Irish Property Market chat II - *read mod note post #1 before posting*

Rent caps should only have been a temporary measure until more housing got built. The govt introduced rent caps and didn't stimulate house building… That was the wrong thing to do. Nobody disagrees with that

How do you protect tennants by keeping their rents affordable and at the same time make it profitable for landlords to increase the number of rental properties? I don't think you can, you have to choose to protect one or the other

Yeah you can a number of things can be done here.

Have longer term leases as the norm 5/10/15/20 years (like other EU countries.) . If tenant wants out of long term lease there will be a penalty and same with the landlord.

Rogue tenants don't get years to live in a place without paying rent and then walk away without payment or punishment and in a lot of cases wrecking the place on the way out.

Implement a policy of the government not taxing rental income at the high cost it is now. If you told a landlord we will stop taxing you as much but you have to pass on 50% of that cost saving to the tenant and have proof of that. It would mean more profit for landlord and less rent to pay for tenant.

Allow landlords to write off on tax the full amount paid for the full mortgage costs not just the interest before paying tax. The state would still get their dividend when the landlord sells with CGT.

There are ways and means some may not be popular but until we build the 1 million modular homes I outlined in my last post this would go a long way to easing the rental side of things.

Agreed it's all to do with supply. There's also a big demand at the moment not helping matters. A demand that I expect will ease off in time to come as peace breaks out in Ukraine and Syria

Punishing tennants only ensures things get worse and worse for the homeless figures as they exit their homes with nowhere else to go. Anything that's done in the immediate future, whether it's to punish tennants or landlords will be a double edged sword, at least in the short term. It's important to note that first time buyer grants are only for new builds so lets not incorrectly try to make FTBs look like the problem

Will the removal of rent caps increase the supply of rentals? Hard to say, probably not in the short term as house and apartment prices are so high, but it might put a slow-down on the numbers of landlords leaving the sector which would obviously be a good thing. Homeless figures will also sky-rocket

Changing the laws on rogue tenants would have the biggest influence on supply for rent, you cant expect someone to give a property over to someone they don't know with the law stacked on the tenants side which gives the tenant the legal right to dig in and not pay rent for years and then leave the place trashed without punishment or any cost to them. While that scenario is allowed to continue private landlords (in particular who have one or two properties) will be hesitant to give their property to anyone. Remember property prices have gone up by 50% since 2020 so just by leaving it vacant they are still on a winner.

Can a landlord still evict somebody to put a property on the market? I know they used to be able to stick the property on daft for a few days, reject any offers and decide to keep it with new and better paying tennants when there was a 2-year rental increase rule.

I do agree though the landlord-tennant relationship should be kept professional, the only crowd that should be thinking of the people is the govt.

Just to be clear, FTBs don't get better interest rates and nor do they get generous tax treatment. Interest rates tend to favour the lower LTV rates which actually benefits non-FTBs more. They also have to pay the same levies and taxes as every other buyer!

The only difference between a first and a second+ time buyer is that FTBs have to have a 10% deposit saved and everybody else needs to have 20%

You have to balance rogue tenants with rogue landlords though

I will say, whatever about the various laws, the speed at which a landlord can evict a rogue tennant is much too slow

A landlord to my knowledge has never been allowed to evict somebody to re rent a property at a higher rate. The certainly haven't been allowed for at least 20 years. You don't know anything of the such that landlords could advertise for a few days to get higher rent. That is a mixture of half stories you thought you understood but clearly didn't.

Some landlords told tenants they were selling and evicted them but put it up for rent a short while later at a higher price without offering it back to the original tenant at the original rent. That is/was illegal. What you also conflated was where a landlord went to sell but didn't and then but it back to rental. If a landlord proved they were trying to sell such they did nothing wrong but still had to offer it back to the original tenant at the original rent. Which is/was legal. The RPZ meant it didn't matter who rented the rent had to be the same as the last rent and only go up 2% annually. I know some landlords did try what you think was allowed but they got fined. The same way some tenants trash places and don't pay rent but it not allowed but there really isn't any punishment for them.

You didn't agree earlier about keeping things professional as you thought landlords should have compassion to their tenants and not think business. You also stated that if tenants' income dropped the landlord should take the hit and a lease meant nothing. Clearly you haven't actually joined up thinking.

FTBs can get discounts/grants on buying new housing through things like affordable housing in estates. I paid 20k in stamp duty and now also have LTV so present FTB have gotten off certain levies others paid.

You really should actually check what you are saying before you post because you don't know what you think you do.

If you think rent can go up to 50% if RPZ is removed that means some landlord is subsidizing the tenants rent because of government mandates. If you see that as fair then why don't you pay to subsidize somebody else rent? Why should you make a landlord do it?

At one point rents were going up 20%-30% with wages and inflation going up by single digit figures. Something had to be done to make things more fair. Was it right to introduce rent controls, yes, did the govt do a lot wrong in the implementation? Also, yes!

But if you were the housing minister what would you do to bring in more landlords, and at the same time protect tennants?

Encourage long term tenancies at a fixed rate say 5/10/20 years at the rate the market is currently so no increase not even the 2% a year and it cant be broken by tenant or landlord without a hefty penalty and the government giving the landlord a tax incentive to do this as in you the landlord don't pay as much tax but the trade is you cant put your price up for the next 5/10/20 years. Also the government could act as a kind of escrow account as in the tenant could leave the deposit with them and top this up with a small % of the rent each month as its going to cover any kind of damages they cause in the long term so no issues damages just comes out of this, same goes with the landlord they would pay a % of the rent received here if they have a case to answer for mistreating a tenent

I would of also been building modular homes over the last 3/4 years as the housing issue exploded beyond a crisis, If you look at Oz they will have an additional 1.2million homes modularly built by 2029 at a low low cost of 54million. Why cant we do this and take the demand for homes coming from welfare, students and refugees off the private sector as I said this would bring down both the price to buy and to rent? - The cynic in my thinks there are too many vested interests for anything like this to happen.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/federal-budget/more-homes-more-quickly-albo-promises-prefab-homes-to-answer-housing-pinch/news-story/5b4069830046d867bff47c6f4642c2a0?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Yeah, on the one hand I was scratching my head with the 2% rent hike allowance when it first came in, with inflation at zero I felt it was unfair. Inflation the last few years hit double-digits, which also made the 2% rate unfair in my books. I think rental increases should be the same as inflation or a fraction of it. Long leases are a great idea. Another idea is if local authorities or some independent body were to set the prices the landlords can charge based on location and size

I'm not sure modular homes are necessarily the answer. With the weather we get here they would need to be pretty sturdy, not saying they aren't or indeed that there wasn't some dodgy stuff in the past but it's a consideration. I think they had a modular homes idea a few years ago but it was going to cost €250k each before you even look at buying the land they sit on. A far cry form the AU$45 per home you've quoted, which I suspect is missing a few zeros

You may have hit the nail on the head with vested interests comment. The current situation allows property developers and banks to make big profits of the back of the people, I suspect the landlords will get their way also regarding the RPZs.

These are FF and FGs 3 biggest voter groups. Why look after the homeless when they probably won't vote for you?

Because you can't as you obviously didn't know what you are talking about and have been caught. FTB are exempt for stamp duty on new builds under 125sqm. I didn't say I paid 20K more than FTB at the time just I paid it. The stamp duties changed but a FTB would have paid less.

The problem with relying on the asset going up in perpetuality is, well, that's a very bad thing to rely on... A tax exemption for landlords isn't a bad idea and could even be introduced as things stand. Even something as simple as a relief on the first few thousand € earned could woo some landlords back or just stop them from leaving

But you would need to couple that with building more homes. You could incentivise this at near zero costs by making the planning permission system more straightforward, and I think most crucially, faster!

The current system is up to 30 weeks long. Bring that down to about 20 and you'd have a gamechanger on supply for a near zero cost

Sadly if we want to get houses built we need the construction industry to be creaming profits. Modular homes are probably a part of the solution as well. Not sure they will be cheaper here but they'll add an option to stabilise the price at least