Rent control in Paris: €968 saved per year for tenants, according to Apur

Rent control, which the Socialist mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, is calling to be made permanent, has reduced rents by an average of 5% in Paris since 2019, representing an average saving of 968 euros per year, according to a study by the Parisian Urban Planning Workshop (Apur) published on Monday, April 27.

This study, which Apur has been publishing since 2024 and has just updated, shows a "confirmed effectiveness of the control system in Paris", with rents on average "5% lower than they would have been without control" between July 2019 and June 2025.

Parisians are estimated to have saved an average of €81 per month, or €968 per year, throughout this period thanks to rent control. In the last year studied, from July 2024 to June 2025, the savings amounted to €1.019.

The urban planning agency of the Greater Paris metropolis notes that the smaller the dwelling, the more pronounced the effect of rent control: for dwellings of less than 18m³, rents are 12,4% below the level estimated without control.

Emmanuel Grégoire is "calling on the government" to "maintain rent control", given the legislative bottleneck which risks compromising the vote on the bill aimed at making it permanent.

The experiment, implemented in approximately 70 municipalities, including Lille, Lyon, Grenoble and Montpellier, is expected to end in November 2026.

The government, for its part, is awaiting the results of the various impact studies commissioned, in particular to find out if the scheme contributes to reducing the rental supply as its detractors claim.

The Apur study, conducted with two economic research centers and the real estate listings platform SeLoger, concludes, however, that there is "no lasting and significant effect of rent control on the Parisian rental supply between 2018 and 2025".

The most marked variations in the number of available listings in Paris coincide with one-off events unrelated to rent control, such as the health crisis or the Olympic Games.

For Jacques Baudrier, deputy mayor in charge of housing at the Paris town hall, "it is the very significant increase in the number of second homes and vacant dwellings that is the cause of the decrease in rental supply".

However, the regulations are not yet being properly followed. Nearly half of all rental listings published between July 2024 and June 2025 offered rents exceeding the regulatory threshold. This may reflect a breach of the permitted rent cap or a rent supplement applied due to exceptional circumstances.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.