On the contrary, an EA is a professional in the field of property. The RTB cannot argue against their professional expert valuation of a rental amount or a property amount. Revenue/the state accepts EA agents values all the time. The RTB is not a professional in the valuations or properties or rents.
RTB Rent Register
- Thread starter Sr. Tayto
- Start date
I'd push back on this. The cases I reviewed in this thread/ the 6 year reset thread show the Tribunal does exactly that - opines on rent levels lower than the market rate despite the weight of professional evidence in front of them:
Andriuska (Mullingar, 2020): Two independent local auctioneer valuations at €900-€1,100. Dismissed as "general opinions only." Rent set at €800 - €100 below the lowest professional figure.
IRES v Walsh (Ballsbridge, 2017): Largest accommodation provider in the State, with three professionally prepared comparators. Full professional team / representation at the tribunal. Cut from €3,000 sought to €2,400 determined - even though the RTB's own Ballsbridge rental data showed 4 bedroom rents averaging €3,365 in Q1 2017.
Mardan v Grant Thornton (Cork, 2015): Nine signed achieved leases in the same complex, professional valuers, full institutional support (Grant Thornton). Tribunal acknowledged the comparators were "most useful" — then applied an index-based back-calculation that landed well below them.
The Tribunal has the statutory authority to make these determinations under s.115. They don't need to defer to professional valuations and they routinely don't. Saying the RTB "cannot argue against" an EA valuation doesn't reflect how the system actually works - they argue against them all the time, and the appeal route to the High Court is on a point of law only, not on the merits of the valuation.
That's exactly why the 6-year reset is a problem. The methodology exists. It's well-documented. And it systematically discounts professional evidence in favour of unquantified Tribunal adjustments.
I agree entirely. The local EA who has been looking after rentals in the area for years is the best person to say what market rent is.
I strongly think though that the RTB will resist this and claim their Register is definitive. That gives them more power and bench marks rents to old RPZ levels.
As @LarryScott pointed out it will take a High Court case to challenge this.
You are right, the local EA is the expert. That does not suit government policy though, so there will be push back against this by the RTB in order to impose the rents it thinks are appropriate ie. old RPZ level.
Yes I agree that the RTB did not in those cases go with professional valuations. We did discuss them. In at least 2 of those cases that we dissected the Landlord did not show up to dispute the case on valuations. Let's see if this comes up today with the IPOA webinar. I've already got a question in about whether an auctioneer's valuation of rents is acceptable. The new legislation specifically mentions Market Rent. Government policy is Market rent in order to induce supply, this will play out in the next RTB cases on rent increases.
The cases you put up have helped in highlighting the vagaries of the RTB tribunals. As I've already been to adjudication myself I'm well aware, which is why I'm having my ducks in a row now in case of dispute later. I don't anticipate one, but it's good to be knowledgeable on what the RTB might throw at one.
The reality is that the IPOA is not able to answer this question outside the theory. The theory is that you can provide comparable rents having regards to the RTB register and it was made clear in their webinar that you could provide other sources but that they should be well documented. However, it's noted everywhere on the RTB website that "You must serve a statement with your rent review notice that the rent is not above market rent. To prove this, it must include details of the most recent rent paid for three tenancies in similar properties from the RTB Rent Register." and reference to that register is constant. If one choose to apply a rent higher than the register, they might be right but they also might have to fight the RTB then the courts. They might win at the end. However, most average small landlord will just try to use the register to their best benefit because really the situation depends on the RTB and the way they decide to dispute rents in the next few months/years, then the way courts might decide considering that each case would be different.
@Premos is correct.
The RTB is making up the law. S.24 only says that you have to have regard to the Rent Register, but the RTB is insisting that you base your rent on the Register alone.
Very, very difficult for a small landlord to fight that. If the tenants challenge the rent, you have to go through two RTB Tribunals and then the High Court.
If the RTB investigates your rent off its own bat, you're facing criminal prosecution if you don't back down.
The deck is totally stacked against landlords on all fronts and today's Daft Report means that the RTB has to be very active in this area.
The RTB is making up the law. S.24 only says that you have to have regard to the Rent Register, but the RTB is insisting that you base your rent on the Register alone.
Very, very difficult for a small landlord to fight that. If the tenants challenge the rent, you have to go through two RTB Tribunals and then the High Court.
If the RTB investigates your rent off its own bat, you're facing criminal prosecution if you don't back down.
The deck is totally stacked against landlords on all fronts and today's Daft Report means that the RTB has to be very active in this area.
And I'm now going to push back - So I've gone into the RTB Disputes website, where all their decisions are listed, the only Key Word I used is Market rent:
Up pops 20 pages of decisions. I went to page 20, 6 Determination Orders. All from 2015
I'll use the first names:
Daniel
Maria
Francesa
Gboyega
crean
Declan
Of the 6 on that page 4 rent increases were upheld (so in favour of the landlord) one Maria not upheld and the last one Declan didn't state it, only stated that the market rent is now X. If only 1 out of 6 is negative to the landlord I have to conclude in this the RTB are not being unfair, and I'd have to assume one landlord set the rent incorrectly.
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Now I'll pick a different page 6 which has cases from 2017, this time 6 cases/Determination Orders
Davide, Bryan, Cahel, Maria, Toni, Jayne and Colm
4 rent increases invalid, rent to stay the same, Toni increase valid, Maria don't know, Colm case the notice was not served.
Did the rules change for those cases compared to 2015. It's not clear why the rent increases were not allowed. In the 2015 orders market rent is specifically mentioned in the DO, but not so in the above cases, but it does come up in the 'search' . Not sure what is the difference. Maybe you could set market rent in some places in 2015 but you couldn't in 2017 due to different rules.
Davide, Bryan, Cahel, Maria, Toni, Jayne and Colm
4 rent increases invalid, rent to stay the same, Toni increase valid, Maria don't know, Colm case the notice was not served.
Did the rules change for those cases compared to 2015. It's not clear why the rent increases were not allowed. In the 2015 orders market rent is specifically mentioned in the DO, but not so in the above cases, but it does come up in the 'search' . Not sure what is the difference. Maybe you could set market rent in some places in 2015 but you couldn't in 2017 due to different rules.
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I did indeed partake in this. My email invitation said there would be a Q&A but that was not the case for landlords. Only 2 staff from IPOA plus Emer Morissey answering them. Which is not at all what I was expecting. Summary to follow of as much as I can recall.
RTB Webinar
- keep all your rent review records in case of dispute
- RTB can go back to 2019 to reset rent if necessary (I'm not sure where that year came from, statute of limitations perhaps, or something in the RTB rules....)
- DAFT was mentioned as a Market Rent source
- As was valuations
- as was if you a landlord had an existing lease for another property.
NOTE: in the presentation slides valuations were mentioned, Daft were not. On the RTB website neither are mentioned. Slide title was Can I use other sources for comparable rents
- Your 3 comparables are not added together and divided by 3 to decide the rent
- You do not have to pick the top 3 highest rents, you can send in any 3 from the Register (of your list of 10). But the tenant also gets a copy of this and that might mean they will dispute the rent increase.
- you can send in Notices of Rent Revies to the RTB during the weekend (apparently that was a question from someone)
- a discussion about whether your agent can send in the 3 comparables, I missed the outcome of that
- if you cannot find 3 comparables you can use a different area, as long as you can justify it
- so far there has been no cases as the law is new (I''m only talking about rent setting/market rent)
- the RTB has to wait for cases to come to work their way, not sure what she meant there, I think it means they are unsurre until they have actual cases
- if one tenant leaves in eg a 4 bed, you don't need to give the new replacement tenant a Rent Review as it's not a new tenancy, RTB was very strong on that a 4 bed even with different rents per room was one tenancy
- You'd be up the creek in a paddle if you set Market Rent today and in 7/8 years time the tenant disputes it with the RTB and the RTB decides you were wrong, then you'd owe back rent of 7/8 years.
Edit
- first question was whether the landlords who made a spelling mistake/other error could correct it easily. Can't remember the reply.
- keep all your rent review records in case of dispute
- RTB can go back to 2019 to reset rent if necessary (I'm not sure where that year came from, statute of limitations perhaps, or something in the RTB rules....)
- DAFT was mentioned as a Market Rent source
- As was valuations
- as was if you a landlord had an existing lease for another property.
NOTE: in the presentation slides valuations were mentioned, Daft were not. On the RTB website neither are mentioned. Slide title was Can I use other sources for comparable rents
- Your 3 comparables are not added together and divided by 3 to decide the rent
- You do not have to pick the top 3 highest rents, you can send in any 3 from the Register (of your list of 10). But the tenant also gets a copy of this and that might mean they will dispute the rent increase.
- you can send in Notices of Rent Revies to the RTB during the weekend (apparently that was a question from someone)
- a discussion about whether your agent can send in the 3 comparables, I missed the outcome of that
- if you cannot find 3 comparables you can use a different area, as long as you can justify it
- so far there has been no cases as the law is new (I''m only talking about rent setting/market rent)
- the RTB has to wait for cases to come to work their way, not sure what she meant there, I think it means they are unsurre until they have actual cases
- if one tenant leaves in eg a 4 bed, you don't need to give the new replacement tenant a Rent Review as it's not a new tenancy, RTB was very strong on that a 4 bed even with different rents per room was one tenancy
- You'd be up the creek in a paddle if you set Market Rent today and in 7/8 years time the tenant disputes it with the RTB and the RTB decides you were wrong, then you'd owe back rent of 7/8 years.
Edit
- first question was whether the landlords who made a spelling mistake/other error could correct it easily. Can't remember the reply.
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IPOA webinar with RTB today, a few points which seemed to come up:
- Repeated, clear, repetition of this sort of phrasing "you have to find a match from the register because you cannot exceed market rent".
- Landlords will be required to refund tenants in cases where the RTB finds rents exceeded "market rent".
- Landlords are required by the RTB to retain evidence that they did not exceed market rent in resetting rent within the "allowed" RPZ limits (ie 2%) going back to 2019 because their system now gives them capacity to readily compare rents - and it has always been the case that landlords must not exceed market rent..
- There was a question from an agent noting that attempts to justify a rent higher than the matches from the RTB Register need to have supporting evidence. Roughly:
Q: "We are an agency, can the supporting evidence for a client's rent setting be provided by valuers from our own firm?"
A: "The legislation is very new - we don't know yet if that would count as valid evidence at this point, we will have to wait and see what the RTB adjudication decides in a case like that coming for dispute."
- Tenants have 90 days to complain to the RTB that they think they have been charged more than "market rent".
No indication was given on how long it would take the RTB to decide what the correct "market rent" is. Given how long RTB takes generally this would appear to make it impossible for a landlord to exit the rental contract if the rent is adjusted down because after 6 months he is stuck with the tenancy.
So there cannot be certainty of contract for landlords commencing tenancies. All tenancies now seem to come with a free spin for the tenant to get the rent reduced.
No information about any time limit for RTB's own data trawling to identify and query rent settings which exceed a match on the Register. So, again, as the RTB will not limit their decisions about what the correct "market rent" is to a time frame which would allow the landlord to exit the contract, this seems to mean the rental amount stated on a lease is effectively little more than a suggestion by the landlord. At any point in the future the RTB could look at the rent, notice it exceeds a Register match, write to the landlord, reject his claim the rent was appropriate and tell him to reduce it and refund the tenant.
That was the bit I missed/misunderstood. Good to get clarify on this. I've sent off questions to the IPOA already. And I already did so, they were not mentionened today. In my case my Agent told me what my rental could achieve and that's what we went with. I based teh rent on that, because I'd been out of the market for a while and wanted to be more professional.
An important addition to this is she said the tenant can in certain circumstances argue for longer than 90 days.
So the people in charge, the RTB, who are there to help us cannot tell us the rules. Instead they the RTB have to wait until the people the RTB hire to decide disputes make Dispute decisions. That's ridiculous
I phone them a couple of days ago and the phone message was clearly stating that their advice was not legal advice.
Well this is a good one, and a new one for me and I've followed this closely for a long time now! Somehow "market rent" in the eyes of the RTB is directly determined by other properties which are under RPZ rules. Many properties have been in RPZs for a decade now and have seriously "below market" rents levels. Yet these are a determinant of today's "market rent" levels, apparently. Wow and wow again.
"Landlords are required"... from 2019: is it written somewhere on their website?
Anyway, it should be fairly easy to find records as LLs were supposed to the rent in the registration and then it's really only a mathematical calculation.
Apparently worse than that. Seemingly the RTB can now look back as far as 2019 at a landlord's rent rises while under RPZ rent suppression and compare them with similar properties (also obviously under RPZ rent suppression) and regard those other properties as determining what the correct "market rent" was at the time.
By definition the highest rent amongst any group of properties so compared exceeds their concept of "market rent", and they can ask the relevant landlords to attempt to justify why they charged "above market rent" when they increased rent by 1.4% or whatever back in 2019 or 2022 or whenever, and make them refund down to a sort of retrospective "market rent".
Seems utterly Kafkaesque.
No idea, but when ipoa put up the recording it's near the end.
Just summarising the important points from posters here on the IPOA webinar
The new rules were supposed to steady the system by creating certainty and confidence. There is no such thing where there is a 6 year look back at the rent and the rent can be challenged at any time into the future.
This is all incredible stuff
The new rules were supposed to steady the system by creating certainty and confidence. There is no such thing where there is a 6 year look back at the rent and the rent can be challenged at any time into the future.
MM in the Dail today
Any international organisation analysing the rental market or any property market has said time and again that rent controls or the freezing of rents just reduces supply, kills the market for the long term and will keep prices at too high a level.
So we can't have rent controls, they destroy supply.
How does not having rent controls tie in with what the RTB said at the webinar?
Any international organisation analysing the rental market or any property market has said time and again that rent controls or the freezing of rents just reduces supply, kills the market for the long term and will keep prices at too high a level.
So we can't have rent controls, they destroy supply.
How does not having rent controls tie in with what the RTB said at the webinar?