No complaints about unfair rent prices

The recent story about some foreign football players’ salaries being eaten up by high rent costs has rekindled the debate on rental prices.

A part of the 2019 amendment to the Rent Act states: “Leigunevndin [the Rent Control Board] is authorised to process complaints from disputing parties regarding agreed rent prices, overrule clearly unfair prices and set a new price.”

But the board has not processed any such cases since Eyðbjørn Larsen took over as board chairman in autumn 2020.

“One possible reason for this is that the right for tenants to register complaints about high rent costs is relatively new,” he says.

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“We are a complaints board, which means we do not actively investigate disputes about rent prices. Tenants who are unhappy with their rent price need to contact us, and then we will take up the matter.”

So, when is a rent unfair? There is no official data on rent costs based on factors such as price per square metre, quality of the rental property and location.

“The law does not provide us with any objective measures for determining fair and unfair rent.

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“This would obviously be helpful, and this is something we have discussed a lot in our board meetings. But until such measures are available, we need to work on a case-by-case basis.”

This means that tenants are required to make their own subjective assessments of whether their rent is fair, based on comparisons with similar rental contracts and then present their assessment to the Rent Control Board for consideration.

The lack of complaints about high rent does not mean the board members are left twiddling their thumbs. The board receives many complaints about rental contract termination, deposit returns, notice periods, contract breaches and similar disputes.

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Demand far outstrips supply in the housing rental market, not least in Tórshavn, and this pushes rental prices up.

“We can help in cases where we deem the rent to be clearly unreasonable, but we cannot fight the market forces,” Larsen adds.

“A good place for tenants to start is to learn as much as possible about the relevant regulations and appeals processes.”

For more information, visit the Leigunevndin website. A few public documents are available in English. Most of the text, however, is in Faroese only. Contact details are listed at the bottom of the site.

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

Translated by prosa.fo.

More Faroese News in English.