Renting Amounts Negotiable?

Redders825

Hey,

Moving to dublin in the next few weeks and wondering are rents quoted on daft.ie negotiable or is there no movement at all? Thought the way property is going there might be but wouldnt know the dublin market too well. Is there an abundance of properties?

Thanks

RoryW

Whether rents are negotiable depends on whether they are overstated to start with.

Also some areas rent better than others and are likely to be less negotiable. also you may not wish to rent the house/apt/room which is negotiable as you may prefer another none negotiable property.

Are you going to be renting on your own or taking a room in a house with others.

All different scenarios and markets.

And the landlord may not decide to rent to you anyway !

Jo King

Some landlords have a policy of not letting to tenants who try to negotiate. they will reduce their asking price if necessary but only for future prospective tenants. This is to avoid starting off 1-0 to the tenant.
The only thing to do is look around and see what the market is like and when you see a suitable property, go for it, and try and avoid alienating the landlord.

SimpleSam06

The question the landlord is asking himself (or herself) is how quickly can I fill that rental slot. Every week it is unoccupied is costing them money in advertising and money that they could have had if it was rented out.

So you need to put it to them like this: This place has been advertised for 3 weeks, costing you x, and you could have had 3 weeks rent as well. If it stays empty it will cost you this much every week, so I think its reasonable to look for a discount of less than the amount it would cost you otherwise, over the course of a year. In effect the landlord is saving money by giving you a discount .

Its very much a who blinks first situation though, if you can't brass it out and convince them it might be empty for a month or more, you'll be told where to go.

Jo King

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

The question the landlord is asking himself (or herself) is how quickly can I fill that rental slot. Every week it is unoccupied is costing them money in advertising and money that they could have had if it was rented out.

So you need to put it to them like this: This place has been advertised for 3 weeks, costing you x, and you could have had 3 weeks rent as well. If it stays empty it will cost you this much every week, so I think its reasonable to look for a discount of less than the amount it would cost you otherwise, over the course of a year. In effect the landlord is saving money by giving you a discount .

Its very much a who blinks first situation though, if you can't brass it out and convince them it might be empty for a month or more, you'll be told where to go.

Telling the landlord how to run his business is more than likely to get you shown the door straight away.
Make a remark such as " the price is at my upper limit and I still have a couple of others asking lower prices to check out". You may get an offer of a lower price to clinch the deal. If not, you may be able to still take it at the original asking price, after a further look.

SimpleSam06

Jo King wrote: »

Telling the landlord how to run his business is more than likely to get you shown the door straight away.

A landlord who won't negotiate will soon find out that he is indeed running a business, and people will vote with their wallets, same as any other business.

Jo King

SimpleSam06 wrote: »

A landlord who won't negotiate will soon find out that he is indeed running a business, and people will vote with their wallets, same as any other business.

How does that help the person seeking accommodation? A lot of businesses do not negotiate. Does your supermarket negotiate prices? They reduce the price if demand is week but they will certainly not enter into negotiations on the price of goods.

SimpleSam06

Jo King wrote: »

How does that help the person seeking accommodation?

Saving money, finding better accommodation, I would call these positive points. Also its handy to get to know what kind of person's house you'll be living in before you move in. I wouldn't go handing money to someone that thinks its their god given right to take it, and gets their back up at any attempt to discuss prices.

Jo King wrote: »

A lot of businesses do not negotiate. Does your supermarket negotiate prices? They reduce the price if demand is week but they will certainly not enter into negotiations on the price of goods.

The company agents you deal with in supermarkets have no authority to offer discounts, so its pointless to even try. And even then, you can negotiate deals with managers (and I have done this when buying hardware up in PC world, looking for display models).

In tiny businesses like most landlords run, you have tremendous leeway to negotiate, since you are speaking to the person that sets the price. The art of haggling is rapidly vanishing in the increasingly "consumerised" society we have here, but give it a try. You might be surprised.

BigglesMcGee

RoryW wrote: »

Whether rents are negotiable depends on whether they are overstated to start with.

Also some areas rent better than others and are likely to be less negotiable. also you may not wish to rent the house/apt/room which is negotiable as you may prefer another none negotiable property.

Are you going to be renting on your own or taking a room in a house with others.

All different scenarios and markets.

And the landlord may not decide to rent to you anyway !

Agree with you 100% here.
Ive often asked for reduced rent but always been refused.

No harm in chancing it though,in a non-offensive way, you might be lucky. The worst that can happen is that you are asked to pay the original rental amount anyway.

Pa ElGrande

There are loads of properties available for rent in most areas. You should ring around and get quotes from the landlords, if you want to bargain with them then you have to do a bit of legwork to find out what rents are actually being paid in the area in question. i.e. I can pay €X per month from the landlord at no. 122 down the road.

If you can, avoid the scumlords, however, these are often the lowest priced accommodation, you get what you pay for and no more. Price negotiation is virtually non existent at the bottom end of the market.

Evaluate the places available and rate the following 1 to 10 in order of importance to you. There may be other options so you can put a scorecard together.

Distance to work/school: (know the cost per mile of running your car/time it take to get there)
Public transport: yes/no (how frequent are buses)
Car parking available: yes/no (on street, or driveway or garage, does it cost extra)
Washing machine: yes/no (if no is there nearby launderette)
Drying clothes: is there a dryer (expensive to operate), are washing lines allowed (many management companies ban them)
Safety: yes/no (fire alarms, escape routes, bars on windows)
Security: Some areas have a higher rate of crime, burglar alarm, ground floor,
Heating and energy: Gas, electricity, oil
Space: can you store your bicycle, tools etc.
Television: satellite/cable or terrestrial only
Cooking: some places only have microwave
Washing: Bath or shower (some places are shared)
Fridge: if sharing with multiple people, what size?
Amenities: Shops, Parks, clubs, Gyms etc.
Terms of lease: short-term - medium term
Pet friendly: yes/no
Internet access: yes/no (You generally have to provide this, but minus marks if this is not possible)
Payment terms: cash, per week or per month (how large deposit etc?)

From a landlord's point of view, I find they may be more willing to negotiate on price if you are an established professional with a view to a medium to long term lease. Excellent references also help to establish trust as does word of mouth from existing tenants.

Beware, there are a lot of under-capitalised landlords on the market who are loosing money by renting to you. The days when they could subsidise your accommodation are coming to an end (there is no capital appreciation any more so no incentive to continue doing this), and with the difference between the rent received and mortgage payments increasing, it's just a question of time before the banks call time on these operators, so you may find you have to move fast over the next two/three years. I know one Landlord who rents a house for €5,000/month but needs €10,000/month to cover the repayments, this is madness. :eek:

With the price of energy increasing, being near to shops and work is a huge plus that should not be overlooked when factoring it how much you want to pay in rent. You should work out what your cost of living budget and how much you can afford on rent.

If you know what your costs are and the rent being asked in an area is slightly outside your budget, you have nothing to loose by calling the Landlord and making an offer, who knows they might just say yes.

red dave

If I had a place advertised to rent and someone arranges to make an appointment to view it based on the price shown on daft I would be royally pissed off with that person then trying to "negotiate".

If anything "the way property is going" would lead people to rent out rooms at a higher rate than what they normally would as the interest rates are too high or else you will have people renting out rooms that would not normally have done at a cheaper rate. Neither would seem like they would budge on an advertised price.

You should probably ask what the average rent is in a certain area that you're looking to rent then you will be able to judge yourself if the rent advertised is above the norm.

Or else go look at the place if the person renting rings you to offer you the room then tell them you have been offered somwhere else for cheaper. Then see if the person will offer you the place at a lower rent?

Phaetonman

If I had a place advertised to rent and someone arranges to make an appointment to view it based on the price shown on daft I would be royally pissed off with that person then trying to "negotiate".

What if you were selling? Or if you were selling a car.

Its the exact same deal.

Pa ElGrande

red dave wrote: »

If I had a place advertised to rent and someone arranges to make an appointment to view it based on the price shown on daft I would be royally pissed off with that person then trying to "negotiate".

Irish property watch has a section monitoring price movements on daft.ie and the trend since the beginning of the year is that quite a few landlords are kite flying and having to drop their prices at the higher end of the market, the takeaway from this is you should negotiate and get more value for your Euros. Yes, Landlords are going to get a few tire kickers, but at the end of the day business is business if you're paying for a service, why not haggle and get the best value?

BigglesMcGee

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

I know one Landlord who rents a house for €5,000/month but needs €10,000/month to cover the repayments, this is madness. :eek:

You mean someone got about a €2Million mortgage to rent out?

€10k a month :eek:. What is it? a Castle?.

professore

red dave wrote: »

If I had a place advertised to rent and someone arranges to make an appointment to view it based on the price shown on daft I would be royally pissed off with that person then trying to "negotiate".

What nonsense. Everything is negotiable.

Pa ElGrande

BigglesMcGee wrote: »

You mean someone got about a €2Million mortgage to rent out?

€10k a month :eek:. What is it? a Castle?.

He did well out of property early on, sold up and banked the profits in 2004, then got back in again in 2005, bought the house (6 bed, Dublin 15) and spent money doing it up to original condition, intending to put it on the market for up to €3 million. He put it for sale in 2007 but did not get any takers, so he put he on the rental market in order to have some cash coming in. He reckons the market will come good again in two to three years and is prepared to ride it out......

SkepticOne

I would disagree with red dave that the "way the market is going" has a tendency to force prices up. True landlords may wish to raise rents and in some cases may do so. But things like higher interest rates and the inability to sell at prices hoped for are forcing more and more properties into the rental market. Therefore raising rents may just increase the amount of time a property stays vacent thereby losing the landlord money.

I would negotiate.

Calina

SkepticOne wrote: »

I would disagree with red dave that the "way the market is going" has a tendency to force prices up. True landlords may wish to raise rents and in some cases may do so. But things like higher interest rates and the inability to sell at prices hoped for are forcing more and more properties into the rental market. Therefore raising rents may just increase the amount of time a property stays vacent thereby losing the landlord money.

I would negotiate.

QFT. I think the issue is that reality is not biting enough for some landlords. Effectively, rental supply is up, so where there are old landlords with room to manouevre, rental will be down because they want to avoid long term voids. This is the main negotiating position for people in rent reviews.

There is an illusion out there that just because mortgage interest for a landlord has gone up they can automatically pass this on. They can only pass this on if the supply of tenants allows them to. Viz: all new apartments are much of a muchness. Landlord A is a long term boy with a low LTV and therefore a relatively low mortgage, easily covered by current market rent. Landlord B is a new entrant to the market, relatively, didn't cash in at the top of the market and now the market is tanking and interest rates are rising. He is on a high LTV, and possibly interest only. Market rental is not covering the repayment.

There is one tenant on the market. Landlord A realises that two months vacancy is more expensive than one month vacancy at market rent-100E per month. He drops. Landlord B is looking at his cashflow, says he cannot afford.

Tenant C looks at both properties. One costs 100E a month less than the other. Both are pretty much identical. In most cases, barring some story involving a murder in the property 8 months previously, or possibly the place operating as a brothel, Tenant C will probably choose the property belong to Landlord A. Meanwhile, Landlord B needs to wait for another tenant to come along to pay the slightly higher rent. fine if there's one handy, but if not, vacancy of two to three months will work out far more expensive than dropping the price below that of Landlord A.

This is the reality for a lot of landlords today, particularly new BTLs. Supply of tenants is dropping off, and supply of sale is rocketing so slightly problems on both fronts.

Pa ElGrande

Tenants at risk as landlords lose homes

Hundreds of tenants are at risk of being forcefully evicted without notice as growing numbers of landlords hit by the credit crisis are having their properties repossessed.
The number of people threatened with repossession because they can't keep up with mortgage payments has shot up by 16 per cent in the last year, according to official figures released last week. But now housing charities are warning that it is not just the owners who at risk of losing their homes - many tenants will also face eviction, often because their landlord has the wrong type of mortgage.
'We have already started seeing inquiries from tenants who are being forced out of their homes,' said Adam Sampson, chief executive of Shelter, the housing charity. 'If the credit crunch continues we are going to see many more repossessions and many more tenants being evicted. They are the unheard victims of this crisis.'

O'Callaghan holds his own

"I think we're very close to bottom of the market. I think people still expect us to drop prices more, but I think we'll be at the bottom this summer, " he said. "Believe you me, we had to drop prices because (developers) had gone out of control completely."
Developers' profit margins He confirmed that developers' profit margins on each residential unit sold had grown to more than 33%. Now they're down to 15%-20%.
"That's where they should be, " he said.
"This is a correction, a very fast correction, that had to happen. If it didn't happen when it did happen I reckon (the industry) could have been in serious trouble. The reason for this is the banks giving out too much money to people who knew absolutely nothing about housing development, allowing people to get involved in the business that should not be involved in it - professionals in particular, who were paying too much for land, adding it to the house prices and killing the market.
"Dublin lost it completely but even in Cork, an acre of farmland was up to €2m and that meant if you wanted to buy a house on that you'd have to pay €500,000 for a three-bedroom semi. Dublin completely blew it. There will be blood, I can tell you. There's a lot of correction to be done, but it had to be done. It's still too early to get value in Dublin. It'll be September to November I think."

It's not the end of the world if this happens to you as a renter, but it is inconvenient and can be costly (moving and not so favourable deals)
But you have to factor this in for the next few years.

Mind you we could see deals like this in the near future, especially with available rental stock increasing...

Rental Rates Begin To Drop With Home Prices

If one were to describe house prices to falling rocks, then, it would be safe to say that rents in South Florida are dropping like boulders.
"We're just trying to stay competitive," said Frank Leonor of Design Place to CBS4 David Sutta.
After years of price increases, property managers like Leonor are doing the unheard of: offering not one, not two, but three months free rent to get you in the door.
"It's a drastic measure, but in today's economy, most people are on a tight budget, so we have to try to offer to balance out, try to offer them something that they can afford now," he added.
Design Place in Miami is just one of thousands of bargains appearing across South Florida.
"This listing has been available on the market for 3 months," explained Guillermo Puig of Mymiamipad.com; luxury buildings in Sunny Isles dropping in price by five to six hundred dollars.