so Don't Blame the rtb,
I suspect If Landlords were calling for the heads of both FF and FG if the new rules came in the new rules would never have got through,
Who would be a landlord?
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The Horseman
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Ironic how people don't see what's staring them in the face. Eventually landlords (I am one for nearly 20 yrs at this point) will rebel.
Funnily I was listening to a recent podcast about socialism and communism and there affect on innovation in the commercial world. If you impose excessive restrictions on the commercial world it stagnates.
Wonder what will happen in the private rental sector if the recent changes and possible future controls/limitations are enacted?
Funnily I was listening to a recent podcast about socialism and communism and there affect on innovation in the commercial world. If you impose excessive restrictions on the commercial world it stagnates.
Wonder what will happen in the private rental sector if the recent changes and possible future controls/limitations are enacted?
Same here - only close family and very close friends know. Our daughters have been warned likewise not to mention it.
Same here. As they are reaching adulthood, they are coming back home with all sorts of comments on the subject.
There are times and places where governments need to intervene in free markets for the good of society, such as monopoly situations. Usually as a temporary measure. But when there is a working supply and demand model, even if tilted in an unbalanced way, and a government permanently restricts the free working of this model, it rarely ends well.
There is only one solution to the housing crisis in Ireland and that is more housing. We are now going on for 10 years since RPZs were introduced as a temporary measure. They have now effectively become permanent.
I'm not up on how much housing has been built in this time and how much of that was due to government direct or indirect support, but whatever was achieved does not seem to have had any dramatic effect on the supply of housing either to buy or rent.
If the government truly wanted to address the problem, a national housing supply crisis would be declared and emergency measures put in place to grow the housing stock - as random examples: construction incentives, relax planning laws, relax building regulations. (I'm not in support of some of these, personally, but in a crisis situation, they need to be considered.) Is this happening?
(Sorry, asking such a question may really deserve a new thread...)
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The Horseman
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Everything should be looked at but sadly we don't plan rather we have knee perk reactions.
Examples include banning of the bedsit, introducing bike lanes (thereby reducing road spaces for cars) without an increase in public transport. Granting planning permission without sufficient and appropriate infrastructure, public transport or community facilities (schools, shopping centres, Dr's etc).
Govt never seem to learn from the past. We then have politicians jumping on the "band wagon" with Peadar Tobin of Aontu using the demolition of the house in Navan to score points. Rather than looking at the facts of the case, it was illegally built but he tried to put a political spin on demolishing a house in the middle of a housing crisis.
or stand your ground like the farming lobby do ,The new rules were flagged a long time ago yet landlords for the most part stayed silent until now,
where I live in Ireland their is quite a lot of building going on and the same goes in the area where my wife was born lack of housing is not as big an issue as it was a few years ago,
lots of small builders catering for the build to rent sector they appear to be getting lots of government support in lots of the smaller towns up and down the country,
Horseman I am replying to your post no 89 as I have to wait an hour before posting again
The Government I suspect appear to be banking on cost rental housing coming on to the market fast lots of small builders building on small sited turning out units fast (not having to wait until a large whole scheme of houses is finished before people move in,
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The Horseman
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Have you heard the term silent resignation in a work environment? This is what you will see in the rental market. Landlords who remain will not invest in upgrades to properties etc if the return is not there.
Tenants will loose out, eventually moving out, landlords will have vacant possession and will be able to sell in the open market and get market value for their property. They will not be hampered with a reduction in value needing to sell with tenant in situ.
LarryScott
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It's sort of funny.
We have a cultural history relating to landlords in this country. As a consequence, the government have implemented policy that will lead to a new batch of mandatory hereditary landlords.
If the parents are landlords, then the children are forced to be landlords.
They will probably add the reverse too. Children will be able to inherit tenancies. If the parents are tenants, then so will be the children.
The tenancy should die with the landlord and die with the tenant. Let each generation make their own decisions.
Curious as to how this might work in practice in a few years time.
If LA inspections of the rental stock is set to increase, could owners be legally obliged by inspectors to carry out upgrades eg BER or disabled access.
What if the owner can’t afford it, what happens then - do they terminate to sell? If they had to sell with the TIS, does that upgrade obligation pass to the new owner?
What if the new owner wants the house as a PPR and it takes years to get vacancy, what happens in the meantime?
Also, what if the obligation lands mid TMD cycle and there’s no termination allowed.
I think that this will happen.
I think that the inspections will get a lot more stringent once the 6 year/permanent tenancies are bedded in. The inspector will have a quiet word with the tenants as to what improvements they'd like to see. No way around this for the landlord.
The Horseman
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Personally I don't think this will happen. They may try but I think this will lead to a constitutional challenge which may be funded via a go fund me or another method.
As the constitution stands we are all entitled to own private property and this is exactly what a property is when not owned by a business etc. I think this could be a step to far for the general public to accept if the state at a whim could force private property to be used in a way the owners don't want.
Remember at this point no one has actually taken a constitutional challenge on the existing laws. Just because the state has implemented the rental laws does not mean they are constitutional.
Personally, I would not be betting protection of the assets I have and my own mental health based on the possibility of a successful Constitutional challenge.
The general public have been extremely well trained at this stage to hate and despise landlords. I can't see them supporting us.
I hope you are right though and that there is a successful Constitutional challenge at some point.
The Horseman
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I agree the general public have been well trained but when something has a chance of effecting them directly they soon change their view.
Remember we still have a large number of home owners.
What springs to mind in the recent past is how the govt has treated pensioners in long term nursing homes and how renting out their homes was handled. I have a vague recollection that rental income was excluded from means (although I could be wrong) and don't know how the new rules affect a landlord (ie a pensioner in a home in this scenario) when they pass away.
The improvements from the inspections will be painted as tenants living in third world conditions and a few where that is genuinely the case will be show cased. If there is any push back from landlords, they will be demonised by Threshold and the other homeless NGOs.
That landlords are vile creatures has been hammered into the general public via the media for the last 10 years. It's ingrained at this stage. We'd get no support.
I think on this thread other posters myself included discussed how we can't reveal we are landlords for fear of what people would think of us and say to us or about us behind our backs.
The Horseman
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We are portrayed as fat lazy people (the old English image) but if faces where put to us people would realise we are just your ordinary "Joe soap" the majority are your typical paye worker or self employed tradesman.
What we lack is an effective representative body. I am not sure of the effectiveness of the IPOA. I don't even know what their membership numbers are like.
This is a golden opportunity for them to contact landlords en masse offer free membership and maybe even tap into the wealth of experience, knowledge and professionals who are part time landlords. I am sure there are those in the legal and financial services who are landlords who could come together and come up with a plan of action with the govt.
I asked about this before and afaicr, a landlord accepts the rules when they enter a new tenancy so they’ve no case to challenge. The issue for some individual owners I know is that they entered under different rules and when rules changed previously, they weren’t directly informed - no letters from the housing agency about those previous changes to every registered landlord, plus the rtb website or telephone service refused to give information on any amendments or how it might affect owners. Tenants otoh had access to any number of state funded charity organisations to explain how changes might affect them. It is a very unbalanced system.
I can see how changes happen in every business sector and if you enter a market, you play by the rules. However, some previous rental changes were brought in with little media coverage, individuals weren’t constantly scouring the oireachtas website and were caught out. RPZs were brought in in a matter of days but those owners didn’t sign up to tenancies under those rules and they were negatively impacted by the changes; similarly a lot of property owners didn’t realise they’d be locked into indefinite tenancies by automatic rollovers as that wasn’t the rule when they entered the tenancy, and those changes weren’t fully explained before enactment.
The big difference in the PRS to most other sectors is that other business rules don’t change constantly, new rules are not sneaked into other Acts as well as the primary legislation, and proprietors or traders have a choice to exit freely and decide how to proceed, ie sell as a going concern or just cease trading. The owner of a rental property who wants to cease being a landlord has no real choice, their options are dictated by the RTA and enforced by the RTB even though every citizen has a right to freely own, transfer, bequeath or sell their property.
If a landlord chooses to exit, why should he be obliged to dispose of his property, why can’t he leave it empty and pay whatever taxes are due if that’s his choice? It’s worse if he is a landlord with 4+ properties as he is compelled to sell with a sitting tenant. That rule impacts many owners who entered the market under very different rules. The RTB have belatedly started to provide resources, templates, information on its website but it should have provided those as soon as the act started and constantly updated the information for the public the same as every other state agency like DSP, Revenue etc. It’s scandalous really that a small cohort of property owners in the state do not enjoy the same constitutional property rights as other citizens.
The Horseman
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We don't fully know that yet until a constitutional challenge is taken. How many laws were previously enacted and were subsequently found to be unconstitutional.
If the govt thought they were fully covered legally why have they not introduced a permanent RPZ or even a ban on any rent increases on existing tenancies?
The RPZ legislation is only extended each time from memory. Remember individual acts of the Oireacthas does not supersede our rights under the constitution.
From a Facebook post replying to the RTE report on landlords emailing politicians about the new rules
Chris Boyd
Mary Buckley landlords are parasites. They suck workers wages and create nothing. You'll most likely never be a landlord so why lick the boots of the ppl leaching off you.
That is the attitude I'm afraid and it permeates society at this stage.
When I was young and renting, I don't think I thought about my landlord from one end of the month to the next. All that has changed now, we are parasites sucking on workers like vampires.
Chris Boyd
Mary Buckley landlords are parasites. They suck workers wages and create nothing. You'll most likely never be a landlord so why lick the boots of the ppl leaching off you.
That is the attitude I'm afraid and it permeates society at this stage.
When I was young and renting, I don't think I thought about my landlord from one end of the month to the next. All that has changed now, we are parasites sucking on workers like vampires.