On 1 May 2025, the Brussels’ Ordinance of 10 April 2025 (the “Ordinance of 10 April 2025”) “organising the entry into force of articles 8-13 of the Ordinance of 28 October 2021 (the “Ordinance of 28 October 2021”) creating a joint rental commission and combatting excessive rents” entered into force.
The Ordinance of 28 October 2021 had already introduced the concepts of “excessive rent” and “reference rent” in articles 2, 224 and 224/1 of the Brussels Housing Code, but those provisions, restricting excessive rents, had not yet entered into force.
Article 224 of the Brussels Housing Code Rent specifies that a rent is presumed to be excessive when it either (i) exceeds the reference rent by more than 20%; or (ii) does not exceed the reference rent by 20% but the property contains “substantial quality defects that are inherent to the property or the surroundings”. This presumption is rebuttable if it is demonstrated that the difference between the charged rent and the reference rent is justified by “substantial elements of comfort that are inherent to the property or the surroundings”
The reference rent is defined in article 2 §1 of the Brussels Housing Code as the median rent for the concerned property, as listed in the indicative rent roster, which was introduced by the Brussels Capital Government on 19 October 2017. The reference rent can be consulted on the Brussels’ government website Homepage – huurprijzen.brussels / Homepage – loyers.brussels.
The Ordinance of 10 April 2025 has also activated the powers of the so-called joint rental commission (the “Commission”), which is established within the Housing Advisory Council and whose objective is to assess the fairness of residential rents.
Both parties to a lease agreement may ask the Commission to issue a reasoned opinion on the fairness of a contractually agreed rent.
First, the parties to a lease agreement may ask the Commission to provide an opinion on whether a contractually agreed rent is excessive. In case of a lease agreement with a duration between 1 – 3 years, a request to revise an allegedly excessive rent may not be submitted to the Court or the Commission during the first 2 months of the lease agreement. For lease agreements with a longer duration, this waiting period is 3 months.
Second, the parties to a lease agreement may also ask the Commission to provide an opinion in case of a rent revision. Article 240 of the Brussels Housing Code provides that contracting parties may agree on a revision of the applicable rent between the 9th and 6th month preceding the end of each three-year period. In case the parties should want the input of the Commission on whether the applicable rent is reasonable, they can request its opinion.
In both instances, the opinion of the Commission is free of charge, but non-binding. The opinion must be issued within 2 months of the request. If the opinion recommends a rent adjustment, and if the parties should not (immediately) agree, the Commission may propose a mediation to the parties, which is limited to the rent amount.
In case of an agreement on the adjusted rent, and unless agreed otherwise the adjusted rent will enter into effect on the first day of the month after the request was submitted to the Commission.
If the parties should disagree with the non-binding opinion of the Commission and the proposed mediation should not result in an agreement, the adversely affected party may file a legal proceeding to obtain a rent revision. In such case, the competent court is entitled to revert to the Commission to either obtain a copy of an already issued opinion between the parties or to issue an opinion if no opinion was yet issued. The court will subsequently render a binding decision on whether the contractually agreed rent should be adjusted. In case of an adjustment, the adjusted rent will be applied retroactively up to a maximum of 4 months prior to the date of the introduction of the legal proceeding.
Article 14 of the Ordinance of 28 October 2021 expressly states that it applies to all lease agreements, including those signed on the date of the entry into force of the Ordinance. As such, the rent cap applies to both existing lease agreements and new lease agreements where either the landlord proposes a rent, or the parties discuss the revision of the rent.
The introduction of a mandatory rent cap in Brussels is contested, both within the Brussels Government and by different stakeholders in the real estate market. One critique is that this new regulation may hinder new housing developments and renovations, as developers and investors may now decide to avoid Brussels, which will put even more strain on the existing housing portfolio. Another objection is that the current database of reference rents of the Brussels government is outdated, as the reference rents were collected between 2017 and 2020. Opponents of the new regulation argue that it would have been better to first update the reference rent database, a.o. by using the information resulting from the mandatory registration of lease agreements in Brussels as from 1 January 2025, namely via Irisrent, and this in addition to the pre-existing federal registration thereof via MyRent.
Seven real estate sector organisations (UPSI-BVS, Embuild Brussels, CIB, SNPC-NEMS, Federia, BECI and UCM) state that they are preparing a joint appeal to the Constitutional Court to have the new rules declared unconstitutional. At present, no appeal has yet been published on the website of the Constitution Court.
