Advice needed! Tenant looking for reduction

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wigwam

Registered User
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HI, my tenant is looking for a reduction in his rent for a one bed apartment in town.
Any advice on what to do?
Can he apply for rent supplement to assist him in paying his rent? He is self employed.

Thanks
 
Both parties can look for a rent review once per year. If he has been in the apartment a year already then he can ask. If the rents in the local area are lower than yours then I would consider it assuming you want to keep him. If your rent is less than other apartments in the area then I would probably say no.

If he is a very good tennant then I might consider it.
 
What is the current going rate in your area? Are you at, above or below this? If you above this then business is business and he's bound to ask for a reduction to current market rates. If you're happy you're charging the going rate or below, then he won't get a cheaper apartment by moving so you have to then ask yourself, is he genuinely having difficulty meeting the repayments or just 'chancing his arm'? If you believe he genuinely cannot pay the going rate, ask yourself are you prepared to take below the going rate to avoid searching for a new tenant if you believe this will be difficult (be honest with yourself-how many aimilar units are to let in your area?)/because he keeps the place particularly well and is a trouble free tenant (worth a lot)/because you feel sorry for him (bad business of course!)/etc. etc.

There is no right ir wrong answer. You must decide what you are prepared to accept. I doubt he'll be entitled to rent supplement but the SW guys on here might know for sure. It's a HSE payment not a SW one AFAIK so maybe.
 
I have just completed the letting of a one bed apartment in Dublin 6. It was the most difficult in 20 years. I had to drop rent by 10% and there is no doubt that it is a renters market. If your tenant is a good tenant and is likely to stay long term I would certainly recommend having a good think about a rent reduction. He was good to you in the prosperous times and maybe its now your turn to be good to him.
Some will disagree with me but all I can say is that my apartment has been let to good tenants while three other landlords in the complex who did not reduce the rent are still waiting for tenants to take their apartments. I have seen viewers come and go from them without success
 
I suggest that you should not take this kind of impertinence from a mere tenant, you should rack the rent up immediately. That will put manners on him.

Seriously, check out the graph of the number of properties to rent here: http://daftwatch.thepropertypin.com/ Clearly there has been a huge growth in rental stock throughout the country and this is rapidly reducing the exorbitant rents that landlords were able to charge up until recently.
 
"exorbitant" is a strong word I'd say. I'm not one of them but many recent buy to let landlords have been subsidising their mortgage with their own money so the rent was not enough to cover mortgage repayments. Those are the ones who will soon be forced to sell (if they can find a buyer) or default on their mortgages.
 
The media are encouraging tenants to ask landlords for a reduction.

I have granted a reduction of 100 pm to a tenant as I feel its more important for the apartment to be occupied at a reduced price - we all have to make sacrifices.
 
Someone said to me a few years ago, words of wisdom..if you have a good reliable tenant its better to have the rent slightly lower and be happy and secure in your property letting. Has worked for me!
 
kerokero said:
The media are encouraging tenants to ask landlords for a reduction.
Click to expand...
Many tenants were already looking for reductions last year when the print media were saying that while house prices were down, rents were still going up. The media are now following public sentiment as usual.

Quite apart from the situation with vacant properties, unemployment and emigration, the fact that we're starting to experience deflation as an economy means that reduction in rental costs seems inevitable.

It's a difficult time for landlords and tenants alike. As you and others have said it's better to have an occupied property than an empty one.
 
Well my good reliable tenants asked for a rent reduction recently and I said no.
If the market was rising, the landlord would not be allowed raise the rent mid-way through the lease and the same applies to the opposite situation.

Funnily enough when I checked my rent against daft I found it was still in normal range for a house. BUT when I checked the rent for 1 double bedroom and multiplied that by number of rooms the rent seemed high.

A bit of an anomaly in the rental market it seems.
3 individual bedrooms are cheaper than a 3 bedroom house.

Anyhow the tenants appear to have accepted my refusal.
Hubby said worst case scenario they break the lease...we keep the deposit and re-rent using the deposit to subsidise the remaining months of the lease.
 
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