CASE OF RIEDEL AND OTHERS v. SLOVAKIA
Violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 - Protection of property (Article 1 para. 2 of Protocol No. 1 - Control of the use of property)
Alena Poláčková;Branko Lubarda;Georgios A. Serghides;Helen Keller;Helena Jäderblom;Luis López Guerra;Pere Pastor Vilanova
6. The applicants are owners or co-owners of residential buildings which comprise flats that were or still are subject to rent control. They obtained ownership of the flats by various means, such as restitution, donation, inheritance or purchase. Under the relevant legislation they had to accept that the flats were occupied by tenants with a regulated rent and that they could charge them no more than the maximum amount of rent fixed by the State. The relevant legislation precluded them from unilaterally terminating the leases, or selling the flats other than to the tenants (“the rentcontrol scheme”). The particulars of the flats affected by the rentcontrol scheme are set out in Appendixes 25 (columns AF). 7. The situation of the applicants is structurally and contextually the same as in Bittó and Others v. Slovakia (no. 30255/09, 28 January 2014 (merits) and 7 July 2015 (just satisfaction) and three subsequently decided cases concerning the rent controlscheme in Slovakia (Krahulec v. Slovakia, no. 19294/07; Bukovčanová and Others v. Slovakia, no. 23785/07; and Rudolfer v. Slovakia, no. 38082/07, all adopted on 5 July 2016). 8. It is in dispute between the parties in the present case what amount of rent the applicants would be able to receive by letting their flats under freemarket conditions. By extension, that disagreement translates into an argument over the proportion of the market rent that the regulated rent represents. 9. In that connection, the Government submitted an expert’s opinion drawn up in 2010 in relation to all four applications (“the Government’s expert opinion”), according to which the monthly free-market rent for flats comparable to the applicants’ was between 6.13 and 6.48 euro (EUR) per sq. m in the municipality of Bratislava-Staré Mesto and EUR 5.05 and 5.35 per sq. m in the municipality of Bratislava-Nivy. The regulated rent in the flats owned by the applicants ranged between EUR 0.80 and 1.7 per sq. m. According to those calculations therefore, the regulated rent of the flats possessed by the applicants corresponded to some 14-26% of the market rent in 2010. The relevant data are set out in Appendixes 25 (columns GI). 10. The applicants for their part relied on different sources of information to support their contention that the regulated rent was disproportionately low compared with similar flats to which the rent-control scheme did not apply. The data submitted by them are set out below separately in relation to each application. 11. The applicants maintained that in 2007 the regulated rent ranged between EUR 76 and 84 a month whereas the average free-market rent for comparable flats in a similar location was EUR 956 a month. They submitted an expert’s opinion which showed that the difference between the general rental value of the property and the regulated rent they actually received was EUR 88,431.53 for the period between 2000 and 2011. 12. The applicants submitted that in 2010 the regulated rent for their flats amounted to EUR 95 and 105 a month, whereas the monthly free-market rent for comparable flats was EUR 616. They relied on data from the National Association of Real Estate Agencies (“the NAREA”). Depending on the period and the relevant law in force, the regulated rent represented some 5-13% of the market rent for comparable flats in the area. They further submitted that the sum which they and the other coowners had invested in repairing the building was ten times the income they obtained from letting the flats under the rentcontrol scheme. 13. In 2008 the applicant was allowed to charge a monthly rent of EUR 40 to 60 for each of his flats. He submitted that the market rent in the same area in 2005 was between EUR 305 and EUR 366 a month for the single-room flat and between EUR 396 and EUR 488 a month for the two-room flats. He relied on information about average rental prices published in the press. 14. The applicants submitted that the regulated rent for their flats ranged between EUR 38.5 and 104 a month in 2010. Relying on data from the NAREA, they maintained that the market rent for comparable flats in the area amounted to approximately EUR 616 a month.