Long-term leasing with county council

Luckysasha

Saw, an ad in the local paper today for Meath county council seeking landlords to sign up to the long term leasing scheme for 10 years. I have a property in Meath and am interested in finding out if anyone has any experience of this scheme. Note this is NOT the RAS scheme. Do you need to get a different mortgage in place , do you pay tax on the rental income etc. Any help would be appreciated

Gumbo

Luckysasha wrote: »

Saw, an ad in the local paper today for Meath county council seeking landlords to sign up to the long term leasing scheme for 10 years. I have a property in Meath and am interested in finding out if anyone has any experience of this scheme. Note this is NOT the RAS scheme. Do you need to get a different mortgage in place , do you pay tax on the rental income etc. Any help would be appreciated

It's the long term lease scheme.
You get lower rates because of the security.

My open market rental price was €1400 per month, council offered €1100 just to give you an idea.

Similar to the RAS scheme in that the council control the tenant.

Yes of course you pay income tax on the rental income, including prsi, usc etc

Eric Cartman

if the contract means the council will repair any damages after then id say go for it. Gives you 10 years of income without having to worry and the council would deal with complaints.

CreepingDeath

Yeah, we rented the wifes house with Louth council beginning this year. ( The 10+ long term lease scheme )

Although we applied last February... so it took fecken ages and lots and lots of bureaucratic nonsense. We were accidental landlords and rented privately for a while.

So it took us 9 months from start of application, to the lease starting.

They have a list of regulations you must adhere to eg.
- number of smoke alarms
- a heat detector in the kitchen
- partial attic flooring to the water tank in the attic
- ensure the attic is insulated (even the attic door)
- gas/oil boiler serviced AND a separate inspection certificate
- electrician giving a certificate for the house electrics
- architect giving certificate of compliance and cert saying nothing had changed significantly from the building plans
- child locks on all upstairs windows (IKEA child locks worked well for us)
- BER certificate
- tax clearance certificate
- house fully furnished
- a solicitor must review the lease, advise you and sign it (it was very difficult to find a solicitor to do this, cost about €430 for that)
- approval from your mortgage provider to the lease *

The approval from the mortgage provider was painful.
The council wouldn't allow the lease until the mortgage provider approved the lease. The mortgage provider wouldn't approve the lease as the council only providerd a draft of the lease... catch 22 situation, that the mortgage provider eventually caved in on.

* Note: Now over 6 months into the lease and PTSB have charged more this month, something we're looking into, but they never gave any notice they were going to change anything. But after 6 months it is no longer your primary residence, and at their mercy for terms of the mortgage.
So I'm not sure if they upped the tracker mortgage rate, or something else.

For the first 6 months of the lease you are liable for anything that break down or the tenant complains about. In the first month we got a "snag list" from the tenant, and luckily that was the end of it, nothing too bad.
But it depends on the tenant you get.

So there's a lot of pain, expense and potential lost rental income before you get to the point where the council starts paying out.

The rent review can go up or down, but is only reviewed every 3 years I think. That can fall out of line with your mortgage payments especially when interest rates start to go up.

The wifes tax free allowance covers the rental income, but may or may not for yourself. So you must declare and potentially be taxed on the rental income.

murphaph

I see a LOT of extra expense there for some extra security. It doesn't come close to adding up in Dublin or anywhere with any sort of consistent rental demand. I'm on RAS and to be honest I'm looking forward to getting out of it when the 5 years are up. My RAS tenant asked me would I be interested in selling to her during the week there, so I take it she has come into some money. Hopefully they'll just buy something else (I am not interested in selling that house) and I can terminate the RAS agreement (it's in-situ, so it only applied to them and terminates automatically if they vacate) and get the house back into the private rental market, away from the vagaries of the council who seem to think they're doing you some massive favour renting your house to them in the middle of of a housing crisis!

Luckysasha

Thanks for all the advice. Looks like it could be more hassle than it's worth especially if my bank changes the term of my mortgage. I'm one of the lucky ones on a tracker but I'm sure I'd loose that if I went ahead with the councils scheme. The going rate for property like mine is 1000 per month so I might be better off renting privately

La Haine

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of doing this 10 year lease with SDCC, and there's deffo a lot too it.

I've never rented before so it as all new to me anyway and seemed the safer option then renting out privately to be honest.

I had a council guy out to the house and he gave me a sort of snag list, ie; fix shed door, paint boundary wall & inside of house, change window hinges, etc - along with needing to get BER Cert, Boiler cert etc, etc,....

So far I've spent about €1500 putting all this right and I'd say I'm looking at about the same again before I have everything that's needed done for SDCC.

While I'm here- I wonder does anyone know off hand where I'd get a 'Heat' alarm in Dublin?

Thanks!

L1011

Luckysasha wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice. Looks like it could be more hassle than it's worth especially if my bank changes the term of my mortgage. I'm one of the lucky ones on a tracker but I'm sure I'd loose that if I went ahead with the councils scheme. The going rate for property like mine is 1000 per month so I might be better off renting privately

The bank terms would change for a private rental too, if they were liable to change for this. Once it's rented its not your private residence to mortgage as such

CreepingDeath

La Haine wrote: »

While I'm here- I wonder does anyone know off hand where I'd get a 'Heat' alarm in Dublin?

Any big DIY store should sell them.
Here's B&Q's English site, but same idea.

B&Q UK Site Link

newacc2015

La Haine wrote: »

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of doing this 10 year lease with SDCC, and there's deffo a lot too it.

I've never rented before so it as all new to me anyway and seemed the safer option then renting out privately to be honest.

I had a council guy out to the house and he gave me a sort of snag list, ie; fix shed door, paint boundary wall & inside of house, change window hinges, etc - along with needing to get BER Cert, Boiler cert etc, etc,....

So far I've spent about €1500 putting all this right and I'd say I'm looking at about the same again before I have everything that's needed done for SDCC.

While I'm here- I wonder does anyone know off hand where I'd get a 'Heat' alarm in Dublin?

Thanks!

Phone up the council and ask do they want the cheap heat alarm eg like your basic smoke alarm. As they may want a main operated one or 10 year battery one. Both of which will be harder to get in a DIY store. But any electrical store will have them eg Eurosales are pretty cheap for them

Sunshine55

Pmd u

percy212

This all sounds like something that should be done for any rental. Fairly basic standards.

CreepingDeath wrote: »

They have a list of regulations you must adhere to eg.
- number of smoke alarms
- a heat detector in the kitchen
- partial attic flooring to the water tank in the attic
- ensure the attic is insulated (even the attic door)
- gas/oil boiler serviced AND a separate inspection certificate
- electrician giving a certificate for the house electrics
- architect giving certificate of compliance and cert saying nothing had changed significantly from the building plans
- child locks on all upstairs windows (IKEA child locks worked well for us)
- BER certificate
- tax clearance certificate
- house fully furnished
- a solicitor must review the lease, advise you and sign it (it was very difficult to find a solicitor to do this, cost about €430 for that)
- approval from your mortgage provider to the lease *

So you must declare and potentially be taxed on the rental income.

athtrasna

Mod note

umpo apisdn please do not post in this thread again

La Haine

Just as a quick update if anybody's interested!

I signed over the house to SDCC on Sept 21st for 10 years.
All in all the process wasn't the worst experience in the world.
Cost about €2,000 in total by the time I finished all their snag bits n pieces.

The only sticky part for me was getting an correct Electrical Cert that they'd be happy with - got there eventually though.

So, about 8/9 weeks from initial contact to signing the contract.

Fingers crossed all goes well from here on in.

Tradnuts

I'd be interested to know if anyone has signed up with Fingal coco for the long term lease scheme.
I wonder what their terms are, and what people's experience has been like with them and most of all, how long it took to setup with them.a

Thanks

Moonbeam

I can't see how anyone could make anything but a huge loss .
The tax bill and maintenance for a rented house can cost a fortune.
Paying the mortgage ,getting less then market rent and paying tax in most cases will cost people alot more then they will get in rent .

the_syco

La Haine wrote: »

I signed over the house to SDCC on Sept 21st for 10 years.

WHo pays for the maintenance, and fixing things as they break/need to be replaced? Also, can you inspect the house in those ten years, and what structural modifications can the tenant make?

handlemaster

Tradnuts wrote: »

I'd be interested to know if anyone has signed up with Fingal coco for the long term lease scheme.
I wonder what their terms are, and what people's experience has been like with them and most of all, how long it took to setup with them.a

Thanks

Was going to do the ras scheme with them. But didnt. If thats anything to go by fingal will be a year taking your house

Tradnuts

handlemaster wrote: »

Was going to do the ras scheme with them. But didnt. If thats anything to go by fingal will be a year taking your house

Well, I have a bit more info now.

Apparently it'll take 8 weeks for an engineer to call and access the apartment.
Then i'll need to fulfill his requirements, smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, and a few other things i suppose. Hopefully its not much.

I must furnish the house initially, but i'm not responsible for the long term maintenance of anything (except the first 6 months -a kinda snag list scenario).
I can inspect the apt. over the 10 years.

After that, 10 years, with 100% guarantee for rent every single month without ever missing a month.

I don't really want to be a landlord in the first place. Just getting enough from them to cover the mortgage, so if this means that I'll have 10 years of mortgage payments paid off, then it seems like a good deal for me.
But i can see how others wouldn't be attracted to the deal.

Strongly considering it, so long as the works to be carried out aren't prohibitive and the time frame for getting the contract signed isn't too long.

candoken

I'm considering renting my house to DCC on the long term lease at the moment.
As part of the process they require me to use a Solicitor on my side. Can anyone recommend a solicitor to me that has experience with leases? Any solicitor in the Dublin city centre or north side (even south side would be fine I suppose given email).
Thanks