Increasing Rent


I fear we're going a bit off-topic (happy to discuss on another thread) ... Trying to steer it slightly back - in relation to mould, heating systems and rent... I agree with you re: warmth being needed to guard against mould, but how many landlords will give tenants credit against rent in winter months if they are having to run an inefficient expensive heating system to accomplish this?
 
They should have asked for a BER cert to get an indication of the energy needs of the property. Every landlord should have one available for viewing. If it has a low rating then rent somewhere else.

Going off topic, I think happens the longer a thread becomes. Some posters join in at the end of the thread and miss the beginning.
 

I don't quite know what to say about the rental car other than to say I treat rentals even better than my own but I do not need to go deep into the human psych to understand that some people think it's ok for me to spend my time cleaning their cooker because they are disgusting lazy slobs. And I've better things to be doing than cleaning cookers, but I do it on a pretty much daily basis.
 

I can't see this happening nor can I see how someone paying say 1000 Euro a month can suddenly pay 300 or 400 extra.

1000 X 10% is 100
1000 X 20% is 200
1000 X 30% is 300
1000 X 40% is 400 etc

It's just plain wrong to try and increase by a figure north of 10%. I don't know anybody getting salary increases of 10% etc.
 
I agree with you bronte to some extent. The current rent is 1400 and I will probably propose 1650 - so approx 18% increase. Do you think this is unfair considering they have had the benefit of at least 3 years under market rate? They wouldn't get a similar property in the area for that price.
 
Put it this way, if the tenant decides not to pay the increased rent what is that likely to cost you?
Some void period while you do some redecoration.
Cost of redecoration - paint, tools and labour or decorators price.
Say 2 weeks loss of rent
New tenants will be an unknown quantity - will they pay rent in full and on time?

Now, you are, or should be, a businessman and you are in business, not for charity but to make a profit. You may say you are happy to accept a rent significantly below the market rate. However, if you got new tenants willing to pay that rate or fairly close to it, how mush more would you "earn" per month, per year? Would it cover a holiday or give you some safety net in the bank?

If you are computer literate (I presume you are as you can use the internet and write on a forum) then it is worth using a simple spreadsheet to calculate different scenarios giving monthly totals and accumulated totals. Great things, spreadsheets.
 
I don't need a spreadsheet to figure it out!

If they are not willing to pay the extra (and I will give them 3 months notice of the increase), they are free to hand in their notice, however they would be paying a lot more for something similar. In that case, we may have a short void period but would get a much increased rent (a lot more than the proposed increase).
There is always a risk with new tenants and I would rather keep my current tenants but I think we need to make the investment work for us too.
 
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That sounds fair based on all you've posted, and you are giving them plenty of notice.
 
its a land lords market right now , thats the reality , if they are being charged way below market , they are no doubt aware of this , if they react negatively , you might be better without them , you owe them nothing , i dont buy this arguement about not being able to find decent tenants again or that the unoccupied period will cancel out any increased rent
 
Just to update here, we finally got around to giving the tenants notice of the rent increase. We went for 250 taking the rent from 1400 to 1650. I checked the properties available to rent in the general area (not many!) and the average rent for 7 similar properties was 1950. Some people may think we should have gone higher but considering their track record I felt that was fair. Our preference was to keep the tenants and we took into consideration that over 50% of any extra income we get from the property will go to Revenue. While no-one wants their rent increased, they seemed happy enough with that and they have security knowing that it will be at least 2 years before they have another increase. Of course they may decide to buy their own property or move on before that, but in the meantime we can continue to pay off the mortgage as we currently are and use the extra rent to create a buffer for void periods and allow to to repay any deposit.
 
Well done Nutso on coming to a reasonable solution and thank you for sharing the result with us. One often wonders how our advice on here pans out so that's great to get feedback. It's also nice to know that not only are you happy but the tenant is also treated fairly. And my God rents have gone crazy. Can't believe that useless ex Minister in charge Kelly got voted back in.
 
It's a 3-bed house with converted attic if that makes you feel any better! There were a couple of similar properties for up to 2,200 per month and some starting at 1,800 per month around the general area. €2,200 does seem high but back in 2003, my hubby lived in a shared 4 bed house which rented for 1800 which was a similar size to ours and not particularly grand! So rents haven't moved a huge amount from that period, they just dropped drastically in 2007/2008/2009 when there was oversupply.
 

ah yes, I was looking at OP initial post where he mentioned an apartment.

It's got me thinking what is the government paying every week to house all the homeless families in B&B, it must be costing a fortune. Why they don't kick start a house building program is beyond me.
 
moneybox said:
It's got me thinking what is the government paying every week to house all the homeless families in B&B, it must be costing a fortune. Why they don't kick start a house building program is beyond me.
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Because the County Councils don't want to landlords anymore. Even with free houses they cannot make the rental business pay.
 
surely paying out rent supplement is going to cost a lot more in the longer term.
 
moneybox said:
surely paying out rent supplement is going to cost a lot more in the longer term.
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It's hard to know. I would imagine the repair costs for socially provided houses would be a factor also...with that outsourced to the private sector, the cost goes away...
 
Firefly said:
It's hard to know. I would imagine the repair costs for socially provided houses would be a factor also...with that outsourced to the private sector, the cost goes away...
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Which is probably one of reasons so many landlords are selling up. The taxes on top of all the cost are too punitive. In the UK housing associtations provide a large amount of social housing ever since Thatcher sold off the bulk of the housing stock during the eighties. I would envisage we will see a growth in the no of housing associations setting up in Ireland in the future. Something is going to have to fill the void that is currently there.
 
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