RA 9653 Extensions: Where Philippine Rent Control Stands in 2026 (and What Happens in 2027)

The Rent Control Act of 2009 was supposed to expire on December 31, 2013. It is now 2026, and it is still the law. If you are renting in the Philippines and your monthly rent is at or below the covered threshold, RA 9653 still caps how much your landlord can raise your rent this year - but the current extension runs out on December 31, 2026, and what happens after that is genuinely an open question.

This post is about the extension regime itself: why a 2009 law has needed administrative renewals every few years to stay alive, what the current extension says, and what tenants should be watching as 2026 ends. If you want the broader explainer of what the Act actually does (deposits, rent increases, eviction grounds), start with our overview guide and come back here for the status piece.

This post is general information, not legal advice. RentScout is a rental listings site, not a law firm. Specific rental disputes need a lawyer or your local Public Attorney's Office (PAO). Use this guide to understand where the law currently stands, then get proper advice before you act on it.

The Quick Answer for 2026

Yes, the Rent Control Act is still in effect. The current extension is NHSB Resolution 2024-001, issued by the National Human Settlements Board under DHSUD. It keeps the rent control regime in force from January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2026. The covered bracket is the same one RA 9653 has always used: monthly rent of P10,000 and below in Metro Manila and other highly urbanized cities, and P5,000 and below in the rest of the country.

Inside that bracket, the resolution sets a hard ceiling on rent increases for the same tenant in the same unit. For 2025, the cap was 2.3 percent. For 2026, it is 1 percent. On a P9,000 unit, that is a maximum legal increase of P90 this year. If your landlord bumped your rent by more than P90 a month on a covered unit in 2026, that is not aggressive negotiation - it is unlawful under the current resolution.

If any of that is news to you, our tenant rights overview walks through the full Act in plain English: deposits, rent caps, eviction grounds, landlord obligations, and what to do when something goes wrong. The rest of this post focuses on the extension regime and the question most renters never think to ask: how is a 2009 law still running our rent in 2026?

Why RA 9653 Needs Extensions in the First Place

RA 9653 was passed in 2009 as a temporary measure. The Act explicitly set its own expiration on December 31, 2013 - four years of price control, intended as a bridge while housing supply caught up to demand. Congress never intended a permanent rent cap on the Philippine market.

The Act also gave the housing board (originally HUDCC, now NHSB under DHSUD) authority to issue implementing rules and to adjust the annual increase ceiling within the limits the law sets. That second power is the legal hook for the extensions. Each time the regime is about to lapse, the board issues a new resolution that effectively continues the rent control framework, sets the annual cap for the upcoming period, and pushes the expiration date forward by one to three years.

Why does the regime keep getting renewed instead of being replaced by a permanent law? Politically, rent control is hard to remove and hard to make permanent. Removing it would deliver double-digit rent shocks to tenants in covered units the year it ends. Making it permanent would require Congress to commit to ongoing price controls in a market with chronic supply shortages, which neither party has shown appetite for. The administrative extension is the path of least resistance - and it has been the path for over a decade now.

The practical effect for tenants is that the law you live under is technically RA 9653, but the numbers that matter to you - the percentage cap and the end date - come from a board resolution, not the statute itself. Each resolution is its own document, with its own expiry, and the rules can change between resolutions. What was true in 2024 is not necessarily true in 2026.

The Current Extension: NHSB Resolution 2024-001

The active resolution is NHSB Resolution 2024-001, issued by the National Human Settlements Board in late 2024 and effective from January 1, 2025. It does three concrete things every covered tenant should know.

First, it confirms the coverage thresholds. In NCR and other highly urbanized cities, RA 9653 protections apply to units renting up to P10,000 a month. Outside those areas, the ceiling is P5,000 a month. Above those thresholds, the resolution does not apply, and your rent increases are governed by your lease contract and the general Civil Code rules on lease (Articles 1654 to 1660).

Second, it sets the annual cap for same-tenant, same-unit increases. The cap is 2.3 percent for 2025 and 1 percent for 2026. The dropping cap is unusual - in earlier extensions, the cap typically held steady or rose - and likely reflects a deliberate choice to keep effective rent growth below inflation while supply catches up. Whatever the reason, 1 percent in 2026 is the lowest cap the regime has issued in years, and it is enforceable for the full calendar year on every covered unit.

Third, it sets the expiration date. The resolution lapses on December 31, 2026. Without a successor resolution, the rent control regime as currently implemented would simply end the moment the calendar turns over to 2027. In practice, that has not happened in any of the extension cycles since 2013. But the date is real, and as it approaches, watching for the next resolution is worth a few minutes of your time.

If you are renting in the covered bracket, the cap is enforceable - meaning a landlord who exceeds it can be ordered to refund the overage and stop the increase. Our guide on how to get your rental deposit back walks through the same escalation ladder you would use for an unlawful rent increase: written demand, barangay conciliation, then small claims if needed. The mechanics are the same; only the dispute is different.

A Short History of Extensions

The pattern of administrative extensions has been remarkably consistent. RA 9653 took effect in 2009 with a built-in sunset on December 31, 2013. As that date approached, the housing board (then HUDCC, the predecessor to DHSUD) issued the first extension resolution, continuing the regime past the statutory expiration with an updated annual cap. Subsequent resolutions have repeated the pattern roughly every two to three years, each one carrying the regime forward.

When HUDCC was reorganized into the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development in 2019, the extension authority moved with it to the National Human Settlements Board. The format of the resolutions changed (HUDCC numbering gave way to NHSB numbering), but the basic mechanism did not. NHSB Resolution 2024-001 is the most recent in this lineage. It is not the first time the law has been extended, and it almost certainly will not be the last.

What does change between resolutions is the cap. Earlier resolutions in the HUDCC era often held caps in the 2 to 4 percent range for covered units. The current resolution, with its drop from 2.3 percent in 2025 to 1 percent in 2026, is at the lower end of the historical band. If you signed a lease in 2020 and have stayed in the same covered unit since then, the cumulative legal rent increase across all resolutions in that period adds up to a fraction of what an uncapped landlord would have charged. This is not a flashy benefit, but it is real money - and it is the central reason the extension regime persists.

If you want to see the original statute itself, the underlying authority for everything above is RA 9653, available in full at the bottom of this post. It is short - roughly a dozen sections - and the parts that matter most to tenants are Section 4 (rent increase ceiling), Section 5 (coverage thresholds), Section 7 (advance and deposit limits), and Section 9 (the five lawful grounds for eviction).

What Happens If the Regime Expires on December 31, 2026

There are two realistic scenarios. The first, and by far the more likely, is that NHSB issues a successor resolution before the end of 2026 that extends the regime further - whether by another two years, three years, or a different period. If that happens, you will see a new cap (probably announced in late 2026 or early 2027) and a new expiration date, and life carries on more or less as it has since 2013.

The second scenario, less likely but worth knowing about, is that the resolution lapses without immediate replacement. In that case, RA 9653's annual rent increase cap on covered units stops binding administratively, and the statutory baseline (a 7 percent annual cap, written into Section 4 itself) would be the next available reference point. There is also the possibility of a gap period - a few weeks or months between the old resolution lapsing and a new one taking effect. During such a gap, the legal position of mid-lease tenants becomes genuinely murky, and most prudent landlords would not push aggressive increases until the situation is clarified.

What this means in practical terms: if you are on a lease that renews in early 2027 and your unit is in the covered bracket, do not assume the protections you have today will still be in force at renewal. Watch for an NHSB announcement in the second half of 2026. If the new resolution is in place by the time you renew, lock the new cap into your lease language. If it is not, your renewal terms become a regular contract negotiation under the Civil Code, and a landlord who was previously bound by a 1 percent cap is suddenly not.

What Tenants Should Actually Do in 2026

Five practical things, none of which require a lawyer, all of which take less than an evening:

1. Confirm whether your unit is covered. If your monthly rent is P10,000 or below in NCR or another highly urbanized city, or P5,000 or below elsewhere, you are inside the protected bracket. If you are above those numbers, the rent control caps do not apply to you and the rest of this list is mostly about awareness rather than enforcement.

2. Check your 2026 increase against the 1 percent cap. Find your 2025 monthly rent. Multiply by 1.01. That is the maximum your landlord can charge you in 2026 on a covered unit. If they raised it by more, the increase is unlawful for the calendar year, and you have a real grievance you can act on.

3. Time your lease renewal carefully. If your lease comes up for renewal in mid to late 2026, the renewal period straddles the resolution's December 31 expiration. A landlord who knows the resolution is about to lapse may try to push a steep increase that takes effect on January 1, 2027. You can negotiate against that - and the strongest move is to lock in a fixed-percentage cap (or a flat amount) into the renewal contract itself, instead of relying on whatever administrative regime is in place at renewal.

4. Save the resolution number. If your landlord ever disputes the cap, the citation you want is "NHSB Resolution 2024-001, 1 percent for 2026." That single line, in writing, ends almost every conversation about same-tenant increases on covered units this year.

5. Read your lease for the renewal language. A surprising number of contracts include rent escalation clauses that are unenforceable on covered units (anything above the resolution cap is void) but perfectly enforceable on uncovered ones. Before you sign anything new, run through our checklist of 5 things to check before signing a rental agreement. The escalation clause is on the list, and it is the one that costs the most when it is missed.

A Final Word

The Rent Control Act has lasted almost three times longer than it was supposed to, kept alive by a string of administrative extensions issued every few years by the housing board. The current one runs until the last day of 2026. Most renters do not know it exists, do not know which resolution number applies to them, and do not know that the cap they are getting this year is 1 percent. Knowing those three facts puts you ahead of most landlords.

RentScout aggregates rental listings from Facebook groups across the Philippines, updated throughout the day. Filter by location, price range, and property type to find your next home - and once you do, this guide and our other legal posts are here to make sure your tenancy is on solid ground from day one.

And one more time, because it matters: this post is general information, not legal advice. The rules summarised here are accurate as of mid-2026 and based on NHSB Resolution 2024-001. If a successor resolution is issued, the cap and expiration date will change. If you are in an actual dispute, talk to a lawyer or the Public Attorney's Office (PAO) before you act.

Sources

Every hard claim in this post traces back to one of the following primary sources. Where the resolution itself was not directly accessible during research, the figures are as reported in news coverage of the resolution and consistent with the parameters the underlying statute permits.

Republic Act No. 9653 (the Rent Control Act of 2009) - full text on lawphil.net. Section 4 sets the 7 percent statutory baseline for annual rent increases. Section 5 sets the coverage thresholds. Section 11 originally set the December 31, 2013 expiration and granted the housing board authority to issue implementing rules and adjust the annual cap.

NHSB Resolution 2024-001, issued by the National Human Settlements Board under DHSUD. The current administrative extension of the rent control regime, covering January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2026, and the source of the 2.3 percent cap for 2025 and the 1 percent cap for 2026 on covered units. The resolution itself was not accessible on the DHSUD website during research; the figures above are as reported in news coverage of the resolution (Daily Tribune, January 5, 2025) and consistent with the rate-setting authority RA 9653 grants the board.

Republic Act No. 11201 (DHSUD Act, 2019). The statute that created the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development and reorganized HUDCC's housing functions, including the rent control extension authority, into the new department and the National Human Settlements Board.

Civil Code of the Philippines (RA 386), Articles 1654-1660 - full text on lawphil.net. The default rules that govern lease agreements outside the RA 9653 covered bracket, and the fallback regime if the rent control resolution were ever to lapse without replacement.