The eviction ban

I think one of the things we need to look at is how things are done in other countries. Good article in The Journal comparing levels of regulation and tenant protection in Ireland vs. other EU countries.

From the article:

Is our going alone and following the UK model a mistake? Full article well worth a read.

That article is cherry picking. Not a word about security for the landlord, i.e. getting rid of a non-paying tenant. I'll hazard a guess that it's a lot harder to get a non-paying tenant out here in Ireland than it is in Germany etc.

Personally I think the RTB are as useful as a chocolate tea pot.

I think one,of the several, elephants in the room is the exorbitant cost of housing. You can speak of a housing shortage but if you have access to enough money then you will have no problem getting a house. How have we allowed a situation arise in what is after all a thinly populated country where a modest enough house will cost €400,000+ ! We have overdèveloped the dublin metropolitan area, and all the strain on resources that brings, while leaving swathes of the country underdeveloped. As for 30 + planning authorities we have in this country, don't get me started.

FFG have promised planning reform for 2 decades. A costly tribunal said reform was long overdue. Why is it so slow? FFG don't do reform.

Meanwhile...

An Bord Pleanála admits 'significant' backlog of cases (irishexaminer.com)

An Bord Pleanála has admitted it is struggling to deal with a "significant" backlog of cases, with nearly two-thirds of recent applications failing to get a decision by the expected deadline.

Irish Planning Institute vice president Gavin Lawlor said the reason for the backlog is “obvious”. 

He criticised what he claims is a "lack of urgency" on the issue by Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien, which he said is compounding the problem.

Five temporary board members, each with a year’s contract, have been added to An Bord Pleanála since January. Those appointments were made several months after the resignation of chairman Dave Walsh in November. Mr Walsh stepped down following the leaking of a damning internal An Bord Pleanála report condemning much of the board’s governance and oversight.

Backlog of cases at An Bord Pleanála now stands at 2,300 – the number it normally gets through in a full year

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Housing crisis: One year's supply stuck in An Bord Pleanála backlog | Newstalk

1 year's supply of housing is stuck in a planning backlog at An Bord Pleanála.

The analysis by Mitchell McDermott Construction Consultants finds that planners have yet to decide on 59% of the Strategic Housing Development (SHD) applications submitted last year.

That amounts to just under 29,000 homes – which is the number of homes the Government hopes will be delivered under its Housing for All plan this year.

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That's how serious the government is about fixing the housing disaster.

Fela on Virgin Media Tonight makes no apology for including Gardai in the Famine image.

Fionan Sheehan got very animated about it. The Independent being the newspaper of the Gardai.

No, because one of the regulations would be that selling a property would not be sufficient cause to evict a tenant. So when a block of flats is put on the market, any entity can bid on the tenanted building, and the tenant continues to pay rent at the agreed rate but to the new landlord.

here in Germany there's something called a schufa. It's a type of credit check. If you've been a non paying tenant, it's listed on the schufa. For every single property that's advertised, you have to provide a schufa. On the german equivalents of daft, you can apply for the schufa and you can attach it to your profile.

So the number of non paying tenants would be far lower here than in Ireland. You can view their entire rental history. There's also a deposit of three months rent. So losses due to damages would be less. It even has as a standard part of the contract that the apartment has to be repainted, generally in white, before moving out.

So landlords have very strong protections here.

However tenants also have strong protections. I can't be kicked out because he wants a family member to move in. He can't just up the rent. For a lot of tenancies, if the property is sold, the tenant goes with the apartment. The landlord buys it as a going concern. I'm far more protected here than I ever was in Ireland.

I doubt it. What most renters want is security. They just want to know that if they pay the rent they won't be homeless and the landlord won't hike the rent. My last landlord in Ireland wasn't registered with the RTB so there was nothing I could do when they bumped the rent by 40%. They said if I didn't agree then they'd sell. And they never performed basic repairs on the place.

All I ever wanted from renting was to know that i could keep paying rent and not be homeless and not worry about them gouging me for every penny they could get. But I lived in constant fear.

Now there's certain aspects of German rentals that are confusing. Most (about 80%) come without a kitchen. You either bring your own or you sell it onto the next tenant when you leave the apartment. And most come unfurnished. But there's a huge market in second hand furniture. At first I thought unfurnished was bad but I came to realise the most people build up bits and pieces overtime. Now i think I'd prefer to rent an unfurnished apt. Although a kitchen should be included.

You actually read the factcheck article? So your latest excuse and misinformation for the housing disaster is "SF aren't helping". They ALL aren't helping (Even Leo objects to housing) ...but here's some news - FF and FG are in government. They have the power to reform planning laws and speed up ABP decisions. Why are we waiting for so long??

I agree that you are a waffler and they have you fooled. They are irrelevant, their tweets are irrelevant. FFG need to build the houses and fix the housing disaster. It's that simple. The ABP backlog needs to be quickly fixed and objections from all politicians need to be swiftly death with. Swiftly. FFG have always loved bureaucracy and hated reform. They need to stop looking for scapegoats.

So still let the landlord take a 3 month loss. Dont think thats going to help attract new landlords in or even those who are in already to stay.

I broke my own ignore rule to see were you still spouting the same tripe - and I was wasting my time and energy, you are - do you even read the posts that you respond to with your automaton, ChatGPT-like responses?

I said I was willing to manage the risk, I said I made losses in the past, I said I was willing to rent on into the future balancing losses and gains - I specifically said that it was not the financial aspect that made me decide to sell, I said that there was no tax/financial solution at the moment that would have persuaded me not to sell.

Don't bother replying to this as you're still on ignore and I won't be making the mistake of looking at any of your posts again. Just wanted to point out the absolute folly and stupidity of your WUM posting, and encourage others to deploy the ignore button, it gives great peace!

Three months is a hell of a lot better than a year and a half or longer.

Remember that LL will have the deposit. So it brings rent risk back to two months. The real advantage of a rapid termination process in the case of non payment is it encourages tenants not to stop paying.

That's a question that I have never seen addressed here.

Whatever about getting the rental scene sorted for the working population, what on earth happens to all those people who are still renting when their earnings mostly fall off a cliff on retirement (esp given our reluctance to engage in proper pension planning, if all of the financial gurus are to be believed over the years)?

There’s no “perfect” solution especially not one that could be posted in a chat thread, I grant you that.

But whether losses can be underwritten by government assuming standards of dwelling are met by the landlord in the first instance etc or some other mechanism, “something” needs to be put in place- and not only that, if a government guarantee came in, it could be on the basis of lower rents- landlord then makes normal profit not super normal profit but risks are greatly reduced as a result. Government are just not creative enough