Becoming a landlord – is it really that expensive?

[shesells]

You haven't allowed for the PRTB registration fee of €90 per tenancy. Also your tax figure seems waaaaaay too low. We pay about €2k a year with a similar income/expense ratio.

 

[Maybrick]

Apologies, that tax figure was monthly rather than annual - the real figure should be 336.

Which just underlines my original point!

 

[lightup]

As Complainer states the OP clearly has not got a grasp of the figures on mortgage interest relief. The 75% interest relief is of far greater benefit to a landlord than the home owners mortgage interest relief.

becoming a landlord and hence a businessman should not be confused with the fact that you cannot sell your apartment.

As you state becoming a landlord is starting a business. Therefore mortgage interest is a business expense and should be fully allowable. Try telling any other business that their costs are not allowable.

 

[Complainer]

Making it easier to rent out your home would enable people to trade up, which would surely benefit the property market as a whole – surely a worthwhile objective when so many people currently feel trapped.

Govt policies that 'benefit' the property market are what got us into this mess. The last thing we need is more reliefs to keep prices artificially high.

At a personal level, I have sympathy for you, but I don't see what a Govt can do, without making other people pay for your property.

 

[Maybrick]

A fair point, Complainer. But surely a frozen market such as the one we have now is hardly desirable either? There must be intelligent ways of stimulating the market as well as stupid ones - and it seems to me that making it easier for people to rent out their homes would belong to the first category.

 

[Butter]

Anyone wanting to become a landlord in today's market needs their head examined I think. You would be better off paying down your mortgage as quickly as you can with a view to building up as much equity as you can so you can sell it whenever there is some market recovery and move to a bigger gaff then. But with prices still falling your equity is also falling - catch 22 situation.
Becoming a landlord is not easy, not cheap and can be a major headache if you are unlucky enough to have bad tenants. I would think long & hard about it. And yes you are right - the shortfall that a landlord has to put into an investment property these days (especially one with a big mortgage) makes it a pretty uneconomical thing to do!

 

[RMCF]

As someone who has recently become a landlord, my honest opinion is that I would rather sell my original house rather than rent it out, but unfortunately the market forced me to become a landlord.

I have only started on this road, and will not have to make my tax return until late 2012, but to me its just extra hassle. In this current economic climate I would much rather have one mortgage than two.