How the rental housing market will change with the requirement to obtain consent from neighbours

Photo: Реальное время

“Renting out apartments often becomes a violation of the rights of other owners”

Russia may ban renting out apartments without the consent of neighbours — the proposal is being studied by the relevant State Duma committee. The authors of the bill — LDPR deputies — believe that the current practice of renting housing violates the rights of citizens to comfortable living conditions. At the same time, they admit that the Housing Code has already provided for the obligations of the owner of the premises to comply with all the rights and legitimate interests of neighbours. In other words, he is responsible for noise, disorder and damage to the common property of the building along with tenants.

“However, the issue of obtaining the consent of neighbours to rent out an apartment remains unresolved. This rule is especially relevant for cases of short-term (daily) rent. Owners of residential premises in an apartment building, of course, have the right to dispose of their property at their own discretion. However, renting out apartments on a daily basis often becomes a violation of the rights of other owners of premises in an apartment building to comfortable living conditions and becomes the cause of the risk of damage to common property in an apartment building,” the deputies pointed out.

Therefore, the authors of the initiative propose to prohibit landlords from renting out housing without the approval of neighbours. Not all residents of an apartment building must give consent, but only the owners of neighbouring and adjacent premises to the rented apartment. Moreover, consent will be required regardless of the term of the lease (rent) agreement or gratuitous use. The document is drawn up in written form. It must indicate the full name, passport details of an individual neighbour or the name and registration number of a legal entity occupying premises adjacent to the rented apartment, as well as the details of the title deeds.

It is proposed to introduce fines for violating the law — for this purpose, they plan to amend Article 7.21 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, indicating liability for landlords.

Increase transparency and tax discipline

The issue of daily rental of apartments was discussed last year. The Constitutional Court of Russia put an end to this dispute, indicating that short-term rental is allowed if the interests of other residents are not violated.

Next in line are a number of initiatives related to the rental housing market. One of them concerns the requirement to register any tenants — this is important for migration registration. Another bill proposes to introduce fines for renting out housing without concluding an agreement. Thus, citizens can be fined 5-10,000 rubles, officials — 10-20,000 rubles, legal entities — 20-50,000 rubles.

Another proposal is to oblige online ads for renting housing and providing services only after registration on the State Services. Senator Artyom Sheikin asks about this in his letter to the Ministry of Digital Development. According to him, this is necessary to increase transparency and tax discipline: “We are talking about introducing verification of users posting ads on ad placement services through the State Services portal, integrating these online services with the My Tax mobile application, as well as information reminders on online platforms about timely payments taxes.”

“Apartments will be rented out only through State Services, that is, the owner will rent directly, and not the real estate agency,” explained Anastasia Gizatova, “I am for the owners themselves to rent out, because this will immediately remove fakes from advertising platforms, there are a lot of deceived people who think that in Kazan you can rent an apartment for 10,000 rubles. And the owners cannot get through and rent out the apartment, because they put up an honest ad that the apartment costs 25,000. I believe that intermediaries as such are not needed for renting.

“There is a serious problem on the market — fake ads, which agencies massively fill aggregators with. Clients do not reach real properties, falling for ‘traps.’ As a result, many real and liquid properties, both from owners and agencies, remain unnoticed by potential tenants,” Marat Gallyamov agrees with her.

“This law is unlikely to work”

The bill on the need to obtain consent from neighbours when renting out housing is currently in the relevant committee of the State Duma. On 7 May, the State Duma Legal Department issued a conclusion that it complies with the requirements of Article 104 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

“It seems to me that this law is unlikely to work. This is not so much a legal question as a household question: will you give such consent with all your passport data and details of property rights documents? I don’t know, especially in our age, when fraud in various forms is flourishing and we are all very careful with personal data. Therefore, I think that it is unlikely to be technically feasible,” doubts Ildar Khabibullin, managing partner of the law firm A2K Legal.

In addition, the rights and obligations of owners of rented residential premises have long been regulated by law, the source said. “The Civil Code is over 30 years old, and the relationship between neighbours is not the biggest problem. Of course, this is an eternal topic, passed down from generation to generation, but it has never created major difficulties,” he added.

According to the expert, it is better to focus efforts on processing complaints from the population about noise and disorder among neighbours in order to avoid such problems: “Here, clearer feedback from the district police officer in such cases should be established. And collecting written consent from all owners of neighbouring and adjoining apartments, it seems to me, is unrealistic. In addition, it is the constitutional right of a citizen to dispose of his property.” Ildar Khabibullin believes that it is necessary to regulate rental activities not from the point of view of tightening the responsibility of homeowners, since, as a rule, we are talking about conscientious landlords.

Rent is getting cheaper in the second quarter of the year

The Russian rental housing market remains predominantly unofficial, according to Dom.RF data. 13%, or 8 million families, live in rented housing, of which 9% rent apartments on market terms, the rest live with relatives. Another third of families indicated that they rent housing unofficially — without a lease agreement. In total, 10 thousand housing lease agreements for a period longer than a year were registered in 2024. This is approximately 10% of the total number of apartments offered for rent, the Russian Registry reported. In the first quarter of 2025, there were 101 thousand active advertisements for renting housing in Russia. Compared to the same period last year, the number of lots has almost doubled.

The results of the first quarter showed that rental housing in Russia is getting cheaper. On average, prices in cities with a population of over a million fell by 7.5%, according to the Yandex.Real Estate service. Rates fell the most in Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don and St. Petersburg, which was explained by a significant increase in the supply of apartments for rent. In Kazan, the average long-term rental rate fell by 9.7% — to 45,000 rubles.

“Price reduction is indeed taking place: at the moment, demand for apartment rentals has decreased. Apartments fell to the average market price in the period 2023-2024,” confirmed Ruslan Khabibrakhmanov and added: “The price reduction is not critical. In the summer, during the season, prices will rise until September — October inclusive. Then a drop in prices to 25-30,000 + utility bill is expected. At the moment, the situation on the real estate market is not the best: apartments may not be rented out for a week, demand has significantly decreased. It is predicted that the summer season will not be as active as in 2024. There is a chance for minor price dumping.

“In the second quarter, as in the first, the trend continues to decrease. We are talking about properties that were not put up for sale, properties that were rented out above market last year, as well as investment lots acquired last year during the housing market boom. The renovation is complete, and it is necessary to rent out the properties. This year will be significantly different from the previous one. Competition among properties has really increased — on average, the price is decreasing by 10-15% compared to last year. However, we adhere to the policy of working with liquid properties. At the present time, it is more important than ever to pay attention to the price and quality of the content,” said Marat Gallyamov.

According to him, if in 2023 and 2024 the process was managed by the owner due to the unaffordability of rental housing, today the management has passed to the tenants — this can be said with confidence. “The market is oversaturated, and the trends have changed. A similar situation is observed throughout Russia. Growth trends can only be recorded when the mortgage situation changes,” he added.

It is quite difficult to estimate the size of the entire rental market taking into account its shadow side. For the first time, experts made such an attempt in 2023 in the daily rental segment. The total volume of the short-term rental market then amounted to 231.2 billion rubles. According to the Centre for Strategic Research (CSR), by 2026 this figure could more than double to 495 billion rubles. By the end of 2024, the market had already reached 333 billion, an increase of 35.4% compared to the previous year.