.26 / €0.12 (no annual increase) |
The arithmetic is where the regime shows its age. Take the worked example the government itself uses: a category II C flat in Paris with a corrected surface of 43 m². Ten square metres at €7.44 and thirty-three at €3.93 give a ceiling of €204.09 a month. The same flat on the open market would fetch somewhere around €1,300, and even under Paris rent control the reference rents run at roughly €25 to €35 per square metre. A loi de 1948 rent is not a discount. It is a different currency.
How this differs from an ordinary rent revision
Under the 1989 law that governs almost every other French tenancy, the landlord revises the rent once a year on the anniversary written in the lease. The increase follows the IRL for the quarter the lease names, and only if the lease contains a revision clause. Miss the anniversary by more than a year and the increase is lost. The 1948 regime works the other way round. The increase comes from a decree, not a clause, so it applies whether or not the old agreement mentions it. It takes effect on 1 July for everyone, whatever the lease date. It is a maximum the landlord may apply rather than a formula that fixes the figure. And it is capped not by the index but by the valeur locative. A rent that already sits at the ceiling for its category rises only when the decree lifts the prix de base, which this year it did by the same 0.78 percent. The one thing the two regimes share is the direction of travel: in 2026 both are close to standing still.
How the regime ends, and what a buyer is really buying
There are three exits, and none of them is quick. The first is the tenant’s departure or death. When the home falls vacant it leaves the 1948 regime for good and can be relet under the 1989 law at a market rent. But death does not always mean vacancy. The right to stay passes to a spouse or PACS partner, to minor children until they come of age, to an ascendant, or to a disabled person, wherever they have lived in the home for more than a year. A buyer looking at an eighty-year-old tenant should ask who else is on the electoral roll at that address.
The second is the bail de sortie progressive, the eight-year exit lease created by the 1986 reform. It is available only for category II B and II C homes, and only where the household’s net taxable income for the previous year exceeds a threshold. That threshold is €34,233 for one person outside Île-de-France and €45,644 in it, rising with household size. The landlord proposes a new rent based on at least three comparable local rents, six in an agglomeration above a million people, by recorded delivery or bailiff. The tenant has two months to accept, to challenge the income condition with evidence, or to stay silent, which counts as a refusal. The landlord then has six months from the proposal to take the matter to the conciliation commission or the judge, and if that deadline passes the home stays under the 1948 regime. If the lease is agreed, the gap between the old rent and the new one is spread evenly over the eight years, after which a standard 1989 lease follows at a free rent. With one large exception: a tenant who is over 65 or disabled at the end of the eight years cannot be given notice, and the rent cannot be raised on renewal. The Service Public sheet sets out the procedure step by step.
The third is notice at the end of a fixed-term lease, which in practice is rare, because most of these tenancies have been rolling on the right to stay for decades and the grounds for repossession are narrow. So the honest description of a flat sold with a loi de 1948 tenant is this. A heavily discounted purchase price. A rent that will not cover the taxe foncière. A tenant whose age and household you cannot control. And an upside that arrives on a date nobody can name. Some investors buy exactly that, as a long option on a Paris address. Most should not, and any who do should insist on seeing the category classification, the surface corrigée calculation and the tenant’s entry date before the compromis, because all three decide the ceiling and the exit.
The decision rule
Landlord: apply 0.78 percent from the July rent, check the result against the ceiling for your category, and if the tenant is in II B or II C and earns above the threshold, cost the eight-year exit lease this autumn. Buyer: price the flat on the tenant’s life expectancy, not on the rent, and walk away if the seller cannot produce the category and the entry date.
FAQ: loi de 1948 rents in 2026
Can a new tenant sign a loi de 1948 lease today?
No. The regime is closed to anyone who moved in after 23 December 1986, and a home that falls vacant leaves it permanently. Every new letting is under the 1989 law.
Does the landlord need a clause in the lease to apply the 0.78 percent?
No. The increase is authorised by the annual decree itself, unlike an IRL revision under the 1989 law, which requires a revision clause. It remains a maximum, and the rent may never exceed the valeur locative for the category.
Why does category IV get no increase?
Category IV is the lowest grade, homes in very poor condition. The law freezes their rent, and the only way to lift the ceiling is to improve the home so that it qualifies for a higher category.
Is a flat with a loi de 1948 tenant a good investment?
Only as a long-dated bet. The purchase price is discounted and the rent is nominal. The tenant’s right to stay can pass to a spouse, an ascendant or a disabled cohabitant, and the exit lease is available only for II B and II C homes where the household earns above the threshold. The return depends on a date nobody can predict.
