Poland: Expected Changes to the Tenancy Law

→ Michał Gruca

When it comes to residential tenancy, the Polish law favours tenants over landlords. The eviction court proceedings are time consuming. Then, getting the verdict does not solve the situation. Before eviction by the bailiff, the commune must offer a replacement facility to privileged tenants, such as pregnant women, minors, pensioners, persons with limited legal capacity, disabled persons, sick persons, unemployed persons, or those requiring social service assistance.

Most oth­er ten­ants, before being evict­ed by the bailiff, must be pro­vid­ed at least with tem­po­rary facil­i­ties. Con­tract claus­es that do not com­ply with the statute are void and statu­to­ry pro­vi­sions apply instead. So evic­tion pro­ceed­ings are slow at both the judi­cial and enforce­ment stages.

Exception: Individuals acting as landlords

Some years ago, the sit­u­a­tion was slight­ly relaxed for indi­vid­u­als act­ing as land­lords of res­i­den­tial premis­es who are not car­ry­ing out busi­ness activ­i­ty in terms of rent­ing premis­es. Such land­lords have been allowed to enter into occa­sion­al ten­an­cy agree­ments. The agree­ments can be exe­cut­ed for a lim­it­ed time only, and nev­er longer than 10 years.

To take advan­tage of such an agree­ment, the ten­ant must name oth­er res­i­den­tial premis­es where he can go after ter­mi­na­tion of ten­an­cy and must pro­vide a writ­ten state­ment of that prop­er­ty owner’s con­sent to the ten­ant liv­ing there. Addi­tion­al­ly, the ten­ant must issue a for­mal state­ment in which he promis­es to leave the rent­ed premis­es at the landlord’s request (vol­un­tary sub­mis­sion to exe­cu­tion).
In such case, evic­tion is car­ried out based on the vol­un­tary sub­mis­sion to exe­cu­tion and is effect­ed to the premis­es named by the ten­ant. It makes the pro­ce­dure much quick­er.

Expected amendment

To revive the res­i­den­tial ten­an­cy mar­ket, the Min­istry of Trans­port, Con­struc­tion and Mar­itime Econ­o­my is work­ing on an amend­ment to the Ten­ant Pro­tec­tion Act. Occa­sion­al ten­an­cy agree­ments will be also avail­able for busi­ness enti­ties oper­at­ing as land­lords. The expect­ed changes may lead to an increase of invest­ment in res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty mar­ket in Poland and to the growth of rental mar­ket.

The tenant must name other residential premises where he can go after termination of tenancy and must provide a written statement of that property owner’s consent to the tenant living there.