Landlord rep at PRTB

Greeneye said:

I can't get a solicitor at this point.
As for asking the rx to move his ass eewe that's on ongoing conversation. He won't do it. He had said he wants to lose house, initially to bank so that I basically suffer, he said he didn't care if bank chased him for mortgage because he lives at home now so he wouldn't suffer much. This is what I am dealing with. Impossible situation.

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There are so many couples in this situation. Your x is really trying to control you and as you are with some else he feels you cannot do anything without him. He will have the bank after him and they can put an attachment order on his wages as well as rtb. He will never be able to get finance if he goes this way.
Get the house in your name if you can afford it. Tell the bank you have been paying a while. you may have to pay off the x but you need legal advice on this.

Do not go in to a hearing without a solicitor(with rtb experience) with you. You will fall at the first hurdle. It is worth every penny and you can offset it against your tax bill. There are a few landlord associations and one advertises solicitors that can help in your situation.

You can agree a payment plan with your solicitor as long as you stick to it you will be fine. Make sure you submit all your evidence before you attend the hearing(it is court) and the x tenants could say you are not allowed to show what you have with you.
did you allow them to sublet. If not that is another thing against your x tenants.

Get your builder boyfriend to give you an invoice with vat. He must flesh out what he did to repair the house in his invoice as much as he can. His bill can be labour only. You bought the materials to get it back in order. Do not mention he is your partner as you are not allowed to put bills in that are your own. He will be seen as bias. See if he can go with you so he can give verbal evidence(make sure you tell rtb he will be attending the hearing.

You have photographs. Scan them and send them over to rtb. Make a log of all the calls you have and any texts you have with x tenant. If they have been late with rent/anti social etc then put on our log. Include any text calls that you offered the house back to tenant.
If you get a fine you can appeal that you cannot afford to pay it as you are in your situation family mortgage rent etc...

You have a bill from the agency for advertising the sale etc. Have a chat with them and ask if they would write something extra for you eg state of the house when they viewed to sell. If they let the house out for you then see if they can go with you to the hearing. They would know that your x partner was going for the sale and then changed his mind.

Have your ducks in a row. You have not done the statutory declaration but you did offer the house back. That will reduce the fine somewhat.
X tenants that damage houses should not have the option of going back into a property. What a stupid system we have here.
Hope this helps you some way.

Thanks sconeandjam, yes I know the ex is playing a game of punishment, but I didn't meet my current partner until two years..my ex was a spiteful person long before I moved on.

The hearing is in the afternoon. Anyone I was going to bring, such as a solicitor, would have to have been declared to be in attendance before now.

My statements etc have all gone in now.

I only put my claim in two weeks ago and was only notified last Thursday of the X tenants full claim, I only had fri to mon to get my case in order and my response etc to the X tenants claims also. I feel I wasn't given much opportunity to build or get much chance to get advice etc for case. But that's how the prtb roll it seems.

I really don't know what to expect and feel the PRTB will be bias in favour of the
Tenants. I base this on the little notice I was given and the PRTB have said in their letter to me they feel I didn't give tenants enough notice. The tenants aren't flagging this however the PRTB is..so I had to get everything tracked by post to prove tenants got enough notice.

A solicitor gave me a figure of 10,000 to represent me ...I mean come on...

My RTB registration is only in my name and I deal solely with everything in relation to the tenancies, I dnt see why I'd need my husband to sign a declaration if we decided to sell, I'd have thought I could do that. If I were going down that oath though I'd check test in advance.

I don't thing you need a solicitor. What you need is to be clear. I fear the fact you've not so far on here given a chronological order of events is not in your favour. Do that now. Have all your receipts, phone logs, email messages, and photographs. Be calm, not emotional, be professional. Don't get into stuff about your ex only in a cold detached relevant way about how he scuppered the house sale.

I don't like the fact you put it back on the market 3 weeks later. That's reeks to me, and it will too for the RTB. Sounds like that's pivotal to your claim.

Thanks Bronte,
I agree about having the co owner having to sign everything I just don't see how that makes sense, for practical reasons.

Yes I know I haven't been very clear here, hopefully the paperwork I put are clearer. They are in chronological order.

I will be as detached as possible today, as much as I can considering the people who thrashed my house are trying to get money from me.

I know what you mean about the house going on the market quickly but I TV genuinely could not sit waiting for my ex partner to get over his huff and get back to me while I paid for everything. I am only person working in my house hold and tax is due to be paid on rental income. The money was not there. I do have documents to show house arrears and restructured mortgage and hope this will show I am not in a position to pay a mortgage alone on an empty house and that how I acted was in good faith.

Please remember too before I relet the house I offered it back to x tenants before I let to new tenant.

Best of luck with the case.

Thanks Paid..I will let you know how it goes.

Greeneye said:

A solicitor gave me a figure of 10,000 to represent me ...I mean come on...

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That solicitor clearly was too busy to take you on or didn't want your custom. There are alternatives. Professional representation at a hearing shouldn't cost the colour of €10,000 or anything like it. Shop around.

T McGibney said:

That solicitor clearly was too busy to take you on or didn't want your custom. There are alternatives. Professional representation at a hearing shouldn't cost the colour of €10,000 or anything like it. Shop around.

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I agree with T mcGibney. There are other solicitors that would take it on. Check the landlord association s..I have no connection to them but you can ask for someone to be there. The reason for notification is to make sure the room is suitable for the numbers attending and the hearing assigned an hour.

I was at one hearing and material was sent the night before the hearing and was accepted. The information was all lies so got thrown out anyway.

If you have extra information ask if it can be included on the day. Mention what it is and ask if it can be noted in the minutes. E.g. Bill for repairs to house, late payment or non payment of rent, text messages etc.

Good luck today.

The RTB will only deal with the details of the eviction (valid or not). I have not fully read all of the comments in the thread to apologies if I am restating anything.

You issued a notice to quit and you had the Statutory declaration issued. As the lease was between you and the tenants you do not need your ex to sign any declaration of intention to sell in the RTB's eyes. If you do sell then you need your ex to complete paperwork for the banks etc but not for RTB purposes.

You mentioned that you offered the property back to the existing tenants once you repaired the work (again apologies if I am incorrect in this).

Based on the above I would consider you have a strong case (obviously this will rely on the evidence you have to hand).

I feel for you in this situation. It takes a certain type of person to be a landlord when you come up against these type of tenants. You need to be strong in yourself and as a previously mentioned you need to treat this as a business transaction, tenants will try to vilify you as the evil landlord but don't take it personal (I appreciate its easier said than done).

Keep us informed of how you get on, there is a wealth of knowledge on here which may help you.

Hi everyone and thank you for the supportive advice.

I did join a landlord group to see if I could get help, they were helpful but pretty general and did not give representation at hearings nor recommend solicitors.

I shopped around for solicitors but I felt I couldn't and can't afford to lose money on them and what could be a fine. I kinda thought I will have to cut my potential losses.

It certainly does take a certain type to deal with these kind of people, they really feel entitled to take without question. I hate that attitude, I believe in working for things and not trying to gain at other people's expense so that's triggering my anger.

I will keep everyone informed and thanks for the good wishes.

Greeneye, even if you say they will only look at eviction bit you can give background as to why you were selling, damage, rent late etc. You still can mention bills,cost you incurred. Try to slip that in as you will have time to have your say.
You can ask the tenants questions in hearings so think about what you want to ask them. Where you good landlord. Did they pay rent on time? All can help.

Did they damage walls and not repair them before they left. That way the solicitors can see they are not as good as they are trying to make out to be..the whole picture explains why you wanted to sell and make sure you mentioned you offered the house back. Good luck.

Thank you everyone for well wishes and advice.

I can't say much about hearing today as the adjudicator won't give his finding until a few weeks.

I don't want to say much in case a PRTB rep reads these threads and I don't want to prejudice my case. I will say it was horrible experience and I hope never to have to go through that again. Having to sit and watch people lie and lie and cry and play victim. They asked why I brought my case, crying how I could do such a thing... they were the ones who brought the case first!!!!

Funny that....the tears. I wonder if landlords started to cry would get the same response?

I had the same experience and the adjudicator fined us 1k due to her tears.

We Appealed that it was all lies and the case was squashed so fine.

The person showed their true colours at the appeal by getting very angry. We kept asking questions over and over to show what they were really like.
In the appeal is a court setting.. there were 3 judges/3 solicitors one representative for tenant, landlord and other impartial.
The judge challenged the persons pervious comments which they retracted. I had logs of texts messages etc sent in and some with me on the day.

I don't know if you can pm in this site but you have only a few weeks from outcome. I hope the adjudicator seen through the tears.

Hmm. I hope I don't have that experience I want to put this behind me.

Seeing the devious nasty side of people is never nice.

Gowd..thats not me..thank God..although a lot of similarities. What a nightmares, that kind of drawn out process would have ruined me.

Well done you on going to the hearing. Best of luck with it. I think it's good you offered the property back to them after you had to undo your decision to sell.

Thanks Bronte.

Only just came across this post today and am curious as to how this ended. Any update on the decision of the RTB? Was in a slightly similar position a couple of years ago and RTB found in our favour thankfully.

Hi, case completed. Absolute farce, however tenants case against me was found to have no basis in truth.
My case it seems was successful, for trashing my house the tenants have to pay me less than 300e, I had few receipts as myself and my partner did repairs ourselves etc.
I don't feel I won anything really, the money doesn't come near to compensating me for my time off work to fix what these people did and the amount of time I put into building my case. I submitted 154 pages and the adjudicator didn't read one page, he announced this at the start of the adjudication. I feel PRTB are a total joke who have complete bias in favour of tenants and unless a landlord can prove without a doubt that a tenant is in the wrong then a landlord may as well just take the hit, unfair as that is.