Rent review period when tenants rotate regularly

4thfloor

I have a 3-bed Dublin apartment which is let out. I reviewed the rent downwards in 2011 and it is now well below market rate. I haven't pushed it until now since the tenants are excellent, but it's so far below market rate that it really needs some adjustment upwards.

Since I started letting, the arrangement has always been a 12 month lease with all three tenants as joint signatories. If one tenant moves out, the other two tenants find a suitable replacement and all three then sign a new 12 month lease.

The last time this happened was in July 2015. At that time, I notified everyone verbally that I intended to review the rent no later than June 2016, and confirmed by email a couple of days later. The term of the lease was set to 11 months for that reason.

With the new 2-year restriction on rent reviews, I'm wondering how this applies to my situation. The apartment has been continually occupied since 2009, with never more than 1 of the 3 tenants changing at any time.

Does a brand new tenancy begin each time a new lease is signed, as long as there is at least one new signatory -- so a rent increase can be introduced at that time?

Or is it treated as one continual tenancy, in which case I could advise of a rent increase at any point once I give 90 days notice?

Or do neither of these apply, and I must wait until all signatories have been in situ for at least two years? (How would I ever get to increase the rent without evicting them in that case, as long as at least one tenant moves out every 23 months?)

Michael D Not Higgins

I would not consider an updated lease with the new tenants names to be a new tenancy, it is a continuation of the old tenancy with a new fixed period commitment. In that respect, I think you would be entitled to a rent review.

However, the tenancy is clearly a different one to the one that started in 2009 (assuming all the original tenants are now gone). This leaves the tricky situation of when one tenancy ends and another begins and I don't have the professional experience to judge that.

quietsailor

As far as I know the rules are/were;

Pre Dec 2015 you could not review the rent within one year of the last review and you had to give one months notice of doing so. Post Dec 2015 you can only review the rent every 2 years and must give 90 days min notice.

To use the old system of one yr and 30 days notice a lot of landlords gave the notice before Dec 2015 - surely that's the position you are in - you gave the notice under the old system back in June 2015 so the old system applies to you

Michael D Not Higgins

quietsailor wrote: »

As far as I know the rules are/were;

Pre Dec 2015 you could not review the rent within one year of the last review and you had to give one months notice of doing so. Post Dec 2015 you can only review the rent every 2 years and must give 90 days min notice.

To use the old system of one yr and 30 days notice a lot of landlords gave the notice before Dec 2015 - surely that's the position you are in - you gave the notice under the old system back in June 2015 so the old system applies to you

That's not how the rules work. The notice period is the length of time before the new rent comes in, not notice of an impending rent review. Had the OP reviewed the rent in July and said the rent was going up x% in June, that would have been a rent review that took place in July 2015 with 11 months notice.

This is further complicated by the fact that you can't review the rent until 2 years after the start of a tenancy. The start of the current tenancy is not assured and could be considered to be July 2015, depending on the tenants and how the current lease is interpreted.

You would probably be better off renting rooms seperately rather than having a lease for the full house. That way anytime a new person moves in you can set a rent for that person seperately to match the market rate. As people come and go you can always be revising the rent on an individual basis.

Cuddlesworth

I would read it as the last rent review was July 2015, as that is when a new contract was signed for a agreed amount. Individual tenants would also have part 4 rights depending on the length of their stay. If its not a obscene increase and he handles it well, they will probably just take it.

He can't just rent out rooms in future, because the current tenants are entitled to the exclusive use of the full apartment. What he would need to do is get the remaining people to to agree to new leases with exclusive room use only or ask them to leave, or continue to pay the full rent without subletting. Assuming its not allowed within the lease.

Cuddlesworth

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I would read it as the last rent review was July 2015, as that is when a new contract was signed for a agreed amount. Individual tenants would also have part 4 rights depending on the length of their stay. If its not a obscene increase and he handles it well, they will probably just take it.

He can't just rent out rooms in future, because the current tenants are entitled to the exclusive use of the full apartment. What he would need to do is get the remaining people to to agree to new leases with exclusive room use only or ask them to leave, or continue to pay the full rent without subletting. Assuming its not allowed within the lease.

It's an interesting scenario actually when you think about it. Say you have 3 people on the lease, one is there 4 years and the other 2 people for say 2 years. The LL should be allowed give notice as part 4 ends after 4 years however there are two people equally on the lease who are not there long enough to be given notice so how can it work.

To be honest the renting rooms seperately is a much better model to go with from day one if its a house that being shared by different people with the possibility of tenant turnover.

I can't imagine the mess my place would be if we were all under a lease with people moving out and others in more often than once a year. We would have had a new lease signing 5 times in just over two years I've been there not including my signing when I moved in. Instead we all rent rooms, no one has a lease and when someone moves out they just give a months notice and someone else is found to replace them.

Cuddlesworth

Just so you are aware, that arrangement seems to heavily favour the landlord. If the only tie you have to the property is the use of a room, you are considered a licensee, with little to no rights.

Michael D Not Higgins

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Just so you are aware, that arrangement seems to heavily favour the landlord. If the only tie you have to the property is the use of a room, you are considered a licensee, with little to no rights.

And here we go again, the PRTB has made judgements to the contrary. The legal position of someone renting a room in a shared apartment is not as cut and dried as that.

Diane Selwyn

For a shared rental of that type PRTB used to require a new tenancy be registered once all of the original tenants had moved out (or after the tenancy expiration date if any of the same people were still in residence). So you would not need to register a new tenancy every time one person changed even though you are asking them to sign a new lease each time. I don't know if the restrictions on rent reviews are tied to tenancy registrations rather than leases but it might be a valid way of measuring the time for the sake of rent reviews? btw my dealings with PRTB were a few years back so you might want to confirm with them if that's still the correct procedure.

Cuddlesworth

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Just so you are aware, that arrangement seems to heavily favour the landlord. If the only tie you have to the property is the use of a room, you are considered a licensee, with little to no rights.

Id argue that this situation does make me a licensee while others may argue differently. The PRTB has ruled both ways so it's not clear.

In a houseshare situation this is the only way I'd chose to rent to be honest and has always been the way I do it. I don't want to be tied to the place nor do I want to be responsible for anything other than my own rent when renting with strangers.

4thfloor

Thanks for all the helpful comments so far; plenty to think about.

I'm not keen to switch to a rent-a-room situation since it leaves the onus on me to find new tenants when someone moves out. At the moment, the remaining tenants are motivated to find a good, compatible replacement, not least because they are jointly liable for the full rent until a replacement is found.

It's in a good city centre location with high demand and most tenants are staying 2-3 years individually, so there is a change of tenant every 9-12 months or so.

My plan has always been to have the conversation with the current tenants well ahead of the end of June to let them know what's happening, and I expect it will go smoothly. However, it's good to know what the official position is also.

The earliest of the current tenants started in August 2014, so I could see an argument that August 2016 would be a reasonable date for a rent review based on Diane's comments.

Cuddlesworth

Michael D Not Higgins wrote: »

And here we go again, the PRTB has made judgements to the contrary. The legal position of someone renting a room in a shared apartment is not as cut and dried as that.

Do you have a link to the judgements? Their site says otherwise and the law is not so clear cut on the matter(a landlord could argue that in a actual court). I would not be surprised if there were mitigating factors(like bills in tenants names) or situations like the OP's were the landlord tries to manipulate the situation in their favour.

4ensic15

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Do you have a link to the judgements? Their site says otherwise and the law is not so clear cut on the matter(a landlord could argue that in a actual court). I would not be surprised if there were mitigating factors(like bills in tenants names) or situations like the OP's were the landlord tries to manipulate the situation in their favour.

It doesn't matter what the site says, it is what the Board and the Court says is what matters.
http://www.courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/0/C44D283B4830252680257DB700404B8D

esforum

4ensic15 wrote: »

It doesn't matter what the site says, it is what the Board and the Court says is what matters.
http://www.courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/0/C44D283B4830252680257DB700404B8D

That Jusgement states that a person that rents a room and shares the rest is not a tenent. Are you sure that was the correct judgement?

4ensic15

esforum wrote: »

That Jusgement states that a person that rents a room and shares the rest is not a tenent. Are you sure that was the correct judgement?

Look at what it says in the case of Zhang and Holohan referred to in the judgement.

Cuddlesworth

4ensic15 wrote: »

It doesn't matter what the site says, it is what the Board and the Court says is what matters.
http://www.courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/0/C44D283B4830252680257DB700404B8D

4ensic15 wrote: »

Look at what it says in the case of Zhang and Holohan referred to in the judgement.

Thanks,

I've been looking for something like that for a while. I think this matter is very like the other famous judgements, where the result is taken as fact without context.

Report here.

I think these are very important facts to consider in that judgement, although feel free to point out otherwise.

"Apart from that period of 4 months, the only tenant occupying the Dwelling for the 16 month period from 6th October 2009 to February 2011 was the Appellant Tenant. "

"that she would be given the right to select the second tenant."

"She said that the Appellant Tenant had been told that she could find a second tenant and that when the Respondent Landlord found one, that second tenant had moved in with her consent"

"She said that the Respondent Landlord had asked her if she could find someone to take the other room, and that if she could not, that he would try to find someone acceptable to her. She said that she was never told by the Respondent Landlord that they did not have a landlord / tenant relationship."

"but that whenever he visited it was always with her permission which she would give by text message eg when he came to collect one of his daughter’s toys or when someone would come to view the apartment."

"The Respondent Landlord alleged that some text messages were missing from the papers supplied by the PRTB along with the Notice of the Tribunal hearing, but he was unable to identify what was missing. The Representative for the Appellant Tenant said that there were no omissions and that the text messages (TS 23 and 24) were the same as had been submitted at the Adjudication"

I don't think that landlord did himself any favours in that case and I think there is a reason why that blurb is still on the PRTB site.

Breaking it down,

• She had exclusive access to the entire apartment for well over a year leading up to eviction.
• He never made clear that she wasn't a tenant under normal circumstances, implying it was a normal house share.
• He gave her the right to accept any new tenants within the property.
• He tried to argue that he lived there before admitting that he only stayed three nights after she was evicted, using that for his justification that the PRTB was not applicable to this case.
• He had to ask for permission to enter the property from her. He could not prove otherwise. Nobody else ever entered the property without her permission.

The Trinbunal found a number of things(read the report), but what sticks out to me in this case is the below finding.

"b) Consequently a “self-contained residential unit” must mean a unit which enables the person residing there to have all the essentials for living ie for sleeping, washing, cooking, toiletry and relaxing. The fact that the person does not have an exclusive right to those facilities, does not render the unit less than a “self-contained residential unit”. In fact, the word “exclusive” appears in only one section of the 2004 Act ie section 12(1)(a) which deals with the obligation of the landlord to allow a tenant to enjoy peaceful and “exclusive occupation” of the dwelling. In our view the words “exclusive occupation” have to be interpreted as excluding other persons who have no right to such occupation, rather than “exclusive occupation” being necessary to create a tenancy to which the 2004 Act applies. We find as a matter of fact in this case, that the Appellant Tenant had an exclusive right to occupation of a bedroom and a non-exclusive right to other rooms in the unit ie bathroom, kitchen, and living room, which she was required to share with whoever else might have a right from time to time to exclusive occupation of the other bedroom. As the Appellant Tenant was paying rent to the Respondent Landlord for this right, we find as a matter of law that there was a tenancy of a “dwelling” within the definition of the 2004 Act as it was a “self-contained residential unit” and consequently the PRTB and this Tribunal has jurisdiction in relation to a dispute in relation to the tenancy. "

I read that as, she was able to treat the room as hers and she was able to exclude anybody who was not a resident from the entire property including landlord, it was considered a tenancy under the Law.

I'd say that was a illegal eviction too to be honest. The landlord chose in that case to try subvert the situation to his advantage and failed. The tribunal spotted that too.


I know that the landlords I am aware of who rent rooms are very specific in how they handle their dealings with their tenants, well most of them are.

• They are clear from the start that they are renting a bed in a room.
• They have no say in what tenants or other persons are allowed enter the property.
• They are allowed lock their room for privacy but the landlord and cleaner or anybody required have or are given a key and a right to enter it. Similar to a hotel functionality.
• There is no notice to turn up or to enter rooms if necessary outside of a minimal expectation of personal privacy(eg, knocking and no walking in on nude people).
• They do not have any exclusive access to the facility's or the abilty to exclude others from using them. (washer broke, here's a key to next door, go use that)
• All bills are paid by the landlord and included in the rent.
• The house and rooms are cleaned and maintained by a cleaner or landlord.
• Everything is made clear to them and signed in writing before hand. No lease, just notification of terms of stay.

4ensic15

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Thanks,




I know that the landlords I am aware of who rent rooms are very specific in how they handle their dealings with their tenants, well most of them are.

• They are clear from the start that they are renting a bed in a room.
• They have no say in what tenants or other persons are allowed enter the property.
• They are allowed lock their room for privacy but the landlord and cleaner or anybody required have or are given a key and a right to enter it. Similar to a hotel functionality.
• There is no notice to turn up or to enter rooms if necessary outside of a minimal expectation of personal privacy(eg, knocking and no walking in on nude people).
• They do not have any exclusive access to the facility's or the abilty to exclude others from using them. (washer broke, here's a key to next door, go use that)
• All bills are paid by the landlord and included in the rent.
• The house and rooms are cleaned and maintained by a cleaner or landlord.
• Everything is made clear to them and signed in writing before hand. No lease, just notification of terms of stay.

I have never heard of the like. Landlords paying for cleaners at that level of the market?
Such an arrangement may breach the planning laws as it would require hotel use.

4ensic15

4ensic15 wrote: »

I have never heard of the like. Landlords paying for cleaners at that level of the market?
Such an arrangement may breach the planning laws as it would require hotel use.

While not as extreme on some of the points in that post I actually have a friend living in a large houseshare, 8 bedrooms very recently renovated all rooms let totally seperately. All bedrooms have a number and an individual prepay meter for electricity used in the room but all common area electricity (kitchen, cooker, washing/dryer etc etc) is included in the rent. All heating is included in the rent. Internet and bins included in the rent. Also the LL and his wife comes twice a week and clean all common areas, they come when they want. The LL finds new people for the house, I'm unsure if there is a written contract but I suspect there is.

Now this is not like any houseshare I've been in but they obviously exist and it's actually a very nice house renovated to a very high standard and kept very clean due to the twice weekly cleaning by the owners. In contrast I've never signed a thing in a houseshare, always got the room from the person moving out never involved the LL, no cleaning arranged etc etc.

Cuddlesworth

4ensic15 wrote: »

I have never heard of the like. Landlords paying for cleaners at that level of the market?
Such an arrangement may breach the planning laws as it would require hotel use.

All Dublin property's, 4+ beds, combined rent minus bills appear to be substantially greater then leasing property on its own with slightly more ongoing engagement in managing it. Property's are kept in much better condition then usual, repair costs are far less and downtime is close to nonexistent. I'll leave planning considerations to whoever wants to challenge it, but in general planning enforcement in Ireland is like a toothless dog who likes to bark a lot.

Do you have any case reference with the prtb that would apply to the scenario now developing all over Dublin. As stated above, I don't believe that prtb judgement is applicable. I've tried searching myself but can't find anything.

Victor

4thfloor wrote: »

At that time, I notified everyone verbally that I intended to review the rent no later than June 2016, and confirmed by email a couple of days later.

I can't see this as being binding on the tenants. It is a mere statement of intent.

I think you are stuck - the next review is either two year after the last lease (i.e. July 2017) or the next time someone moves in after July 2016.

4ensic15

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

All Dublin property's, 4+ beds, combined rent minus bills appear to be substantially greater then leasing property on its own with slightly more ongoing engagement in managing it. Property's are kept in much better condition then usual, repair costs are far less and downtime is close to nonexistent. I'll leave planning considerations to whoever wants to challenge it, but in general planning enforcement in Ireland is like a toothless dog who likes to bark a lot.

Do you have any case reference with the prtb that would apply to the scenario now developing all over Dublin. As stated above, I don't believe that prtb judgement is applicable. I've tried searching myself but can't find anything.

Tribunal Reference No: TR0914-000847 / Case Ref No: 0414-11559
This is the nearest. The one consistent fact is that the Tribunal is very pro-tenant and all of these agreements are at risk.
As for planning enforcement, it has become more rigourous in recent years.

Cuddlesworth

4ensic15 wrote: »

Tribunal Reference No: TR0914-000847 / Case Ref No: 0414-11559

Can't find any reference either of those numbers.

4ensic15

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Can't find any reference either of those numbers.

Deans Hall Student Accomodation v
Respondent: Turlough McGuinness, Caoimhin King

Cuddlesworth

4ensic15 wrote: »

Deans Hall Student Accomodation v
Respondent: Turlough McGuinness, Caoimhin King

Cheers. Tribunal found in favour of the tenant being a licensee as she had no exclusive use of the tenancy and signed a agreement laying that out.

http://www.prtb.ie/docs/default-source/tribunal-reports/tr0914-000847-dr0414-11559-report.pdf?sfvrsn=0

4ensic15

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Cheers. Tribunal found in favour of the tenant being a licensee as she had no exclusive use of the tenancy and signed a agreement laying that out.

http://www.prtb.ie/docs/default-source/tribunal-reports/tr0914-000847-dr0414-11559-report.pdf?sfvrsn=0

It is quite extreme, restrictions on visitors and the tenant/licensee wasn't guaranteed occupation of any particular room. Full time security. Even then an adjudicator had found a tenancy. It was only overturned on appeal.

Cuddlesworth

4ensic15 wrote: »

It is quite extreme, restrictions on visitors and the tenant/licensee wasn't guaranteed occupation of any particular room. Full time security. Even then an adjudicator had found a tenancy. It was only overturned on appeal.

When the landlord used a lawyer. Can't find the original case