Unregistered Rental Property with Arrears?

Has a management company used the fact that a rental property is not registered with the PRTB (and by assumption Revenue) as an incentive to encourage a property owner to pay arrears, ie: an implied threat to contact both organisations?

Owner is "out of the country".

Would be very interested in hearing if this is done, does it contravene data protection if you write to the PRTB/Revenue requesting a landlord's details on a property & does it work?

It is quite simple to see if a property is registered or not on the PRTB website by just logging in to the PRTB website. You need to have the property registered with the PRTB in order to claim the 75% mortgage interest relief legally. Not sure how well this is checked. One of the weaknesses in the system is that you can register now and all seems to be ok. You might have to pay a €90 penalty but that does not seem fair to the landlords that keep their registrations up to date. I would imagine that compliance it is not much better than 50%. I am not a fan at all of the PRTB.
Is there a reason for the non payment of the manage company's charges.
The management company is unlikely to be writing to the PRTB requesting details. They may write to the PRTB stating that the property is not registered but this will not be a breach of data protection. As I said before the owner can register now and everything will be ok.

The owner has never paid the management company fee & the house has been rented out for the last five years. Tenants claim the owner is out of the country.
I was coming at this more from the management company's point of view. We now have an email contact address for the missing owner & we're wondering if writing to him about his unregistered property & outstanding fees might finally provoke a response. I'm fairly sure he does not want Revenue or the PRTB informed about the property!

Are the Tenants to your knowledge withholding 20% for a non resident landlord and passing this on to Revenue. As a management company I presume you have an address for the owner in this country. Have you checked out this address. You can email him and see what his response is and see does he acknowledge that he owes the management fee for the period.
He probably will have a big NPPR bill as well as Household Charge and LPT to sort out.
I would not be too aggressive in the initial stages. See how much information can you get from him first. I am sure you are aware that you can collect the outstanding management fees if he goes to sell it in the future.
Is there a Management or letting agent involved in letting the property.

I have a separate question on the subject of Management Fees. What is the situation where management fees have not been collected or debt acknowledged or legal proceedings instituted against an owner for over 6 years?.

Your leverage is really the lack of postal address which I assume you don't have as you are attempting to use an email.

By all means write to them explaining that it is a legal requirement to provide a full address at all times as per the MUD act, names of tenants and other details the OMC requires.

If you are not contacted immediately then you will be forced to write to the PRTB, revenue, and their mortgage provider (obtain this for 5eu from land registry) explaining that the property is rented out since [date] and you require the address.

They wont give it but it can sometimes be enough of a push for them (landlord) to engage.

lantus said:

Your leverage is really the lack of postal address which I assume you don't have as you are attempting to use an email.

By all means write to them explaining that it is a legal requirement to provide a full address at all times as per the MUD act, names of tenants and other details the OMC requires.

If you are not contacted immediately then you will be forced to write to the PRTB, revenue, and their mortgage provider (obtain this for 5eu from land registry) explaining that the property is rented out since [date] and you require the address.

They wont give it but it can sometimes be enough of a push for them (landlord) to engage.

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Some years back I paid by cheque 270 euros to have three properties registered with the PRTB. Cheque was cashed immediately. A full year later when I enquired none of these properties had been registered.

We don't have a contact address for this owner. We had written to the tenant in the past asking for details but never got a response.
I was doing some googling recently looking for absentee owners & came across the name of the tenant through a donedeal ad. So I decided to write again addressing the tenant by name rather than "Dear Tenant". We requested contact details or that the landlord or agent contact us.
So that's how we got the email address.

We emailed a letter yesterday outlining the debt, how long we've been trying to get in contact & that we would be forwarding his account to the company solicitor for collection. We also mentioned that we would be contacting the PRTB & Revenue requesting his contact details for the rental property.

This prompted a response within a couple of hours! Whether it was the solicitor, the PRTB or Revenue that got a reaction - I don't care, as long as we can cross one of our biggest debtors off the list.

Dermot - your question about the six years - I don't know. We won't furnish any information necessary for a house sale until the account is clear. We have cleared a few accounts like this. I don't see what impact six years passing without acknowledgement would have on the debt.

With regards to issues like 6 years you should read this info from AON which includes a talk by Jenny Murphy who has significant experience dealing with all legal matters re management companies and debt recovery.

As I understand it you can get this when a unit is sold by withholding critical documentation required for the sale to proceed (in the case of an apartment this will be the block insurance cert.) However, debt recovery through a court is limited to 6 years.


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Addresses are pretty important for issuing legal proceedings properly. Its a common way owners avoid paying by becoming invisible unless they are tracked down.

lantus said:

However, debt recovery through a court is limited to 6 years.

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That is where I was coming from. I am looking at it where an owner is saying he will pay for the previous 6 years and no more and is prepared to challenge the non issue of documentation etc from the management company for arrears going back further than that. He has not acknowledged the arrears going back further than 6 years or any arrears for that matter. I am really talking about an incompetent management company here. Long story.
I know from your posts lantus which I have followed that you had a lot of work sorting out your management co.

Actually the 6 year thing is very useful for us to know. We took over in 2010 & have been chasing several owners since then. Our six years will be up next year in a couple of cases.
We've found refusing to furnish any documentation for house sales until the account is cleared the only way to get payments out of a couple of members.