Real Estate: Fear of Unpaid Rent Leaves 2.4 Million Homes Vacant in Morocco

The figures are dizzying and illustrate the extent of the blockage. According to recent data from the High Commission for Planning (HCP) cited by Finances News Hebdo, the Kingdom has nearly 2.4 million vacant housing units in 2024. This dormant stock coexists, however, with very strong demand from households and businesses. But the market is jammed by a sense of legal insecurity. Rental investment, once a safe haven for savers, has become a source of anxiety. The fear of the "bad payer" or the unshakable tenant is pushing landlords to massively withdraw their properties from the market, artificially drying up the supply.

On the ground, the search for a roof is an uphill battle. Despite the proliferation of digital platforms and real estate agents, rental candidates face increasingly stringent requirements or a shortage of quality properties. Legal professionals, such as Me Nabil Haddaji of the Casablanca bar, point to the ineffectiveness of the current legal arsenal. Laws 67/12 and 49/16, intended to regulate rental relations, show their limits in the face of the reality of the courts. Eviction or collection procedures are judicial marathons, costly and time-consuming, which end up discouraging the bravest.

Faced with this impasse, experts are calling for urgent reform. One of the preferred avenues is the use of arbitration, a more flexible and faster method of settling disputes without clogging the courts. But another, more radical solution is gaining ground in the debates: the establishment of a national file of payment incidents, a sort of "blacklist" of defaulting tenants. This mechanism, already tested abroad, would help clean up the market by giving landlords the necessary visibility to rent out their properties with peace of mind, and thus put back on the market these millions of unused square meters.