Report landlords to PRTB, worthwhile?

gurramok

I've been looking up the PRTB register and noticed that there are a string of houses on my street and the street behind that are not registered with PTRB despite having been rented out for literally years for some of them.
All are 3-bed houses, some have multiple of multiple tenants, 2 houses have at least 10 occupants for just 3 beds!

I've heard that the penaties for landlords are €3k allegedly for not having properties registered, is this penalty actually enforced?

Is it true that once they are registered that the properties will be on the tax man's radar for future 'auditing'?

As a law abiding citizen, I intend to report ALL the rented properties to PTRB as the landlords are breaking the law, is it possible to do this anonymously for my own safety?...Has anyone done this before?

mikemac

Fair play OP. Some posters may attack you as a busy body but well done.
This after all a country where being a "cute hoor" is celebrated and cash in hand landlords are widespread.

Are any of the landlords living in the house and renting a room? Or the houses just fully rented?

It’s likely that the landlords will eventually come to be reported to the Revenue as all it takes is one tenant to fill up a Rent 1 form and the game is up.
I don’t think it realy matters if you contact the authorities now or maybe 3 years from now as the penalties and interest keeps stacking up. If there is a stamp duty liability they the tax liability becomes immense.

I don’t know about the PRTB, I’d deal with the Revenue first.

gurramok

All are fully rented in an estabished area (not new builds).
I know this as i've lived in this area all my life and from contacts with established neighbours who have had problems tracing landlords and are not savvy on how to deal with system(mostly elderly folk).

To my disbelief on checking the register, only 2 properties are registered, many others are not.

Is there a revenue hotline for such matters?

talkingclock

I think an anonymous letter (for your own safety) posted in the letterbox of your local tax office will do the job.

have done this myself with a godawlful prick of a landlord who was not registered... i hope he is in tax hell now as the house is listed as registered now...

NCS

On a similar theme, is there a route for tipping off the powers that be about potential rent allowance fraud, ie. a high turnover of sublets?

ctc_celtic

where can you see the PRTB register? on-line?

gurramok

ctc_celtic wrote:

where can you see the PRTB register? on-line?

Here http://www.prtb.ie/pubregister.htm , thats how i found out houses were not regsitered when they should have been!

ctc_celtic

cheers for that,
just had a look and my last house isn't on it and my current house isn't on it either.
my last landlord kept €120 of our deposit because the house wasn't "clean" when we moved out. which is rubbish, as my partner spent hours cleaning it when we got all our stuff out, and she's a "clean freek".
i often contemplated getting them back.
whats your thoughts?
(sorry if this is hijacking gurramoks thread)

Lex Luthor

What you need to do is write to the PRTB by post or email and ask them for the names & addresses, if they are registered of the houses you are referring to.

If they are registered and not currently showing online, they will send you their details by post.

If they are not registered, then I'm not sure what course of action is taken but they should be following it up.

We have neighbours behind very fond of their drums on the sunny days in the back garden in the late evening so we contacted the PRTB so we could get the landlords details to contact them.

They aren't showing online, but they are registered, so they will be sending us their details and hopefully we can get them to sort it out

ctc_celtic

thanks, so they might be registered, just not on the site.

i really hope their not registered and get a huge fine.
after moving out, i found out this landlord never gives back deposits and always makes up some excuse. (would have been nice to know before i moved in:rolleyes: )

K_P

My parents (along with the local residents association - Busy Bodies United if you ask me) are planning on doing the same thing as yourself OP. About a third of the houses in their estate are rented out (about 40 houses in total) and only 5 registered with the PRTB. My mother rang the PRTB and while they don't target landlords on their own initiative, if they're informed of houses that are let out and given the names and addresses of landlords, they will pursue the matter. Apparently they were very helpful over the phone and sounded like they take these complaints quite seriously

I'd say go for it OP. It's horrible seeing your estate become rundown all because greedy landlords can't be bothered to take an interest in their property.

gurramok

Its reported now!

Rang prtb from me phone(from blocked number, paranoia ), reported 6 houses within spitting distance for not been registered despite some been fully let out for upto 3 yrs.

Ya man over the phone was glad i phoned, agreed with anonymity of call, he said not having names of landlords is not strictly required as they can trace them anyway.
Landlords have now 14 days to comply with PRTB requests.

talkingclock

Well done!

BingoWings

gurramok wrote:

Here http://www.prtb.ie/pubregister.htm , thats how i found out houses were not regsitered when they should have been!

Is publishing that information so publicly is a security risk to the tenants?

It could be a bumper Christmas for burglars who take advantage of the info - just print off the addresses and start knocking on doors! Chances are a good percentage of people (esp in certain areas) will have gone home or away for a few days.

bugler

It's available publicly - I fail to see how merely repeating it has any chance of pushing the risk of burglary up. Unless burglers tend to loiter around the Accommodation & Property forum of boards.ie.

Victor

Be careful in assumming anything. Between the first and second editions of hte register, the number of properties about doubled and I think a fair bit of the difference was the PRTB playing catch up.

In checking a particular street, check for different spellings and alternative addresses. Note that some addresses end up in the wrong file - there was an address in "Cork Street, Dublin 8" that got listed as "Cork 8".

shoegirl

Generally most landlords who do not register fail to do so because they have not declared the property for income tax purposes. It would be a good idea if there was a reliable and safe anonymous way of reporting such landlords, particularly as they probably make up about 50% of all properties.

I once rented from a supposedly "reputable" estate agent in a large East Cork town, only to discover that the "landlady" was in fact his wife. And they were also not declaring it to Revenue or registered with the PTRB.
Having said that it was a useful weapon in minor disputes and we managed to use it as leverage to make sure nothing went wrong. I suspect a lot of tenants don't report landlords for the same reasons - its a nice threat to have if they are not behaving themselves.