Landlord wondering whether to sell or rent it out below market value

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cloudcuckoo

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Hi. Am a small landlord - Have a lovely 2 bed 1 bath 1990s apt in D4. Tenants have vacated voluntarily. No hassle with any tenants ever and it is a very rentable apt. We are faced with a decision now. The mortgage is 2000 p.m. The rent was stupidly dropped during a tenancy changeover during Covid times and is now 2000 p.m - we applied the nominal 2% increase each year. We cannot afford to leave it vacant for 2 years to reset the rent to market value- rents in the complex are 2500, so a fair bit below market value. Someone suggested adding a separate "waste/grounds maintenance...." charge to the rent but I don't see that as standing up - it is just circumventing rpz rules. We would consider refurbishment, but the rpz criteria seem difficult to achieve in our case as it's a small apartment. We could consider holding it vacant for a few months to await outcome of govt rpz review due in q3/2025, in the hope of being able to reset rents to market value. Is this utterly daft?! Or should we just forget about it and sell up - is it a good time to sell? Aware it will only attract owner occupiers due to rent cap. Won't make a significant capital gain on it either - bought it at high price in 2019. The apt management fee has also gone up a lot - nearly 3k pa which is hefty. We have teens but we are in another university city so while we ideally would like to keep it, we are not particularly thinking of holding it for them to go to college in Dublin. Don't have any other investment property either. Disappointed at the way it has all worked out. Any advice welcome. Thanks
 
The question you should address is whether the existing investment is profitable or not.

The profit is
REntal income
less
Mortgage interest (not the mortgage payment)
Expenses
= Profit before tax:

And then whether you could get a better return on the money you have tied up in the property.

It is set out systematically here:

Key Post - A systematic approach to deciding whether to keep your home as an investment after trading up

This has been covered before a few times, most notably in this Key Post, by Sarenco. This post updates it and tries to put a systematic framework on the issue. If you decide to keep your home as an investment, it is a decision which you should review every few years to see if it's still...
www.askaboutmoney.com

There are no short cuts. You have to crunch the numbers
 
As per Brendan.
You have to park the emotion.
Do the Math.
Even give the figures to a friend not involved at all.
Forget about the past.
The numbers and only the numbers count if you have no actual need for the property.
 
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