Accidental landlord considering selling

mmurph

Registered User
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Looking for some advice....I saw a similar post on here recently and tweaked it to reflect my own circumstances. Would love to read your thoughts....thank you.

Myself and my husband own an apartment in Dublin's Docklands area that's been rented out to the same tenants for almost 6 years. We bought the property in 2003 and lived there until 2009. We started our family and outgrew the apartment. We bought a house (in another county) and couldn't sell the apartment due to massive negative equity at the time. The apartment is registered with prtb, taxes paid, all up to date etc.

We bought for 325K in 2003
Mortgage outstanding: circa 170k
Current value: circa 360k
Mortgage is a tracker, payments €950pm
Rent: €1400 (apartments in the same development renting for €2000)
It is with an agent so we pay his fee, then insurance, life assurance, prtb, apartment management fees (€1800 per year) etc. and the tax bill is around 2k per annum.

The property costs us a fair few quid a year and I dont really understand when we will see a decent profit from it. Even if rental income was closer to the market rate, I presume tax man will get most of that? As we are finally out of negative equity we could sell and make a few quid which could put towards paying off the mortgage on our PPR.

The mortgage rate on our PPR is 2.89% - €92K outstanding. We also have a car loan of €18K but no other debt.
We both pay into a pension with our jobs (teacher and nurse). We are pretty cash-strapped at the end of every month so don't top up or save much. We are both in our 40s.

Would we have to pay tax on any profit after selling? My husband wants to keep it long term. I have zero appetite for that and would love to be free of it (although we are lucky with great tenants right now - but they're also getting a great deal). What would you do?
 
Hi mmurph

No two circumstances will ever be identical but I have tried to work up a fairly comprehensive framework for approaching this issue on this thread -
https://www.askaboutmoney.com/threads/keep-apartment-as-rental-or-move-tracker.203907/

You will need to substitute your own details for each line item but I suspect you will find that it makes more sense to cash out the equity in your rental property and apply that against the mortgage on your PPR - it looks like you have been badly stung by the crazy RPZ regime and the Government's punitive approach to taxing rental income.

I would be grateful for any feedback you might have on the framework and obviously fire away with any questions.
 
Hi mmurph,

Sarenco is right...the number's are unlikely to lie so you need to run them. However I'm unclear how it's costing you "a fair few quid a year"? The mortgage is €950 a month, the rent is €1,400 a month, tax is €2,000, service charges are €1,800, and then you've the agent's costs. Surely it's more or less a breakeven scenario (from a cashflow perspective)?

What's the rate on the tracker?

And are you maxing your AVCs?

And do you live outside of Ireland?

Gordon
 
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