Whether Cyprus rental law gives you anything beyond what your contract says comes down to one date and one map. The Rent Control Law, Law 23/1983, covers only a building let as a dwelling or a shop that stands inside a declared controlled area and was completed by 31 December 1999. A flat finished in Limassol in 2004 sits outside it, and the tenancy is whatever the two of you signed.
Two rental systems, and how to tell which one you are in
Section 2 defines the property the Law reaches: a building, let as a dwelling or a shop, within the boundaries of a controlled area, completed by 31 December 1999. Controlled areas are declared by order of the Council of Ministers under section 3, so the test is geographic as well as chronological. Check the completion date on the title or the planning permit first.
Several arrangements are carved out of the definition of "tenancy" altogether: agricultural land, petrol stations, parking spaces, hotels and tourist accommodation, and furnished houses or flats let for less than six months. A furnished winter let never acquires rent control protection, however old the building.
Then there is the definition of "tenant". It covers a person ordinarily resident or seated in Cyprus and extends to sub-tenants and to a surviving spouse or child living there when the tenant died. It then says it does not include a person who is not a citizen of the Republic, other than the spouse of a citizen, or a company controlled by foreigners. Read literally, a British tenant of a 1980s Nicosia flat falls outside the protective scheme even though the building falls inside it. Whether that exclusion survives EU non-discrimination rules for an EU national tenant is an argument to put to an advocate, not to assume either way.
What a statutory tenant is
A statutory tenant, under section 2, is a tenant who carries on holding the property once the first tenancy expires or is terminated. Nothing is signed; staying put creates the status.
Section 27 fixes the terms: the statutory tenant observes every condition of the expired agreement and takes the benefits flowing from it, so far as they sit with the Law. Running the other way, he can give up possession only on the notice the old contract required, or where it required none, on at least one month's written notice.
How much the rent can rise
Section 8 prohibits any increase on a statutory tenant except as the Law provides. Either side may apply to the Rent Control Court to fix a fair rent, but not until two years have passed since the tenant took possession or since the last increase or reduction. The same two-year gap governs an increase the parties negotiate privately, and their agreed figure cannot exceed the ceiling then in force.
That ceiling is reset every two years by order of the Council of Ministers. The current order, K.Δ.Π. 108/2025, published in the Official Gazette on 17 April 2025, fixes it at 6% for the two years from 22 April 2025 to 21 April 2027. For displaced persons and sufferers, section 8(4)(b) caps the rise at 80% of the general rate.
Fair rent is not market rent. Section 8(5) directs the court to work from market rent and the average of rents in the same small area, to leave scarcity of comparable properties out of account, and to weigh the age, character, size, location and condition of the building, with valuation officers attached to the court doing the survey.
Once a rent has been registered, section 10 makes it unlawful to take more than that figure for the two years that follow. Paying or accepting the excess is a criminal offence carrying up to three months' imprisonment or a fine, which the statute still states in Cyprus pounds, a currency withdrawn in 2008. That tells you how often anyone reaches for it.
The grounds a landlord has to prove
Section 11 says no judgment or order for possession, or for the eviction of a statutory tenant, may be made at all, then lists thirteen exceptions. Arrears are the first and by far the most used.
The sequence is tight. The landlord serves a written demand. If rent lawfully due is still outstanding twenty-one days later and no tender has been made before the application is filed, the ground is made out, and by section 11(4) that demand also terminates the tenancy automatically. The tenant then has fourteen days from service to pay everything owed, which defeats the claim unless he has failed to pay systematically throughout the tenancy.
The 2020 amendment, Law 3(I)/2020, made the defence much harder to run. The registrar accepts a reply for filing only if it arrives with proof that the arrears claimed have been deposited at the court accounts office, or a receipt from the landlord or his agent, or a bank deposit slip in the landlord's favour. That decision goes before the judge within three working days for final approval, and no appeal lies from it. Where an eviction order does follow, the court must allow at least ninety days to comply.
The other grounds are narrower than most landlords hope: nuisance or use of the premises for illegal or immoral purposes; damage from destructive acts or wilful serious neglect, where the tenant escapes by making good in full within two months of service; breach of an express covenant against subletting; and sub-letting profits unreasonably disproportionate to the rent paid.
Own use is the ground people underestimate. The property must be reasonably required for the landlord, a spouse, child or dependent parent, or a member of a family company that owns it, and the claim fails where greater hardship would follow from making the order than from refusing it. That balance takes in whether the tenant is displaced, whether other suitable accommodation at a reasonable rent exists, and whether the landlord bought the building after the Law came into force in order to use this very ground.
Redevelopment carries its own timetable. Demolition, rebuild, substantial conversion, or works to a listed building will support an order only where the permits are in hand, the work cannot be done with the tenant in place, and the landlord has given not less than four months' written notice to vacate. Where no other warning is prescribed, section 11(2) still requires one month in writing, and under section 11(5) the court may suspend execution or postpone possession by up to a year. Appeals from the Rent Control Court go to the Court of Appeal within forty-two days.
Shops get compensation and a right of return
Losing a shop is treated differently from losing a flat. Where possession goes to the landlord for his own business use or for redevelopment, section 12 lets the court award up to eighteen months' current rent in compensation, and section 13 allows more where the tenant loses goodwill by moving (the Law calls it αέρας, air). The order cannot be executed until that sum is paid. Under section 14 a shop tenant evicted for redevelopment, whose trade has been tied to those premises for five years, can also demand a tenancy of a shop in the new building by notice within three months of the order, and the court can grant it at a fair rent if the landlord refuses.
Repairs, communal charges and deposits
Section 27(2) allocates repairs where the contract is silent. The landlord takes latent defects, the watertightness of the roof, the electrical, plumbing and drainage installations, and any natural deterioration that creates a danger to life. The tenant must protect the property from damage by his household or guests, repair it promptly, and allow inspection at reasonable intervals after notice.
Communal charges fall on the tenant unless agreed otherwise, but only the share attributable to the property plus minor upkeep of the common parts, not major maintenance, alteration or replacement. Section 2 excludes them from the definition of "rent", so a 6% increase is 6% of the rent alone. Our guide to property taxes in Cyprus covers the municipal and sewerage charges sitting alongside them.
Deposits appear nowhere in the Law. No statutory cap, no protection scheme, no adjudicator, so a deposit is worth what your contract and your evidence make it worth. Photograph every room on the day you take the keys.
If the building went up after 1999
Most flats bought by British buyers in the past twenty years fall outside all of this. The tenancy is an ordinary contract under the Contract Law, Cap. 149, so the notice period, the permitted increases and the grounds for ending it are whatever the agreement says, and a landlord seeking possession sues in the District Court rather than the Rent Control Court. No background statute rescues a term you did not negotiate.
Two recent changes are worth knowing. A lease signed on or after 1 January 2026 no longer needs stamping: the Stamp Duty (Repealing) Law 239(I)/2025 abolished the duty outright, as our note on stamp duty and transfer fees sets out. And rent received is taxed at the ordinary progressive rates after the flat 20% statutory deduction, plus 2.65% for the health system, with the Special Defence Contribution on rents gone from the same date. What happens on exit is in our guide to selling property in Cyprus.
Renting out or renting in Cyprus? Check the building's completion date before you assume anything about your position, then have a property lawyer from our directory read the agreement. Provisions and figures here reflect the law in force in August 2026 and are general information, not advice on a particular tenancy.