Irish Times covers Landlord's perspective on rental crisis

Meanwhile the Minister seeks advice on extending RPZs nationwide -

While Dublin City Council want to restrict build-to-rent developments -

This means that some expenditures, such as property tax and paying off the capital on a mortgage, cannot be set against profits, while other expenditures, such as on buying furniture for a property, have to be charged against profits over eight years, rather than in the year of the outlay, as is the case with investments in his English properties.

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From the first article, there's a bunch of good points but... he wants tax relief on his capital repayments??

I don't know why the government doesn't empower the RTB to be a mandatory escrow service for rental deposits, the interest on which may help fund the agency and beef up its staffing. According to the CSO, in 2016 there were 326,493 privately rented properties. If the average monthly deposit was even €1,000 there'd be €326 million in funds. Tenants should favour it, as their deposit is held by a more trustworthy party. Landlords may not favour it on the face of it as much as it's less money in their bank account but it should lead to quicker dispute resolution.

Brendan Burgess said:

‘Landlords are petrified’: Property owners’ perspective on the rental crisis

Tenant rights, caps on rent and investment yields appear to be forcing landlords out

www.irishtimes.com

Landlord ‘at wits’ end’ two years after serving notice on tenant

‘I have attempted to be patient. I have been flexible . . . I am not a social worker’

www.irishtimes.com

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This unfortunately is something that goes unspoken because of "evil" landlords. Ironically the majority of people would probably know a landlord with a single property who is just an "average Joe".

The legislation has swung too far towards the tenant almost completely ignoring the small landlord which is no doubt part of the reason they are leaving the market. (not the only reason but certainly is part of the reason).

One of the articles show even when one of the landlords followed the rules and regulations he still can't get his property back. How is this exactly fair on him.

argolis said:

I don't know why the government doesn't empower the RTB to be a mandatory escrow service for rental deposits, the interest on which may help fund the agency and beef up its staffing

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Because we are in a zero interest rate world so it doesn't pay for itself.

Because you would need a whole other type of staff. The RTB is just a load of people pushing paper, it has a very limited finance capacity as you would expect.

Because you would need huge IT overhaul. The RTB's current system is antiquated.



None of this makes it impossible. I am just not sure that the costs involve would be worth the benefit.

NoRegretsCoyote said:

Because we are in a zero interest rate world so it doesn't pay for itself.

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Maybe they could get better returns by investing in REITs or something *cough*

argolis said:

I don't know why the government doesn't empower the RTB to be a mandatory escrow service for rental deposits,

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It would be cheaper for the government to just pay the rental deposit than to set up the bureaucracy required for holding them and paying them out at the end and getting into disputes about what should be paid and what shouldn't be paid and for employing an equality officer to make sure that deposits are the same for every race, class, gender and creed, and to employ people to do annual and five year plans and others to liaise with the housing charities and other government bodies and to attend conferences abroad of the International Federation of State Backed Deposit Schemes and then to translate all of that into Irish.

Brendan

Very funny Brendan and with more than a grain of truth!

In most countries where a deposit guarantee scheme operates this is run via an insurance scheme rather than someone holding cash in a central agency. If something like this was established in Ireland it would save the RTB a lot of work because a huge % of the disputes they deal with relate to deposits.

The anti-landlord bile in the comments underneath this Irish Times article is something to behold. I have rented some proper kips in my time and been messed around by numerous landlords particularly as a student and I know rents are very high. So I do understand the resentment against landlords but unlike the people posting on the Irish times I understand that no one is obliged to provide me with a commercial service. No more than the local corner shop owner, electrician etc a landlord can choose to withdraw his/her service is the government makes the business too unattractive via taxation and regulation. And they are doing that currently, in droves. So I fail to see how yet more regulation will reverse this situation.

I have always returned the Deposit within one week. I will give another 2 examples of where two tenants were leaving my properties by giving 1 week's notice and 3 days' notice in the 2nd instance. In both cases, they were with me in excess of 5 years. One of them was moving in with a partner and the other to a job in another part of the country.
I know what I could have done but I am sure that the RTB would find an excuse not to make a finding in my favour. The individual that was moving in with the partner would probably have stayed on and not paid the rent if I did not return the deposit.
Politicians are mainly populist and the anti-landlord sentiment is very populist at the moment.
The bureaucracy around a 3rd party holding the deposit would work against tenants in the long term in my opinion.

Dermot said:

I have always returned the Deposit within one week. I will give another 2 examples of where two tenants were leaving my properties by giving 1 week's notice and 3 days' notice in the 2nd instance. In both cases, they were with me in excess of 5 years. One of them was moving in with a partner and the other to a job in another part of the country.
I know what I could have done but I am sure that the RTB would find an excuse not to make a finding in my favour. The individual that was moving in with the partner would probably have stayed on and not paid the rent if I did not return the deposit.
Politicians are mainly populist and the anti-landlord sentiment is very populist at the moment.
The bureaucracy around a 3rd party holding the deposit would work against tenants in the long term in my opinion.

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Another reason small landlords are leaving. The above shows how one sided it has become.

There are such horror stories out there with tenants not paying rent / leaving house in a mess, that I understand why small landlords are leaving. It can take time to find good tenants - we ask for everything from tenants , income, job, employer ref / landlord ref , social media background check. The looks you get when you ask these questions, you get that - they are gone. Takes time to weed out the bad ones and ohh my god are there bad ones out there that you wouldn’t want in your property. I’d fear to give it to an agent in case he / she let one of them in. You just wouldn’t get them out without a fight / cost. Just not worth it. Talking to friends recently about this - they are thinking about selling their places , not worth all the hassle dealing with tenants, over 50% tax on income, but what do you do with the cash if you sell kept coming up!

Have a friend staying in my place since Oct, no charge. even at that I had need to have words with him and he agreed to pay my former cleaner to clean weekly. then we discovered the new oven in a mess, like a deep fat fryer it was, so his only option was to hire in a professional company to restore it or he knew he was packing his bags. What hope do people have if even people we know treat the properties way less favourably than one would hope. Has certainly put me off renting...It can sit there and be used as an occasional bolthole, my worry over new rules and regulations is if someone did move in how does one get them out when it all goes pear-shaped!

Brendan Burgess said:

It would be cheaper for the government to just pay the rental deposit than to set up the bureaucracy required for holding them and paying them out at the end and getting into disputes about what should be paid and what shouldn't be paid and for employing an equality officer to make sure that deposits are the same for every race, class, gender and creed, and to employ people to do annual and five year plans and others to liaise with the housing charities and other government bodies and to attend conferences abroad of the International Federation of State Backed Deposit Schemes and then to translate all of that into Irish.

Brendan

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The reason to out source all of this (and deposits) to the private sector is to avoid all the being caught for all the costs risks in proving housing.

Since all the new regulations they've introduced over the last couple of decades compound all this risk and cost on the LL. The Govt isn't going to go 180 and start doing anything with deposits.

Private landlords should be, gently, run out of the business.
There are, undoubtedly, many good ones, but the level of non-compliance is very high.
Much better to have a well regulated company providing private rentals, along with a massive increase in council run housing and housing associations.
For long term rentals, a council, a housing association, or regulated private company, will offer more security. They will have a professional team of maintenance contractors, electricians, carpenters, painters, plumbers. They will provide regular preventative maintenance, with communal areas manged properly.
Obviously, this should be managed in a gradual, controlled programme of change. We really shouldn't have rich, wealthy individuals telling a vulnerable family of five to vacate the house, because they want to sell it, for a villa in the Algarve,

Allpartied said:

We really shouldn't have rich, wealthy individuals telling a vulnerable family of five to vacate the house, because they want to sell it, for a villa in the Algarve,

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Why not? And, in passing, what's the difference between "rich" and "wealthy"?

Allpartied said:

There are, undoubtedly, many good ones, but the level of non-compliance is very high.

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Source?

Allpartied said:

Much better to have a well regulated company providing private rentals, along with a massive increase in council run housing and housing associations.
For long term rentals, a council, a housing association, or regulated private company, will offer more security. They will have a professional team of maintenance contractors, electricians, carpenters, painters, plumbers.

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Yeah, taking out an individual with a strong and personal vested interest and replacing them with faceless employees of a large corporation always improves customer experience!

Allpartied said:

Private landlords should be, gently, run out of the business.
There are, undoubtedly, many good ones, but the level of non-compliance is very high.
Much better to have a well regulated company providing private rentals, along with a massive increase in council run housing and housing associations.
For long term rentals, a council, a housing association, or regulated private company, will offer more security. They will have a professional team of maintenance contractors, electricians, carpenters, painters, plumbers. They will provide regular preventative maintenance, with communal areas manged properly.
Obviously, this should be managed in a gradual, controlled programme of change. We really shouldn't have rich, wealthy individuals telling a vulnerable family of five to vacate the house, because they want to sell it, for a villa in the Algarve,

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Lot of flawed thinking in that.

The reason such a family has to get housing from small landlords is because there's too much cost and not not enough profit in it for the big companies and local authorities.

Leo said:

Source?


Yeah, taking out an individual with a strong and personal vested interest and replacing them with faceless employees of a large corporation always improves customer experience!

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I mean there will be problems with private rental companies and they need to be closely regulated.

But the strong, personal vested interest of the private landlord is not the same interest as the renter. It is much harder to regulate thousands of individuals , than to regulate well run private companies, councils or housing associations.

Allpartied said:

Private landlords should be, gently, run out of the business.
There are, undoubtedly, many good ones, but the level of non-compliance is very high.
Much better to have a well regulated company providing private rentals, along with a massive increase in council run housing and housing associations.
For long term rentals, a council, a housing association, or regulated private company, will offer more security. They will have a professional team of maintenance contractors, electricians, carpenters, painters, plumbers. They will provide regular preventative maintenance, with communal areas manged properly.
Obviously, this should be managed in a gradual, controlled programme of change. We really shouldn't have rich, wealthy individuals telling a vulnerable family of five to vacate the house, because they want to sell it, for a villa in the Algarve,

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The ideal you're describing sounds familiar. It's called communism. It worked in the old Soviet Union and its dependencies. Subsidized high-quality housing was provided for all by the State. Professional teams of electricians, carpenters, painters and plumbers did the preventative maintenance and the communal areas were managed properly by the benevolent State authorities. Millions of desperate refugees flocked from the Western "democracies" to live in this workers' paradise. The East German Soviet satellite state even had to build a huge wall to keep them out!

And of course private landlords were indeed gently run out of the business, and then gently put up against a wall and shot, or gently reallocated living quarters in a compassionate re-education facility in Siberia, where their benevolent KGB warders would help them reflect on the error of their exploitative ways while encouraging them to engage in a spot of healthy, rehabilitative rock breaking.

Neither was there any question of rich wealthy individuals evicting vulnerable families of five so they could acquire a villa in the Algarve, or the Crimea. Unless they were well up in the Party hierarchy of course.

Ah yes, the joys of Communism. What could possibly go wrong?

Shirazman said:

Why not? And, in passing, what's the difference between "rich" and "wealthy"?

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You've obviously never been on the receiving end of such a demand.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a well regulated, council owned rental property. It was our home, and still is my mother's home. We had full secure tenancy for life.

It really does make a massive difference to the quality of life.