How long does it normally take a landlord to evict a nightmare tenant who is not paying rent?

[Brendan Burgess]

I am not interested in the restrictions place by Covid. My argument is that the protections already in place are strong enough.

Is the following scenario typical for a nightmare tenant who does not want to pay their rent and holds out as long as possible?

Rent due 1 January and not paid
Landlord chases tenant who promises to pay.
Rent due 1 February also not paid. Landlord chases tenant again. Landlord gets the run around
Rent due 1 March not paid. Tenant now in three months arrears so landlord decides to go formal.

2 March gives tenant written warning notice to pay the rent. No rent received.

1 April Landlord issues 28 day notice of termination.
27 April Tenant challenges Notice of termination in RTB .

27 August - date set for RTB hearing. - Tenants gets doctor's cert so hearing rescheduled to
27 September - Hearing goes ahead. Tenant has no defence.
27 October - RTB issues a determination saying notice is valid and rent is due. Gives tenant one month to vacate?
27 November - Tenant refuses to move out saying he has no place to go to
1 December - Landlord issues Circuit Court (?) proceedings
1 March Circuit Court hearing - adjourned due to not being reached on the day.
1 June Circuit Court hearing goes ahead and gives tenant 90 days to leave.
31 August - tenant vacates the property.

20 months later.

 

[Thirsty]

Can't comment from personal experience (thankfully); curious re the time gap from 27th april to 27th august.

Is that a statutory waiting time or due to RTB backlog?

Also does it have to be circuit court or can you have proceeding in district court?

DC possibly faster?

 

[cremeegg]

Just two observations on the above;

A landlord who waits two months from I Jan to 2 March before issuing notice is asleep on the job. I understand the period set out under the legislation is 7 days. If a tenant does not pay the rent due on Jan 1, the landlord may issue notice on Jan 8.

If a tenant is happy to ignore an RTB determination, why should they accept a court order. The time to the final step, a forced eviction, is also relevant.

 

[Thirsty]

The time to the final step, a forced eviction...

Would you have an estimate of that time?

It would be interesting to include external costs here also, on top of the lost rent.

 

[Leo]

Landlords need to be 100% sure they follow the procedures to the letter, failure to do so will have them back at step one.

A 7 day termination notice is only allowed for cases of anti-social behaviour. Otherwise it's a warning notice for failure to pay rent with a minimum of 14 days notice period (that period must be 'reasonable') followed by the 28 day termination notice.

For example, if you're more than 6 months into the tenancy, you have to issues a warning notice for failure to pay rent with a minimum of 14 days notice period. If you go less than 14 days, the RTB will come back to you in October declaring your notice invalid, and you start again.

Article here with a few nightmare stories as well, including one where €55k of arrears built up and the RTB decided that the tenant only needed to repay this at €50 per month!!

 

[Sarenco]

It can take 18 months (or more) to legally evict an over holding tenant.

Here's a good example -

'I would not follow the law the next time' - landlord who lost €25k in ordeal with rent-dodging tenants

A landlord has admitted she "would do things differently" after she lost at least €25,000 in an 18-month battle to remove rent-dodging tenants from her property.

www.independent.ie

In contrast, the full eviction process for a private tenant in England takes an average of 5-6 months.

The reality is that many landlords will take the view that the potential costs of going the legal route are higher than the potential damages of €20,000 that can be awarded against them for an illegal eviction.

Our system is completely dysfunctional.

 

[Thirsty]

That loss is primarily unpaid rent; doesn't say what legal fees came to.

 

[cremeegg]

Would you have an estimate of that time?

Between a court order and an actual eviction.

No idea, (fortunately) but I strongly suspect that if a landlord went down to his/her local Garda station, court order in hand, asking the Gardai to do an eviction there wouldn't be much of a rush to help.

 

[OMG_OMG]

I have an investment property. I was going to sell it but I leased it to the council instead.
The reason I was going to sell it was that I had a problem tenant, who left after a bit of agro themselves thank god (They owed money to someone you wouldnt want to owe money to, so skipped the country). The two apartments either side of mine were rented too.

Both owners of these apartments told me nightmare stories about trying to evict tenants.
One took 23 months to get rid of tenant with arrears of over €18k and the apartment was wrecked.
The other took took 26 months from start to finish and didnt get a penny rent in that time, and will never get that back. Also wrecked apartment.
Both these guys went the LTL route with the council (after their eviction experiences), which is what persuaded me to do that and not sell.

I would never rent to people again. The risk is just not worth the reward. If there is one good thing I can do it would be to warn people that property investment is torture nowadays.

 

[Thirsty]

One took 23 months to get rid of tenant with arrears of over €18k and the apartment was wrecked.
The other took took 26 months from start to finish and didnt get a penny rent in that time, and will never get that back. Also wrecked apartment.

We can safely take it that once you start eviction for unpaid rent, you won't get anything; write that off.
But no one seems to be able to say what the legal costs are?
Also can anyone confirm Brendan's timeline from experience or professional knowledge?

 

[Purple]

This issue extends to property ownership as well. I know a women who hasn't paid her mortgage in 8 years and is no closer to having her house repossessed than she was 7 years ago. She owns another house which she rents out... I kid you not.

My advice to a friend who wasn't getting rent payments from her tenant for 6 months was to offer them a thousand euro and write off the rnt if they moved out in a week. When it comes to homes possession is indeed 9/10ths of the law and whoever cares least about sticking to the law has all of the power.