Tax Treatment of Landlords has to be Revisited
- Thread starter Always Learning
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I agree with the above. For me and I would guess many small landlords, fear of Sinn Fein forming part of the next government and implementing their stated policy that investment properties must be sold with the tenant in situ would be of greater concern than tweaking the tax treatment.
PebbleBeach2020
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I would guesstimate that between now and the summer of 2025 and the next general election, we should see around 20,000 landlords ceasing tenancies and selling up. That would be my guts, based on the last few years and as we near the uncertainty of SF in government potentially.
Not to worry though, those 20,000 landlords maybe offset by 5,000 new properties charging the absolute maximum possible rent. Good luck to the renter's in the next few years, they are going to need it.
Not to worry though, those 20,000 landlords maybe offset by 5,000 new properties charging the absolute maximum possible rent. Good luck to the renter's in the next few years, they are going to need it.
You are correct and those two factors are the main reasons for the landlord exodus. Faster ways of getting rid of real problem tenants would also be good as would less pointless RTB paperwork. Also, someone to actually answer an email or pick up the phone in the RTB would be great as well.
The situation is more complex than you suggest. The reason why we don't have enough social housing is because we sold it of at knock down prices in the interests of vote buying. Ireland has been selling off social housing since the 1930s, long before Thatcher was even born. Currently council tenants can buy their house for between 40 and 60% below market value,
The rents we charge here (current average = €72 per week) don't even cover the maintenance let alone repay the loans taken out to build or buy the housing. I agree that we need more social housing and HAP is a terrible system but we urgently need to reform the social housing sector. I think it should be taken out of the hands of councils and given to housing associations because councillors cannot be trusted to think long term and manage the houses like the critical national asset they are. They are just interested in milking the service for the votes they can get out of it.
T McGibney
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I'm not convinced it had anything to do with vote buying. in fact the opposite is likely to be true. If you're in a council house you need the council to maintain it and to some extent or other you're at the mercy of the politicians who dominate the council. If the tenant buys out the place, the politicians lose control of you and your family, and you are then free to vote for whoever you like.
The truth is much simpler - maintaining old houses is a money pit and a task totally unsuited to bureaucratic councils. They literally couldn't afford to keep maintaining them.
They couldn't afford to replenish the stock either.
I don't agree. We currently sell council housing at between 40 and 60 per cent below market value. The market value is the likely replacement value do the taxpayer has to pay the 40 to 60 per cent each time to replace these dwellings. No country in the world has maintained a large social housing stock with high levels of sales. The reason Austria has so much social housing isn't because they built less social than us (they actually build similar amounts as a % of all dwellings) but because they didn't sell it off.
I think we definitely need more social housing and renting from a private landlord isn't a good long term optikn particularly for vulnerable people or people with children. But we as a nation also need to have an honest conversation with ourselves about how we got to this point. Mismanagement of social hoosong is a large part of it and we can't invest a pile of money in social housing simply to repeat the mistakes of the past.
I also think we need a flexible private rented sector to house people who need to move into or internally within Ireland. This is vital for our economy, the functioning of our universities etc I think a lot of our problems is due to the fact that the private rented sector is being expected to provide both long term homes for vulnerable and low income people and short term housing for students, people working in Google etc. It can't fulfill both roles satisfactorily.
You can't buy a leveraged house. You can buy shares in companies which are highly leveraged, increasing your risks and your potential rewards. The interest which those companies pay is a deductible, reducing their taxable profits and likely reducing your taxable dividend. So it's not really all that different, when you look at it in this way.
Is it not obvious if you don't sell it off you don't need to replace it.
Local authorities here sold it off as a cost saving measure. Once out sourced to the private sector they didn't have to cover the cost of maintenance or non paying tenants. So they foisted that on the private sector. Who didn't want it. So they changed the legislation so you can't refuse hap etc. When that didn't work they kept changing the rules. Death of a thousand paper cuts.
Social housing and affordable housing has to be subsidized. I think they thought they would escape that by privatisating it. Well you can't.
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100% correct, the PRS in Ireland anyway, should really only be used by people who want to rent because they need something relatively short term and flexible ie. it suits the tenant to rent. People who need permanent homes should either be able to buy or be in social housing.
Always Learning
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I second this, it's a big issue for me. I'm tired of people thinking that it's us against them. Tenant vs landlord and that we are terrible people. We are not evil, I'd guess that as a percentage a very small amount of landlords take the p**s. I'm fair with my rent and tenants and have never had a complaint. Any others I know operate much the same. Yes I'm in this to make money, but that doesn't mean I'm the villain of the housing crisis.
Recently I found myself defending making a profit from renting houses to a guy who was convinced it's the landlord against the tenant and that landlords are all getting rich off the back of poor tenants. He didn't even realise that we pay tax on the rental income! When I told him I pay 52% he was actually surprised and it changed his tone.
The message has been going out there for years that we're somehow evil and it's really bloody frustrating. Especially when some of the people listening to this are not very educated on the matter. They just hear populist non-sense and then repeat it.
PebbleBeach2020
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Thank Rory Hearne for peddling his usual false information. If adopting his mandate, they should give landlords twelve months to get out of the game or stay in and these are the rules in twelve months time. See how many landlords stick around then.
Always Learning
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Community group brings challenge against permission for 150 homes in Crumlin | BreakingNews.ie
The locals supporting the action “sincerely want” to see the site of Glebe House appropriately developed for housing, the court was told
www.breakingnews.ie
One or two posters above touched on a huge part of the problem. Private landlords shouldn't be letting houses to people who don't want to be renting in the first place. People who need social housing are a different market to people who want to rent but because the government have been letting private landlords pick up the slack on housing citizens that they can't build for, that market and the rental market have merged.
If you're renting to people who don't want to rent and can't afford the rents landlords need for a return, then of course they are going to be unhappy and that creates an us and them attitude. It's the government they should be looking to though, not vilifying landlords.
BTW... https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland...mission-for-150-homes-in-crumlin-1419422.html
When someone does try to build and alleviate some pressure, it very often gets dragged out for years or refused. So how can you win.
Threshold very much to blame as well - constant anti-landlord stories placed in the media.
That is the situation is a nutshell!Community group brings challenge against permission for 150 homes in Crumlin | BreakingNews.ie
The locals supporting the action “sincerely want” to see the site of Glebe House appropriately developed for housing, the court was told
One or two posters above touched on a huge part of the problem. Private landlords shouldn't be letting houses to people who don't want to be renting in the first place. People who need social housing are a different market to people who want to rent but because the government have been letting private landlords pick up the slack on housing citizens that they can't build for, that market and the rental market have merged.
If you're renting to people who don't want to rent and can't afford the rents landlords need for a return, then of course they are going to be unhappy and that creates an us and them attitude. It's the government they should be looking to though, not vilifying landlords.
BTW... https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland...mission-for-150-homes-in-crumlin-1419422.html
When someone does try to build and alleviate some pressure, it very often gets dragged out for years or refused. So how can you win.
We did - we actually had sold 2/3 of the stock by 1968. And one of the reasons it was sold was to finance old loans before the new ones came in.
This all crashed and burned in 1987 when the local loan fund went bankrupt and had to be ended entirely.
Social home building was largely financed by a mixture of rates, commercial loans and central govt grants - when the first two went bust, the third was the only option. And remember differential rent didn't go nationwide until stipulated by law in 1964.
Minister of finance should not engage in moralising about fairness of tax system but should act on facts i.e landlords are leaving market in midst of housing crisis.The question he must ask is how to stabilise the private rental sector by legislation or budgetary measures
its a vicious circle and highly politicised - there is now pressure from left to "shrink" the private rented sector i.e. make it smaller. But there is no acceptance that the size of the PRS itself has an impact on asking rents. So any policy decision to try to "protect" rental stock is read as "bailing out landlords" - whatever you think of them currently political untouchables, so no action is taken.
Minster is Finance is a politician, and policy very much includes making moral decisions and decisions about perceived fairness - hence the hoo haa a few years ago when the age of child where single parent family allowance paid was reduced as it was seen as being a moral judgment. Ministers have to take into account perceptions of fairness on literally every policy. Part of the issue right now is that in an environment where rents are considered to be at record highs, would reducing tax burden on landlords be perceived as a reward for going against solidarity? And end of day unpalatable reality is most landlords are landlords because they are better off to start with and have assets to rent out, therefore any additional tax reduction is seen as a general reward for being "better off." (Whether or not that is true is another matter). Moral values or perceptions around them are very much part of reality and a big part of why X votes for Y or not.
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