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

Wrong. You needed 3 examples similar to your own property not just in the local area. The reason they wanted to have rents held artificially low was for the reports not really for people. There is no putting the rent up to what they like it is the market rate.

I gave you a clear example of how it is unfair and how it is impossible to catch rent up to the market rates due to existing rules. You are ignoring the facts because your goal is that tenants gets cheap rent that you don't subsidise but other do. Of course you like it because it costs you nothing.

My example shows a 100% increase would be justified and the tenant got a benefit at the cost of a private citizen. If you sell a house and pay CGT then die the inheriting person then pays tax again but not if you keep the property as it is only taxed once at inheritance. Many landlords are elderly and that is on their mind. Are you willing to give the government more tax? Property investment have many restrictions and limitation of liquidity that must be taken into account of when considering value and risk.

Whilst your general point may be correct, as we can now see, interfering with rents is fantastic for current renters but it sells out the next generation to come after them.

Fewer apartments built. Less supply. Higher rents for new builds. The 60 year old who’s rent would increase 50% today is more visible and vocal than the dozen 15 year olds who’ll have to live at home until they’re 30 because the apartments they might have lived in will never be built.

It’s like a lot of things in Irish politics. In the short term it’s always easier to sell out the next generation to appease the current voting one. Cheap rents sounds cool. But eventually the pain of interference becomes too much and must be fixed.

I agree this is realistically the only way out. I would also like to see some level of taking our medicine as a blank cheque from the government to fix all problems will create massive rental inflation.

If 70 year old Mary can no longer afford her 3 bed in Blackrock (and you can be sure she will be in the Irish times), so be it, she will have to find something smaller or in a less desireable area. We have to drop the pretense that policies can solve everyone’s problems. It’s about sensible compromises and balancing interests of the population (current and future)

‘Building more homes’ is anything but easy. Ask pretty much any first world country who are almost all building less than us.

Also, your statement in of itself is a contradiction.
1. We need to build more apartments.

2. Whilst we wait for 1 to happen, let’s implement some policies which make apartment development far less attractive.

3. Shocked when 1 doesn’t actually happen.

The changes being put forward by the Govy to remove rent caps feels like a massive gamble.

While I agree that rent control is not a solution, the idea that removing rent caps is some panacea is also wildly idealistic.

Investors build apartments if the yield is good enough. You can improve yield by either raising market rents, or decreasing cost to build.

Market rents are borne by workers, and there is a hard limit on how high rents can actually go before people simply cannot pay anymore. Not to mention all the 2nd order effects of high rents: less disposable income, less eating out and drinking, lower attendance at events, lower spend on luxuries. All of this is very bad news for the economy. Rents paid to investment funds are money extracted from the Irish economy. A neccesary evil but not a good thing.

The better option for lower rents, increased supply and more disposable income in renters pockets, is to decrease the cost to build. Land prices are massively elastic and add large sums to cost of delivery of new housing. A new class of punitive CGT on undeveloped land should be brought in to discourage price gouging on development land. At the end of the day, sitting on development land adds no actual value, the planning department rezoning adds the value, the speculator should not be the one to benefit.

The very clear example I gave you was for the same property. You want to change everything around to suit your narrative.

Still can't put up the rent to what ever you like no matter how many times you repeat it. You are making up a belief having never actually been through the process where as I have. They took "similar" property very seriously and didn't allow what you are claiming.

There will be less rentals and worse property occupancy if there is no money to be made in renting. There were 4 rentals near me that sold in the last 5 years. The occupancy rate went down as a result as at least 3 adults lived in each (4 in some) and replaced with a couple and in fairness one couple also had a child. That is 13 adults replaced with 8 adults and 1 child. That makes 5 more people looking for rentals and there are 4 less on the market. Sold most likely because or RPZ restrictions. Those 5 people will have to pay rent and it will most likely be more expensive. Unintended consequences of cheap rent hoisted on a private landlord. You just aren't a big picture kind of person and have not thought out your ideas. You will always return to tenants should have cheap rent and don't really cares who pays once it is not you.

A rather disengeious comment in era of record employment where many of those that perform hard work are paid amongst the lowest salaries, insufficient to cover basic costs, particularly accommodation.

We create systems that reward speculators not hard work. We've been here before. We know how it ends

Could you report that to the PRTB?

Yes there was a previous proposal for that to be removed but in the end it seems it will be tied to inflation. New rules will kick in on the 1st of March next year so should be plenty of time for landlords to jack up rents in non-rpz areas before then

Does this in any way incentivise things positively? This will surely further discourage landlords from staying in the market, and discourage new builds being established (ECB project inflation to be <2% next year)

Good points.

Regarding encouraging landlords, my understanding is that there's an average of ~2 tenancies per landlord in Ireland. And, "In Dublin, landlords with 100+ tenancies accounted for 22.55% of all private tenancies registered in Q1 2024. Outside Dublin, landlords with 100+ tenancies accounted for 2.56%"

RTB Releases New 'Profile of The Register' Data Series for Private and Approved Housing Body (AHB) Tenancies | Residential Tenancies Board

I'm inferring from this that most landlords might be considered 'small' by the new proposals, which is ⇐3 properties.

I know several people who stumbled into having ~3 rental properties. They make very little from it for the effort in my view, other than inflation of the assets. These new proposals seem like they'll discourage growth in this private sector if it means they'll move into a new category of 'large' landlord with more encumbrances.

I'd love to see absolute numbers of properties by landlord category if anyone has them. I.e. the number of properties rented by landlords with >3 properties

I don't know about a sale but you can only have the property back if it is for your own use or an immediate family member. My concern is, what if the tenant damages the property or is anti-social? Have there been any changes to make it easier to evict rogue tenants quickly? They ruin the market for good tenants and landlords.

The story of Ireland’s housing market is all about the State subsidising both its profits and losses. When I first read these headlines about landlords being able to go back to charging market rents I though “brilliant” since the State could be reducing its involvement in the sector. Regulation and state funding have created a catastrophic and dysfunctional housing market. It needs to be left alone to market forces with less regulation and reduced planning issues which could be cost-free ways to ensure that supply would dramatically pick-up. Less state involvement would also mean less tax on individual landlords and those purchasing too. What we have is just constant tinkering around the edges with no big picture thinking.