New rental rules .... so bad for all

It is simple to deregister. Just notify the RTB that the property is no longer let. Most people don't bother as the RTB have only 12 months to prosecute and it is unlikely they will find out in time.

If it's to sell, isn't there some other rule about selling within 9 months? 🤣🤣

Wouldnt surprise me :)

Lots of people over on askaboutmoney giving their notice to sell now too.

The funny thing is that I personally knew lots of property investors at one point.

The only ones I know who are still letting their properties now are the ones who tenants wont leave. Everyone else has soldup since rent controls and the legislation roulette table, as yipeede so aptly put it, came in.

What some on this forum (and other forums) fail to realise is that there are landlords and tenants who have good professional relationships that do not rely on the letter of the law to function. In fact, I'd argue that if you ARE relying on the letter of a contract or a law, you have failed as a landlord. Those rules are for enforcement, but don't need to constrain agreements.

It's perfectly possible to rent a place with an agreement like "after six months you can move out with 8 weeks notice no problem, at your convenience" which tenants who are looking to buy might really appreciate. When the time comes, nobody needs to go looking for typos in eviction letters or checking the latest legislation. That is only needed when one of the two parties fails in their duty and doesn't want to try and make good.

You don't have to "get" most tenants to leave, most just leave at the agreed time.

I don't deny there are plenty of good relationships between tenants and landlords (I'd say all of the ones I've had with my landlords have been good), but those often tend to sour once a tenant is asked to leave. Moving out of your home is a big deal, especially when you don't want to and the rental market as it exists is pretty rough, and when faced with that, it's not exactly irrational to decide you're going to use existing legal protections to at least slow the process down. I don't think there's anything you can do about it either in terms of being a good landlord. Once you're asking someone to leave, while that's part of the job and completely within your rights to do, it's almost always going to conflict with the interests of the tenant themselves, and therefore can easily lead to disputes.

What if they don't plan to leave though? Presumably if they don't, you'd have to evict them at some point in order to make room. As long as you give the required notice you aren't dishonouring your agreement.

TBF, you're running a business and you're unaware of some of the basic regulations pertaining to that business which have been around for several years (i.e. rent reviews), it's not that difficulto to stay informed

Fkall said the tenancy changed during Covid; the regulations surrounding rent reviews were in place long before that

The formula used to be that you could increase it by 4% per year, and then if it was longer than that since the last increase, it could multiply. So it was

4% * (months since last increase / 12)

Basically if you hadn't changed it in 1 year, you could push it up by 4%, if it was 2 years then you could push it up 8%, etc, or something partial in between (mine went up by 6% after 18 months of no change previously).

The new rules since July are that it is entirely based on inflation instead. The RTB have a calculator here: https://www.rtb.ie/calculator/rpz

What this basically means is that it doesn't specifically matter how long it was since it increased, what matters is the difference in inflation between now and when it was last set. In general, there will have been more inflation if it was set a longer time ago, but not guaranteed (e.g. according to the chart in the link above, if rent was set in Oct 2020, you'd actually be able to raise it by more than if it was set in Oct 2019).

However, on top of that there is a new rule coming in soon that also caps increases to 2% per year: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-40735440.html

So rent increases will be either 2% or the inflation adjusted amount, whichever is lower.

It's not so much about it being a "poor me" story as it is showing how bad the system is. People complain about some LLs leaving apartments empty, but look at this and you'll see why. If you drop the rates when the market is better for renters, you're stuck with that for years to come. The commenter above did "the right thing" by renting out at a lower rate, and now they've lost out because of it.

Yes. I understood that they would raise the rent annually to reduce the difference between the pre-Covid rent and current rent. Now that increases are linked to inflation and capped at 2% that isn’t such a good option.

Anyway, I may have misunderstood. Perhaps they didn’t know about rent reviews before.

The problem is when you are a large corporate LL you can take this BS. smaller LL with 1-2 rentals gets f@@ked over by the system. When I first was involved another LL said the way he worked was a tenant came in he rented he house, he never increased the rent, and after a 30-50 month period the tenant moved on. Then he fixed any issues, painted and fixed up the property moved the rent up to the market rate and moved on, deprending on how efficient he was, anddamage done the property was empty 20-50 days.

For a smaller LL, now if you make any error, you are better off looking for vacant possession and selling