Irish Times looking for Landlords to have their say

My point is that if it's a business, then there's an income expected / earned. You are flipping back and forth between it being a business and not in each post.

Don't really know what hysterics or drama you are talking about tbh. I'm not struggling to cope financially or otherwise, as income from commercial tenants propped up the damage from my most recent residential tenant. The tenants didn't like living there with the rotten wet mouldy stinky kitchen they created, so they left. Replacing a whole kitchen and the damaged plaster etc behind it effectively forced me to knock and move an internal wall, which according to the current rules, allowed me to let out at market rate again, more than doubling my intake. Am I inconvenienced by some idiots wrecking a kitchen, yeah sure. but I didn't have to evict anyone, and can now reset to city center market rate. I’m in a reasonable position where I can absorb those shocks. Most small landlords cannot. Added bonus, that increased rental yield also increases the resale value of the property with a sitting tenant , so I can now actually sell it if I want to.

I take zero pleasure in that btw. I see that's a really stupid and almost immoral system we have now, which effectively incentives me to utterly gouge the market when I can. Back in the old days before the regs I would have been happy to take a tenant I found capable, and let it out at well under the market rate. I had agreements to reduce rent for tenants who did no damage and who I didn't have to pester. Now, I'm incentivized by law to maximise what I charge, and penalised heartily if I don't, because who knows when the rules change next. I'd be a fool to let it out for less.

But that's what the baying mob want. A completely asinine broken system that makes it harder and more expensive for both renters and suppliers. You got what you demanded. Happy yet?

Again, you were the one to start using the word "business". I merely responded to your post and put the word into quotes in my response.

After me mentioning it once, it suddenly became "unclear" to you. So I explained to you that it is your choice how you run your own things and explained that there were no laws preventing you from setting up a business structure if you want.

I suspect some correlation between your apparent inability to follow a simple flow and your difficulties managing as a "landlord".

What a terrifying thought, SF in power.

You always have to be careful of stats. It's true the wages to house price difference is bigger than in previous generations but it's not the reason young people aren't buying homes.

The main reason for young people not buying houses is they aren't getting married as young. My parents generation were married with two kids by 25. This generation is not getting married until 35+.

So you are really not in the market to settle down with a family home until late 30's.

That report is based on young people 24-34 buying homes between 2004-2019. In 2004 average age to get married was 30-32 ( so a big chunk of newly weds in that group looking to buy). But by the time 2019 comes along the average age was 35-37. Which pushes all those newly weds out of the study group of 25-34.

It's also worth noting that there was a glut of below cost houses on the market from 2009 to 2015. If young people wanted to buy into the market that was the once in a generation golden opportunity. That previous buyers never got.

Social housing is a need, but I don't think we need to be building houses for single 24 year olds.

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This is a fundamental issue for a stable society; and the government has got it wrong time and time again.

Imagine if Irish people could put their energy into businesses, art, science, education instead of worrying themselves to death and working to death to pay for this **** fest FFG has fostered over so many years.

The people who should be having kids who can nurture kids/society are not having kids, having them way too late, getting pets instead ... It's absolutely nuts.

I'd also be very, very wary of any kind of independence journalism from the Irish Times, with respect to housing.

I'd love to be able to sell with tenants in situ. Even when the council (who pay the rent) buy a house they insist the tenant (which is theirs) is kicked out first.

I'd be all on for long term contracts, fair and sustainable rental market where you rent the property and then mind it.

But the Whole thing is screwed by SF and the other populists that insist that landlords can't remove tenants that stop paying rent. Very often landlords sell after a bad tenant has left them 10-20k in debt thanks to the lack of an ability to remove non paying tenants.

In the UK the have a simple and cheap system where a judge rules and if the tenant is to be removed. Court appointed bailiffs go, take them out, change the locks and give the property back.

Here it takes about two years.

Until that's in place, landlords will always need a way out.

In most of the cases it's not that they can't pay, it's that they won't. I'm taking about two income families bringing in over 100k just stop paying rent. 18 months later they move somewhere else and repeat. No accountability, no support for the landlords. They just have to take the hit and sell up.

I moved to another city, then moved to the suburbs, then to the countryside to afford a house I could buy. Great community, far better than anywhere else I've lived. So it's worked out great.

It's a Shame there is such a push to shove people into apartments and estates where no-one knows the person 2 doors down.

"The shame of renting"

Ah would you quit.