Rents: how much will the contracts adjusted in March 2025 increase?
The rental market in Argentina went through a period of changes and reconfiguration after the repeal of the Rental Law in December 2023, which completely turned the rules of the game upside down.
In March 2025, different adjustment methods will coexist, generating very different scenarios for tenants depending on the type of contract they have signed . Thus, on March 1, two types of rental contracts will be updated :
It should be noted that contracts signed between October 19 and December 29, 2023, which are governed by the Casa Propia Index , are still in force. These will have a new adjustment starting in April.
In March, contracts signed in the same month in 2023 will experience a second and final year-on-year increase of 149.34% , more than 25 percentage points less than those recorded in February (174.42%), according to data collected by the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA).
In concrete numbers, if a tenant pays a rent of $400,000 , starting next month and for the following 12 months he will have to pay $997,360 , while the one who pays $600,000 will pay $1,496,040 per month. A key fact to keep in mind is that the ICL varies on a daily basis , so the increase will depend on the day of the month in which the contract was signed to apply the corresponding adjustment.
As of December 29, 2023 , with the repeal of the Rental Law, contracts began to be freely agreed between the parties . This means that landlords and tenants can freely agree on the duration of the contract, the frequency of adjustments and the index to be used.
In most cases, the agreements include quarterly updates based on inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) .
For those who signed contracts in December 2024 with adjustment every three months, the March increase will be calculated with the last index published by INDEC in January 2025, so the increase will be 7.3% . In concrete numbers: if the initial rent was $500,000 , the new amount to be paid in March will be approximately $536,500 . While, if the rent is $800,000 , the new amount will rise to $858,400 .
In the third month of the year , the contracts that were agreed upon in the same month of 2022 will end. These were signed for the rental law: for three years and with annual adjustments under the ICL .
Now, the market outlook is different : rental contracts began to be negotiated freely by the parties , with adjustments every three or four months , in pesos and tied to inflation . Therefore, both tenants who terminate their agreements and those who chose to terminate them, must agree on the new contract under these conditions.
However, a key fact to bear in mind is that the values currently being handled in the market tend to be lower than the prices paid by tenants under contract. This is because a gap was created between the adjustment of the ICL and the rental prices of new contracts .
In concrete numbers, rental listing prices in January 2024 increased by 39.7% (the latest reported so far) compared to the same month last year, according to data provided by Zonaprop . Despite this increase, contracts adjusted under the ICL , which measures inflation and wages (with a two-month delay) rose by 149.34% annually in the same month. This increase is considerably higher than the Consumer Price Index (CPI) , which grew by 84.5% in the same period. The latter is the reference taken today to update rental values. In other words, it ends up being “cheaper” to start a new contract than to maintain the one that is adjusted with the ICL .
“The new market dynamics after the repeal of the law means that cheaper options can now be found on the market,” says Soledad Balayan, owner of Maure Inmobiliaria.
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