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Tenant issues
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While I totally agree that a written tenancy agrement is absolutely necessary to set the rules of the tenancy (no pets, no smoking, no noise, no holes in walls, no painting the walls, ...) in order to protect the landlord (the tenant has already got the RTA to protect him). I have just shown in my post above that fixed term is only advantageous for the tenant (who can get out anytime with some bu..it assignment) and absolutely deleterious for a landlord since it cancels the only period when the landlord can really put the tenant on probation: the first 6 months, where the law is still as it used to be pre-2004: tenant screws up or it does not make business sense, he is served 28 days termination notice and at least on the theoretical legal side the landlord is fine (problem then is enforcing eviction).It's probably best to have a lease agreement of some sort regardless, even if it doesn't specify a term, so that you can outline the tenant's obligations in writing (e.g. when rent is due and how it can be paid, how the tenant should handle maintenance issues, who is responsible for paying for utility services, etc.) to make everything clear so that there can be no he-said-she-said dispute over certain terms of the tenancy later on.
A fixed term lease has pluses and minuses for both parties. On the tenant's side, it ensures security of tenure for the entire term of the lease, including the first six month period before Part 4 rights kick in, assuming there isn't a no-reason break clause for the landlord. On the landlord's side, it locks the tenant in for the fixed term and, should the tenant break the lease, allows the landlord to pursue them for monetary losses incurred while re-letting the property (including the rent owed for any period it was unoccupied, assuming the landlord made a reasonable effort to re-let ASAP), which helps protect you (or at least mitigates your losses) from flaky tenants who up and leave after a short period. Whether that is worth locking yourself into a lease that extends beyond the initial six months is up to you (though in the current landlord-friendly market, it doesn't seem like you'd have much trouble finding a new tenant quickly in the event yours takes a runner anyway).
So landlords should avoid FIXED terms in their tenancy agreements at all cost. I still see in daft.ie those wicked estate/letting agents putting "minimum term 12 months": in my opinion they are a bunch of self-serving people preying on the landlord for their easy and unearned letting fee that they would like to renew every year. By putting 12 months fixed term they are screwing the landlord now for 6 years!!!
Last time I used a letting agent and a fixed term tenancy was 2015: never again! Why should I pay a fee to an agent who is not responsible for its own actions? In addition a few tenants (I had one) as soon as they get the fixed term they will feel entitled, like I want a new colour for the paint or the painting work is not great (I kid you not this happened to me for real with a tenant selected by a letting agent on a fixed 12 months term, both the tenant and the agent are out of the window, but it took me a two long years to get rid of them), now as I said above if I hear bu...t like that the tenants are out of the door at the second request or the second f..k up (the first time I explain that their request/behaviour is unacceptable and will put at risk their tenancy, the second time I provide termination notice).
I my experience if a tenant starts like the OP's tenant he/she will be trouble that is only going to worsen during the tenancy (6 long years of tenancy now!) and will believe that the landlord accommodating attitude is actual stupidity! Believe me when the tenants receive the termination notice they all jump and start to shout all sorts of stupid excuses for their stupid previous behaviour (or just plainly lie in my face
) and some of them say they will go to the other dysfunctional organization called Threshold (it is a pleasure to then see their attitude when they are told the termination is valid by none less than the dysfunctional employees of Threshold, but sometimes they are still told to go to RTB or overhold and then badly loose, problem is the cost and time for me of this whole process).
As I said a landlord in the current Irish housing environment has to be educated, smart and very determined with the tenants (avoid leaving an inch or they will take a mile) otherwise his/her business will go south very quickly. Unfortunately some tenants are too stupid and they can't even understand why they have received a termination notice.
I must also say that the quality of tenants has improved massively in Dublin due to the housing crisis and nowadays I mostly get educated professionals or postgraduate students who usually understand well what their responsibilities start and where my duties stop.
An additional thing that I always explain to new tenants is that I only provide a 6+2 months tenancy which means that towards the end of the 6th month I provide a no reason termination notice even if they have been great tenants.I use the section 65(4) rule "(4) If the duration of the tenancy concerned is less than 6 months, a period of notice of more than 70 days may not be given in respect of it." together with section 61 " (1) A reference in this Part to a particular period of notice to be given by the notice of termination concerned is a reference to such a period that begins on the day immediately following the date of service of the notice.
(2) A reference in this Part to the duration of a tenancy is a reference to the period beginning on the day on which the tenancy came into existence or the relevant date, if later, and ending on the date of service of the notice of termination concerned."
Do I want part 4 tenants? the resounding answer on my side is NO, the govvie takes away all landlord control on a part 4 tenancy. Unless the govvie moves to a UK system or a US system or a German system where the tenant is responsible for the full maintenance of the property and no b...t assignment can be performed, then the current screw the landlord system in Ireland is forcing me to only have short tenancies. The guys saying "Security for both landlords and tenants is essential if the rental sector is to be both an attractive option for tenants and a safe and viable investment choice for investors." is just repeating without any critical thinking the Threshold and Govvie mantra. Security of tenancy at the moment is very detrimental to landlord, unless the RTA is changed profoundly (which will not happen) the number of properties for private letting will only fall. I just gave up asking for planning permission after the architect told me about all the stupid costs the govvie, DCC and other parassites (who add absolutely no value to the property) charge on top of the pure expensive building cost (labour + material). It is just not economical to build to rent residential property up to the latest absurd building standards (set up by the usual suspects in govvie and DCC without doing any cost/benefit analysis) even owning the land unless you have huge economies of scale! My money is now being invested in a different country on commercial property.
Another big error I spotted in the same uncritical thinker above is the following: "Minister Kelly Labour changed the 4 year to 6 year so with only 1 probation period of 6 months. Previously there was a probation period after every part 4 came to an end." It wasn't Kelly that made this change, it was Mr "I know it All" (in reality I am lying big time and screwing landlords big time) Coveney on Christmas Eve December 2016 with the RTA 2016. Mr "do gooder" Kelly with the RTA 2015 extended in December 2015 the rent review period from 1 year to 2 years. As I said previously the govvie and its financed NGOs, Councils and Agencies are nothing short of the landlord sworn enemies.
I am also expecting another Christmas present this year through a new anti-landlord RTA 2017, the Irish politicians just cannot keep their dirty fingers clean. I can already see it with that biased RTE program "Nightmare to Let", who started the drums for a new change of the law requesting a massively expensive certification program for all landlords instead of requesting proper enforcement against rogue lanldords by councils (see Brendan Kenny, the clown at DCC what he says the day after asking for all sorts of huge penalties for landlords: https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/1103/917178-rental-accommodation/ and then what is discovered his department did not do: http://www.thejournal.ie/rte-dcc-emails-were-not-opened-3682662-Nov2017/ "RTÉ emails about 'fire trap' house were not opened by Dublin City Council official": what needs to happen is DCC employees being fired if they do not work and Mr Kenny dismissed!!!). RTE could have easily shown the other side ("Tenants from Hell", just look at the RTB adjudications) but they purposely avoided to do it because it does not fit in their dirty political socialist agenda. I know there are a few communist/socialist posters in this forum, that is why I keep posting here, to show their lies in their full splendour!
I close it here, because the current Irish housing political agenda makes me puke.0 -
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I have already explained really well what I think about the govvie view and my view on economic discrimination, now go and tell a bank that should not consider if the borrower has economic dependants when he/she borrows. Socialists always like to expand the discrimination sphere to fit their own ideological agenda and expanding it into limiting economic actors choices.dancingqueen wrote: »If you take the law to the extreme point a landlord can serve the no reason termination notice on the day before the 6 months expire and provide a 70 days termination notice making the tenancy last approximately 8 months and 8-9 days but he/she is then taking big risks in my opinion. The main issues in my case are always practical matters which are simpler to deal with working tenants who have something to loose if they overhold and a negotiated exit is easier to achieve. Families with children in my opinion have also more incentives to overhold since it is more difficult for them to find alternative accommodation.
This can be viewed as discrimination, I am sure; if you are consciously unwilling to rent to a family on the basis that they might want a long term option.
In my opinion, you are quoting the bits that apply to you to back up the way you "run your business" due to being "backed into a corner". My opinion might be biased in the sense that I am a tenant and I have had mostly ****e experiences with landlords who basically thrive off treating tenants like crap.
A studio or a 1 bed apartment is not fit for a family: full point. To be honest I never had a family applying for a place in the past two years but I had to kick out at great cost an inherited tenant couple that had two children during their long term tenancy in a 1 bed apartment and did not want to move out: so screw the RTE journalists and the righteus DCC executive when they talk about overcrowding, when a landlord needs to clear out overcrowding created by the tenants he has to fight it at the RTB with no help from the righteus brothers!
I have reached a point where I cannot care less, I post here to provide information that can help isolated fellow landlords and counteract the socialists/communsts populating this forum, I do not care about popularity (and I said it many times). I provide good up-to-date accommodation at a decent rent, but I do not want someone else controlling my property (this has happened before with the nasty tenant and the painting one), I prefer my property to stay empty rather than to have an entitled tenant inside and my patience with tenants has dropped considerably in the past two years due to how much the Irish govvie pissed me off with their hypocrisy and their socialist regulations and the RTB bu..it I had to endure!
In all these years I have only found a tenant who really cares about the property (and she is the only one that is still there, the others have all been evicted), so I prefer short term tenants who will not have time to wear the property down and I have full control (I got rid of parasitic letting agents too in order to have full control). If my properties stay empty a few weeks between tenancies: I could not care less! I am a fully financed investor: not an accidental landlord who depends on the rent coming in each month to pay its mortgage with the bank on the other side hanging him if the rent stops, I can take the empty periods waiting for the right person.
Dancingqueen: I advertise very cleary that the flats are only for short term, if the tenants come with second intentions it is then their problem when it is time to get out (I actually hate people with second intentions: there were plenty in the big corporation where I used to work); in addition I mentioned clearly that I usually offer a different property to good tenants, I just do not offer long term tenancies anymore (and to be honest I decide how I manage my properties, not the govvie or some tenant who could not care less about the property as long as he/she can stay inside it at a cheap rent). If tenant needs long term acccomodation he/she can go and look somewhere else, after all he/she has already got the govvie and plenty of taxpayer financed NGOs on his/her side, shame these organizations and the govvie do not want to put down any of their money to actually supply accommodation to the tenant but at the same time they have overregulated the market to death since it did not cost them a cent! This is what I call hypocrisy!
I also could not care less about the opinions (moral or otherwise) on the practical consequences of my short term strategy and how I select tenants: on the contrary I found that the quality of tenants has gone up considerably in Dublin due to the housing crisis. There is a communist poster in this forum who is particularly bad in his practical legal suggestions but thinks he knows all the legal theory and he loves Threshold , probably even worked for them (I am actually astounded he has not jumped in this thread like he used to do so regularly to spout his ideology translated into legal terms). I am finally free from having to expensively prove to an RTB adjudicator why I do not want a particular person in my property.
I shall stop here, since I have work to do. I posted in this thread to help the OP and to return the help I have been offered in this forum in the past by some posters. I do hope the OP is not in the position I think he/she is: stuck with an entitled tenant and not able to evict due to some ill thought fixed term placed in the initial lease and an anti-landlord law fully devised and approved by the Irish TDs supporting the entitled non rent paying tenant.0 -
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