Casablanca Uncovers Massive Losses from Undervalued City Property Rentals

The office of the President of the Casablanca Council, Nabila Rmili, has taken a closer look at the city’s real estate assets and has discovered a gold mine that brings in virtually nothing to the city. The elected official presented the results of the census carried out during the last ordinary session of the Council. According to her explanations, several real estate properties, including the city’s stores and facilities, are rented at a derisory price, not exceeding 20 DH, while all estimates indicate a theoretical rental income of several tens of thousands of dirhams for the premises concerned, reports the Arabic-language newspaper Al Ahdath Al Maghribia. 30% of the inventoried properties were not registered with the Land Registry, she said.

Based on these rather unsavory findings, the city council has taken the necessary decisions. These include launching an operation to register all properties belonging to the city, in order to avoid any risk of them being stolen by third parties, reviewing the rent of the Sqala, a building that has been the subject of a long-standing conflict between tenants and the city hall, which wanted to raise the rent. The rent for the site now goes from 750 DH to 53,000 DH. The council intends to extend the revaluation of rents to other city properties. This is expected to relieve, we hope, the city’s finances.