Do Galway landlords not like paying taxes or just prejudiced against rent allowance?

soapbloggs

I'm just curious, there seems to be a dearth of places accepting rent allowance in Galway. It's all the harder to find a place that does since the government decided to introduce an anti-discriminatory ruling that prohibits daft,ie from offering landlords the choice to select 'rent allowance not accepted'. There's now no way to filter those who won't accept it out.

I don't think it stops them discriminating in my experience anyway and it just makes the search much harder and frustrating to do. Some people indicate by writing in the description they don't accept it but most don't. I just wonder how prevalent it is, should I give up looking in the city of the tribes and stick to rural areas? Is it because landlords don't want to pay taxes or are people on welfare presumed bad tenants?

Gatling

soapbloggs wrote: »

I'm just curious, there seems to be a dearth of places accepting rent allowance in Galway. It's all the harder to find a place that does since the government decided to introduce an anti-discriminatory ruling that prohibits daft,ie from offering landlords the choice to select 'rent allowance not accepted'. There's now no way to filter those who won't accept it out.

I don't think it stops them discriminating in my experience anyway and it just makes the search much harder and frustrating to do. Some people indicate by writing in the description they don't accept it but most don't. I just wonder how prevalent it is, should I give up looking in the city of the tribes and stick to rural areas? Is it because landlords don't want to pay taxes or are people on welfare presumed bad tenants?

It's country wide and welfare pay well below market rents and there is a bigger risk taking on people solely on benefits

soapbloggs

So they're prejudiced I guess. The market rates v rent allowance isn't so bad in Galway, highest outside of Dublin, there's plenty of places within that range, however, landlords just don't want to take on the risk I guess. To be fair the dole is well below what's considered the minimum amount to live off, even min wage isn't much higher than that so I could imagine some people not paying rent on time. Oh well, I don't doubt I will succeed in the end but not in the city I'd imagine. Why they don't use the European system, Germany, Switzerland and France for instance pay most of what was your previous wage for up to 2 years, makes sense to have a national system like this so you can keep your lifestyle in between jobs. Anyway, that's another story.

athtrasna

soapbloggs wrote: »

So they're prejudiced I guess. The market rates v rent allowance isn't so bad in Galway, highest outside of Dublin, there's plenty of places within that range, however, landlords just don't want to take on the risk I guess.

That's a lot of guessing and accusing. A search on here for rent allowance will bring up tens if not hundreds of threads like this, it's not a Galway specific issue. Bottom line is it's up to the landlord who they entrust with their properties, whatever their reasoning in selecting tenants is.

Not a NSA agent

RA is paid in arrears isnt it? That would be a negative.

Then you have someone who will be in the house more often, more wear and tear. Think there was a thread not long ago where they were doing a check on someones tenants so they werent getting paid.

RA can lead to more hassle than a non RA tenant. A LL will want the best tenant possible who will cause the least hassle.

Hollister11

My parents never wanted to take RA, but 3 years ago they needed to get people into their rental property so took a couple and there 4 kids on RA. They didn't get the check for the first 4 months, eventually got it, were paid on time for the next year, and for the last 4 months of the tenancy They got no rent. She wouldn't leave the house, and the geniuses in PRTB (who seemed to be anti landlord in our instance) told us to give them back their deposit and just get rid off them. They had the house and all the furniture destroyed. They had paint and drawing all the wall, couches soaked with urine. Bags and bags off rubbish around the side, the fridge had all sorts in it. There were potatoes in the press, that were there for around 9 months.

The place was in ruin. My folks will never take RA again. In our case they didn't respect the house because it was free.

soapbloggs

I've lived in a few western European countries which includes Ireland and the UK. Contrasting them, I very much understand the trouble some landlords must go through in Ireland and the UK. These two have quite different systems to the other countries in that they tend to offer furnished houses, only take one months deposit and usually don't require renters of rooms to have insurance to recover costs of damage. Germanic countries particularly are very picky indeed about damage. Anyway, I think this is partly why some tenants have little regard for landlord's property and it still shocks me how some of them can behave, like animals. So I can understand the landlord's can be weary. There are supposedly 70k RA tenants, so I guess many of them are fine. My experience of people renting in Ireland has been that some landlords really take tenants for granted,are patronizing, greedy and don't care about the upkeep of the place but the majority have been really decent people. I think there could be a lot more regulation that suits tenants and landlords but I guess that's another debate. I do feel frustrated though, for whatever the reason, that landlords discriminate RA tenants.

athtrasna

This topic has been done to death already...thread closed