Good news for tenants in budget 2018

Grumpypants wrote: »

I looked at selling to the council to see if they could keep the tenant in place, but as usual there is a backward rule where the house has to be empty. I've a year left in my contract with the tenant so I'll honor that.

As long as house prices go up and the mortgage gets paid down I do make back a small amount. If I didn't have a tracker I'd have sold long ago, but I'll never get money that cheap ever again so it is harder to let it go.

The council are going to tell the tenant to stay there when the agreement ends. Where is she going to get another place as cheap?

Grumpypants wrote: »

I think I used negative equity incorrectly. I could sell and pay off the mortgage. There would be very little left over. and the tens of thousands already spent would be lost.

So each year you continue with the tenant your wealth is increasing then? (provided no shock to house prices over the year : rent received less tax less mortgage payment and expenses is more than offset by reduction in principal).

Is your tenant eligible for HAP? Presumably you're not in a rent pressure zone (yet) and with the new CGT budget measures for people buying a property with tenants in situ (getting a CGT relief) it could be worth reviewing tenants rent up to near market rate if you can especially if you're eyeing the exit door.

The Student wrote:

Also to compare a rented property to a taxi is unrealistic. A taxi driver can control his taxi and can clean it up as he needs to, with a property the landlord can give a property in great condition but unless the tenant keeps is cleaned and aired then it gets into disrepair and then the landlord has to prove it was not like that when given to the tenant.

A landlord can & should clean the rental between tenants. A huge amount of landlords don't do this. If the carpets need to be cleaned then the landlord should do this between letting. The landlord is responsible for the general wear & tear of the property. Dirty Ancient thread bare carpets aren't good enough.

Any landlord getting into Airbnb is only too delighted to pay to have the rental cleared between letting. This could be several times a week. It's not too much to ask a landlord to clean rental units between lettings. This will only be once every year or two.

It's ludicrous to have higher standards for a taxi than a rental unit for a fresh lettings.

Eventually the government will bring in decent minimum standards. As a trade off it should be possible to get things changed like making it easier and cheaper to remove a problem tenant. This is all years in the future when we no longer have a housing shortage. They can't be seen to make it easier to evict while we have a housing & homeless crisis. Landlords love to quote how you can evict within weeks in so many other countries. They often forget that the same countries have higher minimum standards.

Any decent landlord has nothing to fear from better minimum standards. It's only the really bad landlords that would have to worry. A good rule of thumb for a landlord is to ask themselves would they be happy for their own family to move in the unit as it is.

While most landlords are sticking to the rules many getting around them or ignoring them. There is no other way to explain 8 percent average rent increase for Dublin last year when it should be close to 4 percent

EDIT: Sorry I made a mistake. Dublin rent increased by 13.4 percent & not 8 percent as I posted above.

Sorry for the confusion

4ensic15 wrote:

New apartments owned by vultures would account for some of the increase. Inertia by existing landlords should cancel that out. Enhancement and improvement can explain all the increase.

Ah bless.

Minister for not enough housing didn't even attempt to come up with that. He says that he doesn't use DAFT statistics (the most comprehensive statistics). The minister says that the real increase is close to 4 percent according to his statistics.

The reality is that there's a huge amount of landlords in Dublin are ignoring the 4 percent cap. Most aren't but lots are. There are constant threads here claiming that the landlord is putting rent up more than 4 percent or they left because landlord was selling & a month later it's back on DAFT at a much higher rent. Most are afraid to complain in case the landlords daughter all of a sudden decides to come back to Ireland and he'll need to rental for her.

As a LL, there was nothing in this budget, bar another stick for people to beat the 175,000 landlords with.
They could have followed their own reports from 4 years ago and allowed LPT to be deducted,
Or allowed landlords to professionalise, set up a company etc
In return for increased lease durations or tenancy protections.

Instead they brought one measure forward two years and allowed all the loonies a free tweet that it was a “landlords budget”.

with property prices now topping off, the 120k accidental LLs with one rented place will continue to step off the merry go round as they get out of negative equity, or were only in it for the price speculation.
This was very obvious in this years RTB report - almost 25k LLs from 2016 vanished. I know a few of them.

People can argue till they are blue about greedy landlords, but I did my tax returns last week for 2017, and 61% of my rent went to the government in tax.
(40%+4%prsi+5%usc + 12% maintence fees and repairs).

As an investment vertical, the market is broken. I can invest in shares, equities or anything else, make a similar return, with a lower risk profile (and I don’t get vilified

What he is trying to say is that 61pc of the rent roll he received didn’t end up in his pocket but in someone else’s.

Sleeper12 wrote: »

A landlord can & should clean the rental between tenants. A huge amount of landlords don't do this. If the carpets need to be cleaned then the landlord should do this between letting. The landlord is responsible for the general wear & tear of the property. Dirty Ancient thread bare carpets aren't good enough.

Any landlord getting into Airbnb is only too delighted to pay to have the rental cleared between letting. This could be several times a week. It's not too much to ask a landlord to clean rental units between lettings. This will only be once every year or two.

It's ludicrous to have higher standards for a taxi than a rental unit for a fresh lettings.

Eventually the government will bring in decent minimum standards. As a trade off it should be possible to get things changed like making it easier and cheaper to remove a problem tenant. This is all years in the future when we no longer have a housing shortage. They can't be seen to make it easier to evict while we have a housing & homeless crisis. Landlords love to quote how you can evict within weeks in so many other countries. They often forget that the same countries have higher minimum standards.

Any decent landlord has nothing to fear from better minimum standards. It's only the really bad landlords that would have to worry. A good rule of thumb for a landlord is to ask themselves would they be happy for their own family to move in the unit as it is.

You are completely missing my point. A taxi driver can clean a taxi after each trip if he wishes and the taxi driver is present during the trip and can minimize any damage (as he can see it being done).

A landlord can't minimize damage as he is not present when it is done nor can minimize its impact unless his tenants contact him when its happening.

Yes a spruce up between lettings is normal (a lick of paint, good clean etc).

The problem lies in the regulations. I have two properties rented out one to the council and one privately. The property let was required to have vents installed in every bedroom and the kitchen (when there is an extractor fan as well over the cooker) for ventilation. Why are vents needed when you have window's?

This is just one example of regulations gone to the extreme. By the way I am not anti regulation but some of the regulations appear to exist just for the sake of it.

I grew up in the 70's and we did not have vents in bedrooms, we did not have mould in the houses because the houses were not insulated the way they are today. People did not dry clothes in houses and if they did in the winter they left windows open to let the dampness out.

I consider myself a decent landlord and yes I would be happy for my family to live in either of my properties (and eventually they will).

The Student wrote: »

You are completely missing my point. A taxi driver can clean a taxi after each trip if he wishes and the taxi driver is present during the trip and can minimize any damage (as he can see it being done).

A landlord can't minimize damage as he is not present when it is done nor can minimize its impact unless his tenants contact him when its happening.

This shouldn't impact on the next tenant coming in as they are entitled to a decent minimum standard when moving in. Airbnb landlords don't have a problem paying a cleaner to clean between lettings.

The Student wrote: »

Yes a spruce up between lettings is normal (a lick of paint, good clean etc).

Sadly not as normal as you think. Higher minimum standards wont effect decent landlords like yourself & I'm sure all the landlords posting here. However in Dublin we have some out & out kips. I'm in different rented accommodation on a daily basis. In Dublin city it's not unusual to find old Georgian buildings split into rooms. You can have several beds in a tiny room. I struggle getting my toolbag through the room into the bathroom. Yesterday I saw two sets of bunkbeds for four adults in a tiny room suitable for one person. Every room covered in mould



Look I could spend the whole day writing about the horrors I see. You wont believe most of it but these are the places that need higher minimum standards. I'm not talking about your property

The Student wrote: »

The problem lies in the regulations. I have two properties rented out one to the council and one privately. The property let was required to have vents installed in every bedroom and the kitchen (when there is an extractor fan as well over the cooker) for ventilation. Why are vents needed when you have window's?

This is just one example of regulations gone to the extreme. By the way I am not anti regulation but some of the regulations appear to exist just for the sake of it.

I grew up in the 70's and we did not have vents in bedrooms, we did not have mould in the houses because the houses were not insulated the way they are today. People did not dry clothes in houses and if they did in the winter they left windows open to let the dampness out.

Building regs state every room must have a vent. If your property is newish then maybe you have trickle vents in the windows & you are wondering why you had to install a second vent in each room? Every room in the house must have a vent, inc the attic.

The Student wrote: »

I consider myself a decent landlord and yes I would be happy for my family to live in either of my properties (and eventually they will).

You passed a simple test there. IMO a good rule of thumb is if you wouldn't want your own family living there then your standards need to be improved

EDIT: I should point out that I am in some really well managed properties more often than the really bad ones.

Sleeper12 wrote: »

It should work that way but it doesn't. My wife was telling me last night about her friends sister & children moving in with her sister. Mother works in a good job. Landlord told her house is being sold & she has to move out. She's in her sisters. Same house is up for rent for hundreds more. Yes she can report him but she's still in her sisters with nowhere to live & wherever she rents she'll pay the higher rent.


There are cases here on boards daily or weekly where the landlord has done something like this. If a rent isn't registered in the first place then how does the government know what the increase is?


It's all well & good saying that we have rules in place put there is no governing body with real teeth to investigate & punish rogue landlords. There are thousands of tenants paying top up rent in cash so the landlord can avoid the cap. Tenants do this because they don't want the trouble of flat hunting again with the possibility of having to crash on someones couch for weeks while hunting, only to end up paying as much in the new place as the old.



You have to understand there are two types of landlords. Good & bad. The bad tend to make a lot more than the good.


Ask anyone flat hunting or house hunting if they feel rents are only 4 percent higher than last year. Not people moving into new apartments as stated in other posts but people looking in regular Dublin rentals.



I made a mistake with Dublin's average rent increase in an earlier post. It's not 8 percent. It's actually 13.4 percent year on year in Dublin

Yes but by reporting him your wife's friends sister in law has nothing to loose. It will put a message out that the rules are there to be followed.

A tenancy does not have to be registered to be covered by the RTB. If a tenant knows the old rent and can prove it then the RTB will take a case.

There are both good and bad tenants and landlords. What you find is that those of us who actually abide by the rules get mixed with those who don't. The term Landlord is toxic these days, you would swear you were the devil himself. Unless both bad tenants and landlords are driven from the sector you run the risk of only having bad landlords and fair landlords like myself (at least I consider myself a fair landlord) will leave the market because of the anti landlord stance and legislation.

The State refuses to evict bad tenants (they don't have a problem going after landlords). It is political suicide to evict anybody and no politician will sanction it. Even the courts wont evict mortgage holders without giving them a number of stays of execution.

As a society we need to change our mindset if we are to even go some way to solving the accommodation crisis we have. Unless all parties accept some changes are needed we will be having the same discussions next year on boards.

Miya Poor Stud wrote: »

I already pay way too much tax on top of having to pay for my own accomidation out of my own pocket and far too much of that tax is going towards housing people for free who appear to think they are entitled to be housed by the government.

The last thing we need is driving out private LLs and even more hard earned tax payers money going into housing people, it’s a completely idiotic idea. It’s reducing state funded housing and forcing more people to pay for their accomidation we should be doing rather than going the other way.

Who says it has to be for social housing only? Why doesn't the government build and rent to middle income earners for sensible rents like 1000 a month for a nice modern well built one bed apartment - we all know that could drive property prices and rents down though so won't happen.

If they keep flogging the "market will provide" mantra and continue to have working people gouged for rents of 1500 plus for Celtic tiger tinderboxes in Coolock and Poppintree (ballymun), whilst saying "we have a plan and the plan is working" people will get sh1t sick of it (and continue to pay HAP to house social housing eligible people in the short term private market).

This situation has gone on for years and shows no signs of abating and will continue to get worse. There is no political will there to drastically increase the supply of houses - landlords are p1ssed, tenants are p1ssed and I see nothing on the cards that will change this.

Sleeper12 wrote: »

This shouldn't impact on the next tenant coming in as they are entitled to a decent minimum standard when moving in. Airbnb landlords don't have a problem paying a cleaner to clean between lettings.


Sadly not as normal as you think. Higher minimum standards wont effect decent landlords like yourself & I'm sure all the landlords posting here. However in Dublin we have some out & out kips. I'm in different rented accommodation on a daily basis. In Dublin city it's not unusual to find old Georgian buildings split into rooms. You can have several beds in a tiny room. I struggle getting my toolbag through the room into the bathroom. Yesterday I saw two sets of bunkbeds for four adults in a tiny room suitable for one person. Every room covered in mould



Look I could spend the whole day writing about the horrors I see. You wont believe most of it but these are the places that need higher minimum standards. I'm not talking about your property





Building regs state every room must have a vent. If your property is newish then maybe you have trickle vents in the windows & you are wondering why you had to install a second vent in each room? Every room in the house must have a vent, inc the attic.







You passed a simple test there. IMO a good rule of thumb is if you wouldn't want your own family living there then your standards need to be improved

EDIT: I should point out that I am in some really well managed properties more often than the really bad ones.

The problem with building regs is (for HAP) having to meet 2018 standards at big cost on an older home.

If the council can stand over the justification for it - they could help towards the cost of it - ideally 100 percent of it.

There are two sides to this issue....

1) the landlord has a house they would happily live in themselves and is "in nice order" but HAP want 20 k worth of work and the landlord can't put their hand on 20 k right now. Even if they could - it's "work that isn't needed".

The other side is......

2) in tacking climate change etc one of the likely measures will likely be retrofit of existing homes to a higher energy standard. This is because we want to ideally reduce fossil fuel use - and make the best use of renewables by reducing energy demand.

Unfortunately it looks like HAP/LAs havent a clue what they are at. What's the aim of just drilling walls????. What's the gain in making the property better to live in.

Is the gain worth the expense????.

A nice refurb can enhance a property but does officialdom know what that is or should be.

There is a longer term need to upgrade as many properties as possible in a way that suits the individual property. But its something that property owners need support with. Not a kick in the privates.

BTW when I say need to upgrade properties i mean in longer term owner occupied etc as well not just rentals

Fol20 wrote: »

What he is trying to say is that 61pc of the rent roll he received didn’t end up in his pocket but in someone else’s.

What he said. Tks.

Sleeper12 wrote: »

What you said was that you paid 61 percent of the rent in tax. This obviously isn't true. You made a mistake & no big deal. I'm wondering if you have a mortgage & how much interest relief you got as this will bring the percentage of the rent paid in tax down to 20 or 30 percent. About half of the 61 percent you mistakenly mentioned earlier.

Based on the figures you gave you might pay 43 percent of the rent in tax. Obviously with interest relief it's possible to cut this in half, depending on how much interest you pay or don't pay.

You're massively overestimating how much a 15% increase in allowable interest will help. Sweet FA in many cases as the LL's are on trackers.

Sleeper12 wrote: »

What you said was that you paid 61 percent of the rent in tax. This obviously isn't true. You made a mistake & no big deal. I'm wondering if you have a mortgage & how much interest relief you got as this will bring the percentage of the rent paid in tax down to 20 or 30 percent. About half of the 61 percent you mistakenly mentioned earlier.

Based on the figures you gave you might pay 43 percent of the rent in tax. Obviously with interest relief it's possible to cut this in half, depending on how much interest you pay or don't pay.

Can’t see why you want to push this argument so much, disputing that 61% of my rent doesn’t end up in my pocket - a fact you can’t know anything about, especially when you’re clearly not a landlord, nor know much about my taxes.

But hey, I’ll bite:

Firstly, my income tax rate on the rent in 2017 was 52% (40+4+8).

Pre tax Deductibles came to 9% of total rent. A very good year.

Thats roughly income tax of 52% of 91% = 48%

+ USC which was 3% of total rent, not deductible.

+ Then the non-deductible parts of repairs and maintence
60% of the 9% above = 5.5%
+ recurring capital allowances were 3% of rental income. Roughly
+ There are always other costs not deductible, small cash work etc. That wasn’t much last year, just 2%. Roughly

48+3+5.5+3+2=61%

But that’s just my case, everyone will be different. I own all houses outright, except for one with a small mortgage.

sk8board wrote: »

Sleeper12 wrote: »

What you said was that you paid 61 percent of the rent in tax. This obviously isn't true. You made a mistake & no big deal. I'm wondering if you have a mortgage & how much interest relief you got as this will bring the percentage of the rent paid in tax down to 20 or 30 percent. About half of the 61 percent you mistakenly mentioned earlier.

Based on the figures you gave you might pay 43 percent of the rent in tax. Obviously with interest relief it's possible to cut this in half, depending on how much interest you pay or don't pay.

Can’t see why you want to push this argument so much, disputing that 61% of my rent doesn’t end up in my pocket - a fact you can’t know anything about, especially when you’re clearly not a landlord, nor know much about my taxes.

But hey, I’ll bite:

Firstly, my income tax rate on the rent in 2017 was 52% (40+4+8).

Pre tax Deductibles came to 9% of total rent. A very good year.

Thats roughly income tax of 52% of 91% = 48%

+ USC which was 3% of total rent, not deductible.

+ Then the non-deductible parts of repairs and maintence
60% of the 9% above = 5.5%
+ recurring capital allowances were 3% of rental income. Roughly
+ There are always other costs not deductible, small cash work etc. That wasn’t much last year, just 2%. Roughly

48+3+5.5+3+2=61%

But that’s just my case, everyone will be different. I own all houses outright, except for one with a small mortgage.

You added capital allowances to your tax bill. Also you've added usc twice.


Takes it down a small bit. The usc computation is a bit more complicated than % of income, its usc on the profit (income) and 5% on the deducted capital allowances to simplify it.

Fol20 wrote:

He didn’t say 61pc in tax. He included maintenance in this. He just didn’t express it in such a detailed manner that you are looking for. I understood what he was trying to say and even when He agreed with what I said and also gave you a little more detail, you still are looking at the small points on this topic exactly like what you did on another discussion we had a few weeks ago.

He said 61 percent tax. He did include maintenance but that actually looked like it was on top of the tax.

I'm not looking for small points. Many landlords here report their earnings on threads in such a way that it is very misleading to other posters. One landlord said that its the only business that you pay USC on income. This is totally wrong. No business pays USC on income. You can only pay USC on profits. I then see non landlords repeat this as fact.

Just look at the way sk8board posted his earnings in post 286. I've never seen anything so complicated. You have your rent /income & subtract your tax deductibles. This is profit. It's only now that you talk about tax. He says USC is 3 percent of the rent. It has nothing to do with rent but has everything to do with profit. I know that he didn't fill in his tax return in such a manner so why try do it here? He may need to recheck his tax return as figures posted here don't add up. They are padded out & made higher than they really are.

Fol20 wrote:

He never said you pay more tax than you, I doubt he really care about whatever your business and whatever taxes you pay.he was just highlighting the fact that he doesn’t end up with that much in his pocket after everything is deducted including tax. There’s no need to get out the accounting hat every time a discussion like this goes on. Ll pay accountants for that and we don’t need to break it down precisely, we just look at the bigger picture and care about the bottom line

I don't care who pays more or less tax. It's not a peeing competition.

My point of saying that I don't get 99 percent of what my business takes in is to show how ridiculous it is to try describe your business in such a way. It means nothing. Not unlike trying to include interest rates when valuing a business.

I might only get 1 percent of my takings but that could be 1 euro or a million euro. The only purpose me stating that I don't get 99 percent of the takings is to make it look like how hard done by I am. Yet it means nothing.

You can only measure a business, any business on profits. Not the percentage that you don't get. What percentage of the turnover means nothing. Turnover isn't yours. Not in any business. Profits is what you should be talking about.

I honestly don't know if most small landlords have genuinely don't understand profits & loss or do they deliberately post misleading figures. I believe that most posting these figures here wouldn't attempt to produce figures like that going for another mortgage. I believe that then they will have profit and loss off to a tee.

Every time someone produces misleading figures I'm quite happy to point it out. I am dyslexic. Left school at 14 before state exams because I was going to fail everything. I have little more than primary school maths. If I can grasp profit & loss I genuinely don't understand how so many landlords posting here get it wrong. Always wrong by inflating figures and never the other way round.

I'm here to keep it honest

A few petty comments do not make a thread