The 6-year rent reset - can you actually get to market rent?

[Greenbook]

looking at that case, I try to see how easy it would be for someone to find today a comparison in my area, for a 2 bedroom apartment. In the small towns surrounding mine (5 towns) with a population of more than 64k (north Dublin), 5 ads today and 0 for a 5 bedroom house. So I can imagine that finding another 5 bedrooms house in a more remote would be close to impossible.

Plus if the other 5 bedroom house you did find was far away that would not be acceptable either.

The only answer for a landlord is never, ever raise the rent. This is presumably the situation the RTB is trying to engineer. You can never evict no matter what and you can never raise the rent either.

 

[Wavelly]

So a landlord who lost a rent review on one advert, refunded the difference, and had her notice to go home upheld, is in a national newspaper as having overcharged her tenants. Read the report and then read the headline. That gap is the story.

This is so scary. Landlords who do their best to do everything by the book but make a tiny error, or even if they have done everything correctly but for some reason the RTB deem the notice invalid, can have their names and photos splashed across the paper as though they are criminals.

The comments on the Facebook post of the Irish Times article are certainly treating her like a criminal - "No accountability they just move on to the next victim", "Disgraceful treating tenants like this, should be ashamed of herself, pure greed", "She should be sacked" etc etc.

 

[Greenbook]

The comments on the Facebook post of the Irish Times article are certainly treating her like a criminal - "No accountability they just move on to the next victim", "Disgraceful treating tenants like this, should be ashamed of herself, pure greed", "She should be sacked" etc etc.

Yes, but that is the atmosphere that the RTB, the Minister, the journalists and the NGOs want to create and have created.

Who would want to be a landlord. You make a tiny mistake, you have to repay rent or pay compensation or you are prosecuted as a criminal. You then have this publicity as well.

The PRS is only for the really big boys now who this won't happen to in the first place because they have top lawyers drafting everything.

 

[JamieB_]

This is so scary. Landlords who do their best to do everything by the book but make a tiny error, or even if they have done everything correctly but for some reason the RTB deem the notice invalid, can have their names and photos splashed across the paper as though they are criminals.

Its designed so you cannot help but make some sort of error. And its close now no NEVER being being able to get your property back too.

 

[Greenbook]

This is so scary. Landlords who do their best to do everything by the book but make a tiny error, or even if they have done everything correctly but for some reason the RTB deem the notice invalid, can have their names and photos splashed across the paper as though they are criminals.

With the new RTB powers in the second Residential Tenances 2026 Act criminal prosecution may well follow in these situations.

 

[patfert1]

So I can imagine that finding another 5 bedrooms house in a more remote would be close to impossible.

It's hard not to conclude that someone at the RTB is chuckling in delight at their cleverness at coming up with rules that are impossible to follow.

 

[stormy]

Another example of pitfalls when the rent review comes around.

TR1023-006810 - Dempsey & O’Neill v Madden - Tuam, Co. Galway

The substance of this rent review was never in question. The record-keeping behind it was, and that alone sank it. The dwelling was not in a Rent Pressure Zone at the time, so the cap was never the issue.

3-bed house, let since 2020 at EUR 1,000, no increase in three years. The landlord served a review to EUR 1,300, backed by an estate agent’s view of EUR 1,250 to EUR 1,300 for Tuam 3-beds and three named comparators. The Tribunal accepted the notice was clean on its face - in time, prescribed form, three comparators, service not disputed. Nobody argued EUR 1,300 was above market. The comparators were never tested on size, type or character.

It fell on one thing: s.22(2C). The landlord kept no dated copies of the comparator adverts, so he could not prove they came from the four weeks before service. The Tribunal did not find the adverts were stale - it found he “has not shown” they were current, the onus being on him because the timing was “particularly within their own knowledge”. The adverts may well have been timely. The figure may well have been right. The notice died for want of a screenshot.

That is the real standard. It is not enough for the rent to be correct, the comparators genuine and the form perfect. You must be able to produce the supporting documents - dated adverts then, the Register and calculator printouts now - on demand. Perfect paperwork is only valid if you can prove it, and the proof is now a filing exercise the landlord carries entirely.

https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR1023-006810 (TR1023-006810)

 

[Greenbook]

Deleted

 

[stormy]

TR0923-006726 - Mc Closkey & Traynor v Aurora Properties - Letterkenny, Co. Donegal

First, the concessions. This landlord did himself no favours. He sought a 54% increase (€434 to €670), one of his three comparators was a one-bed, he produced none of the adverts, and he served the notice by leaving it on the kitchen counter while workmen were in the flat. He had bought the place a month earlier, it needed work, and the Council later served improvement notices. Plenty here for the Tribunal to dislike.

But that isn’t what it decided. The notice was held compliant on amount, date, notice period and referral statement. It failed on one ground: the comparators were not of ”a similar size, type and character” (s.22(2A)(d)(i)), because the flat sits beside the town’s biggest late-night venue and none of the comparators did.

The landlord had already priced that in. His €670 was a third below a €1,000 comparator, and on his evidence 44% to 52% below what the flat would fetch without the nightclub. The tenants then told the Tribunal there are no comparable properties in Letterkenny, because nothing else sits beside a nightclub. The Tribunal accepted their evidence and still required the comparators to share that character.

Follow that through. If the statute requires three comparators of similar character, and the dwelling’s character is unique, then three valid comparators do not exist. A discount for the difference doesn’t cure it. On this reasoning the dwelling cannot be validly reviewed at all, by anyone, ever. The rent stays at €434 until a nightclub opens beside two other flats in Letterkenny.

That is not confined to nightclubs. A flat over a chipper, a cottage on a busy junction, a protected structure, an unusual layout or a rural one-off can each be argued unique on character. The more unusual the property, the easier it is for a tenant to say nothing compares, and on this reasoning they win.

And the new Register makes it worse, not better. It matches on floor area, bedrooms and BER. It has no field for character. It cannot return a comparator sharing the very feature that sank this review. So at year 6, the landlord of an unusual dwelling pulls three Register comparables that by design don’t share its character, and the tenant has a ready-made invalidity argument. One go, and the reset fails on the property’s own quirks.

https://rtb.ie/disputes/dispute-outcomes-and-orders/adjudication-and-tribunal-orders/?_search=TR0923-006726 (TR0923-006726)