Rent Rules for new tenancies

cremeegg said:
Are you sure about this, just going through a few of their determination orders I see two with amounts for damages. [broken link removed]
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1500eur to get rid of undesirable tenants, that's not so bad.
 
I think I know the answer already, but just want to make sure!
Accidental landlord, property put into Rental Pressure Zone in January 2017, no rent increase since August 2015 due to 24 month limit on increases. Can I only put the rent up 4% at the rent review in August 2017? Good tenant in place but rented at about 60% of market rate.
 

There's a calculator here where you enter the current rent, last rent review date and it gives you the max of the new rent... I think it can go up to 8% or 10% if there hasn't been a review ina while.
https://www.rtb.ie/rent-pressure-zones/rpz-calculator
 
Thanks, yep 4%, so I'm penalised for not trying to screw my tenant at the last review.
It's helps with my decision to keep or sell.
 
Mucker Man said:
...so I'm penalised for not trying to screw my tenant at the last review.
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That's about the height of it.

Mind you, your tenant will also be in a bad spot if and when you decide the exit the market.

Everybody is a loser in this scenario.
 
Mucker Man said:
Thanks, yep 4%, so I'm penalised for not trying to screw my tenant at the last review.
It's helps with my decision to keep or sell.
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You didn't have to screw them. Charging 85%-90% of the market rate would not have been screwing them, up to 20% seems like fair 'loyalty\retention' bonus but in any line of business is 40% loyalty discount sustainable?
But this is 20-20 hindsight and who could have foreseen such a dreadful piece of legislation! I start to wonder about other sectors that might come into political firing line for price controls who should 'get their retaliation in first'...

In this specific case, does the legislation merely state 'rent review' or change in level of rent? Is there any wiggle room at all to go to 8-10% now because there were no actual increase last time?
 
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odyssey06 said:
Is there any wiggle room at all to go to 8-10% now because there were no actual increase last time?
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No but I think a review of the history of the passage of this legislation is instructive.

Initially, Minister Coveney's proposal allowed for a maximum annualised rate of increase of 4%, applied pro-rata to the date the last rent increase came into effect or the date the tenancy came into being, as appropriate.

My guess is that if the legislation had been enacted on that basis, there would have been some grumbling but most people would have grudgingly accepted the measures as a proportionate response to the current accommodation crisis (and let there be no doubt it - this is a crisis). But that's not what happened.

At the 11th hour (quite literally), Sinn Fein (quite correctly) pointed out that Minister Coveney's proposed formula meant that some tenants were going to face an rent increase of 8%+ in the current calendar year.

Minister Coveney quickly announced that wasn't he intended at all, at all (which I suspect came as quite a surprise to his civil servants) and the formula was subsequently re-cast.

For existing tenancies that were still caught by the two-year moratorium on rent reviews, the initial rent increase in a RPZ was capped at an annualised rate of 2%, applied pro-rata to the date of the last rent increase or the date the tenancy came into existence, as appropriate.

All of a sudden, the gap between the "market rate" and the "controlled rate" became a gaping chasm.

Bear in mind that all this happened in the days (hours!) before the Dail and Seanad broke up for their Christmas break. I've no doubt that physical exhaustion played a part in this process - it certainly wasn't a "focused, targeted strategy" as the Taoiseach said at the time.

(I tracked all of this in real time here:- https://www.askaboutmoney.com/threads/government-to-introduce-rent-caps-in-dublin-cork.201713/).

So, four months later and already the impact of the legislation is clear:-
  • The pace of the exodus of landlords from the long-term rental market (largely due to unfair taxation) has increased dramatically;
  • The shift to short-term corporate and AirB&B type lettings has increased significantly;
  • Landlords are issuing termination notices to tenants on increasingly tenuous or artificial pretexts;
  • The security of tenure of sitting tenants is becoming increasingly uncertain; and
  • Increasing numbers of new tenants are finding that they are simply priced out of the market with all that entails in terms of attracting FDI, etc.
From what I can gather, there is now almost universal acceptance that the RPZ regime, as enacted, was a mistake. Even housing charities that initially welcomed the legislation now seem to accept that it is not achieving its objective - it's actually making things worse, not better.

The only question to my mind is whether or not the Government will accept that they made a significant mistake and re-act accordingly.

I would be really impressed if Minister Coveney was big enough to admit that he got this one badly wrong and that the key policy objective is to strive to ensure that appropriate accommodation is available for all citizens at an acceptable cost, without any ideological preference for owner occupation over any other form of tenure.

I'm ever hopeful but not terribly optimistic that this will happen.
 
Thanks for the back story @Sarenco, it really is unfair on the landlords who did not increase rents in last rent review.
Far more unfair than hitting some tenants with 8% increases.
If even that one aspect could be changed it would likely dramatically reduce the situations of landlords going down the 'renovations' route.
 
odyssey06 said:
If even that one aspect could be changed it would likely dramatically reduce the situations of landlords going down the 'renovations' route.
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I don't disagree but my hunch is the Government might do something on the tax side to staunch the flow. That would avoid having to admit making a mistake in the first place and could be presented in a postive light.

But what would I know!
 
Sarenco said:
I don't disagree but my hunch is the Government might do something on the tax side to staunch the flow. That would avoid having to admit making a mistake in the first place and could be presented in a postive light.
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To be honest, if the housing situation is such that we don't have enough supply, it's a perverse incentive to allow properties to be taken off the market for renovations. This further reduces the level of supply! It should be removed as one of the RPZ exclusions, assuming RPZ is meant as an emergency measure.
 
odyssey06 said:
This further reduces the level of supply! It should be removed as one of the RPZ exclusions, assuming RPZ is meant as an emergency measure.
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Well that wouldn't make sense.

It would mean that a landlord could simply say that he couldn't substantially renovate a property because he had no legal mechanism for terminating a tenancy to secure vacant possession of a property to allow for necessary works to be carried out.

Picture a situation where a family is renting a property with no running water or heating for example.

Incidentally, the "substantial renovation" ground for terminating a tenancy is not limited to dwellings in an RPZ.
 

For me, no running water or heating doesnt count as a 'renovation' as renovation is an improvement ... that's remedial\necessary work that should be carried out with the tenant in situ.
I'm assuming there's no one renting in an RPZ property where the property wasn't designed with running water or heating, even if the system is now old.
People in their own homes upgrade their bathrooms, kitchens and heating facilities all the time without having to evict themselves.
They should have the option to remain in situ if the property is in an RPZ zone which means there is limited alternative supply.
 
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Sarenco said:
That's about the height of it.

Mind you, your tenant will also be in a bad spot if and when you decide the exit the market.

Everybody is a loser in this scenario.
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I have to disagree, both parties are not losers here.
The tenant will be exposed to reality, which he is currently not exposed to, because the landlord is carrying the suffering for both of them.
 
Well, the landlord in this scenario is reluctantly exiting the market and his tenant will have to find new accommodation in a particularly difficult rental market.

I can't see how either party could be happy with that outcome.
 
odyssey06 said:
For me, no running water or heating doesnt count as a 'renovation' as renovation is an improvement ... that's remedial\necessary work that should be carried out with the tenant in situ.
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I renovated my kitchen which required my water to be mostly off for a week. It wasn't remedial work.
 
odyssey06 said:
They should have the option to remain in situ if the property is in an RPZ zone which means there is limited alternative supply.
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That's an interesting idea but I think there would be uproar if a property owner was prevented from securing vacant possession of his property to develop or substantially renovate same.

I doubt that would even be constitutional.
 
qwerty5 said:
I renovated my kitchen which required my water to be mostly off for a week. It wasn't remedial work.
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Perhaps I amn't using the right words here, but the general principle of what I'm saying is that if a tenant has been living there for months or years, I don't see how it's justified to evict them for a week or fortnight of work.

The tenant has to provide access of course. They could stay with friends or family or co-ordinate it with holidays. People who own their homes do this sort of stuff all the time, they don't necessarily have to buy an empty house to do up. They seem to manage. Why can't a tenant if they choose to do so?

The implication of RPZ is that there isn't an abundance of alternative accomodation for the tenant available.
The merits of RPZ as a whole is a separate argument but within the context of an RPZ operating it is not logical to allow properties to be taken out of the market for this reason.
 
Sarenco said:
That's an interesting idea but I think there would be uproar if a property owner was prevented from securing vacant possession of his property to develop or substantially renovate same. I doubt that would even be constitutional.
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For all I know RPZ is unconstitutional... possibly everything you've said applies just as much to RPZ as it does to my amendment to it
 
Well, I think there are good arguments that the RPZ regime is indeed unconstitutional but I think there is a far higher probability that a developer would take a case if a law prevented him from gaining vacant possession of a property.
 
Sorry for resurrecting an old thread - but I didnt see a more up to date one on this topic after a search...

Speaking hypothetically of course...

Do any landlords know the current position on RTB enforcement of changing the rent by more than 4% after new tenants move in, in a rent pressure zone?

example:
-Property is in a rent pressure zone
-Old tenants voluntarily moved out
-If I were to charge market rent for a new tenancy, rent would be approx 16-17% higher than what was agreed with old tenants 12 months ago. This is higher than 4% allowed by the Rent Pressure Zone rules, but neither the new tenant nor the old tenant would know what the other's rent was. So it would have to be something checked and enforced purely by the RTB. My overall question is are the RTB policing this without prompting from a tenant?

Questions:
1. Are they doing an automated or manual comparison to check old rent vs new rent, and see if > 4% on the registration of a new tenancy? It seemed like earlier in the thread (2017), they were not doing this. What about now? I see in recent months there has been vague talk about increased powers of policing in the RTB. It's super easy to implement from an IT point of view so the cost of them doing it would be low.

2. There was some minor work done on the property between tenancies - anyone know how closely is this checked if I were to claim the renovations clause? Eg do I need to send in receipts / photos to prove work done?

3. Has there been a definition of what renovations clause is? i.e a listing of possible work that qualifies as "renovations"?

4. What form does enforcement take, do they just ask you nicely to put the rent back down, first, and just give you a slap on the wrist? Or do they start prosecuting immediately?

5. In general, do you have any acquaintances who did something like this and didn't hear anything from the RTB on it?

Of course all of this is purely hypothetical

Thanks for any input.
 
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