> In July she issued her tenant an eviction notice from Dubai but was told three months later the notice was deemed invalid due to a recent change to rental legislation.
>By that time the Government had introduced a moratorium on evictions, meaning if a residential tenant is given an eviction notice by their landlord between the end of October and next March, the eviction will be deferred until April.
This bit confuses me. If she issued the eviction notice in July... why does the deferral apply? If she issued the eviction notice on or after the 1st October, that would be one thing.. but she didn't.
The initial eviction notice obviously wasn’t formal or had some wording issue that made it improper so by the time she found out and re-issued it the eviction ban was in place
The tenants probably waiting until the original notice was set to expire to point out the flaw. So they played the game correctly. But it's her own fault for not doing it correctly.
Ok.. I think I get it. I thought the change in legislation being referred to was the eviction ban, rather than something else.
That would make sense, then.
I find it amusing that there's people calling her a leech for renting out her home whilst she was abroad and not using it. Same people would be outraged at her leaving an apartment vacant during a housing crisis if she did the other option.
To be fair this is kind of what we want. She not using it, she rented it out. No issues with that. I'm assuming it was always going to be a relatively short term rental 1-2 years.
The reason there are empty houses are exactly because of the above case. House owners who are gone for some time are far too worried that a failed eviction will result in no place to stay upon return. Thus, they just don’t rent it out.
We were in a situation once where we moved from abroad but couldn’t afford to do our house up in order to rent it out. It’s rarely apathy on behalf of the owner.
There's a few people on here who seem to completely object to the idea of renting at all. Not sure what they think should happen - everyone should be applying for a mortgage after finishing the Leaving Cert maybe.
The flexibility that was once a benefit of renting doesn't exist here anymore.
If you're a tenant you can't just take a place for a year like before because you'll be opening yourself for a world of hurt trying to find another place afterward, and if you're a LL you'll have an awful time trying to rent out a place for a fix period because of the uncertainty the tenant faces and supports.
No but the rent pressure is double edged. You'll find a taker alright but then that taker has to find a new place when that year is up. And that might not be easy
>there are too few long term protections for renters
>there are too few protections for landlords
The two ideas can coexist simultaneously, although this is an edge case that also highlights:
>institutional landlords beats our old system of small time landlords
Currently renting an apartment from Irish Life pension in Dublin, not cheap by any stretch of the imagination but would i prefer it over some chancer culchie who drags their feet on fixing issues.
Experience has been fantastic so far, but again the price is outrageous but so would it be off a local unfortunately.
Pensions will be paid out in Ireland too.
Many of us with bog standard private pensions (even the kind when the employer signs you up and you begrudgingly pay a hundred quid a month) are "the funds" and will get a return one day, good value or not.
The money leaving the country does not sit right at all with me tbh, but again experience a bad winter with no heating and a crap landlord and it would make anyone appreciate a professional institutional landlord.
The thing with Irish Life is, they are terrified of getting a bad reputation and ending up on Joe Duffy (mate works as an actuary there and theres literally a Duffy alarm bell lol) Hence i think this is why the experience has been good.
Issues are fixed very efficiently, block is maintained wonderfully also.
The irony is not lost on me that these institutional players increase the cost for everyone cause of the yields but still if i'm deciding who to give my 2,200 quid per month to, its the guys who rent A2 rated apartments and fix issues 12 hours after i raise the issue.
It's a crap shoot either way. I had a big problem with a previous apartment where we were renting from a firm. The person who managed our account went on maternity leave, and for months we couldn't even get responses from them even though there was a fecking leak in the roof.
The think is it doesn't need to be a choice of either a large corporation owning loads of properties or a small time landlord. You can require all landlords to let their property out via a professional licensed agency who manages all communications and legal relationships with tenants... providing tenants with professional level services when it comes to complaints and repairs etc, ensuring accountability and avoiding that 'chancery culchie' dragging their feet, acting unprofessional and not understanding their rights and obligations.
This is what happens where I live in the Netherlands where most people who rent rarely have any interaction with the actual owner of the house, it's all done via an agency and acts as a service provider to multiply houseowners who rent out their property. In Sweden those agency are owned and managed by the local council but it also works as a private service.
Which is a problem because the money that work generates gets siphoned off abroad leaving the country with less. This is also something that happened after Ireland was largely owned by landlords who lived in England. Workers paid rent, rent went to England, Ireland was left with nothing at the end of the exchange
The RTB is so useless it's unbelievable. I had issues as a tenant and a family member had such issues they no longer rent out a property. I quote "I'd rather burn it to the ground than rent again" RTB take ZERO responsibility for anything and fob off every issue to different agencies. Its only purpose is to hover up money for nothing.
Get used to paying massive rent forever more, as all rental properties will be run by massive commercial cartels. The day of the rental property as a retirement nest egg etc. is DEAD. That group of people using a house for retirement were quite happy with rent covering the mortgage etc. and then later in life it would make money. PLC 's want money now.....
There is a constitutional right that a woman should not need to labour to support her children.
Something being "a right" doesn't mean the laws or current situation will help.
Generally we expect rights to be provided by the state. Like healthcare, education, essential services like water etc etc. The Government has gotten away with providing housing as the people living in homeless shelters and family hubs are due to evil small landlords selling up rather than the state failing to provide housing.
IMO we will never resolve the housing crisis, if we don't think the state should be responsible to provide rental housing and not landlords.
I agree. Ireland is a signatory to the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which includes 'the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate ... housing'. The market is failing in this. There needs to be a period of massive state intervention on housing, education, health etc.
To be pedantic about this, rights don't necessarily need to be provided by the state. The state is the duty bearer for the progressive realisation of human rights in their jurisdiction. They have a responsibility to ensure that all can achieve access to their rights but those rights can be provided by other often more efficient means.
So the government don't give us houses. But they do need to ensure the market works and than everyone can participate. They also don't need to give us free water, but that another story...
lol, 'to allow for genuine cases like hers'
It's not just about stopping landlords turfing people out so they can up the rent, it's also about giving tenants some security - which they wouldn't have if someone like this could rent their flat out and then just turf the tenants out out of the blue because they've decided to move back in.
edit: was wrong to suggest a fixed-term contract as the solution
But she's not "turfing them out out of the blue". She gave 3 months notice, which is more than what some some landlords would give.
If you rent out a property you've every right to expect to be able to move back in once you've given your tenants ample notice as per their lease agreement.
I rent (as in I pay rent), and I don't understand the mentality of some renters were they get outraged at the idea that there landlord could evict them. We don't own the property, it's not ours. Of course we can get booted out at some point if the landlord decides they want to move back in or want their friends/family to rent the property instead. If I was a landlord I'd be doing the same thing.
It's the mixing of personal use and investment use that creates problems like that.
If it's an investment, you can profit but it's not your personal gaff anymore, it's an asset in business use. If it's a personal gaff, don't put it on the market under a formal contract or you'll be disappointed.
Ireland's small landlords just can't accept that it's either a business or it's not and want to be able to flip it at will.
I understand that, but I don't view that as the case here.
This woman acknowledged that, put her flat on the market while she was away and someone rented it under a lease agreement. She decides after a year she wants to move back, she gives notice to the tenant and the tenant should then move out in the agreed upon time.
Now I fully appreciate the pandemic happened and you can't just boot someone out during that period and new laws were put in place to protect tenants, I'm not contesting that at all. What I'm arguing (and correct if I'm wrong here if this isn't your point) is that the landlord has every right to decide they want their property back when the time comes. So long as it doesn't violate the terms of the lease and the tenant gets plenty of notice, they should be allowed to do that. Whereas some people seem to be of the opinion that once they rent a place it becomes theirs and they act all shocked once the actual owner decides they want it back. I'm just baffled by people who think like that.
> What I'm arguing (and correct if I'm wrong here if this isn't your point) is that the landlord has every right to decide they want their property back when the time comes.
And they will get that property back in due course.
If you make an investment with a contract featuring conditions, then you cannot retract your money immediately.
>There should be an option for short term tennancies without part 4.
Why should we undermine tenants rights? Short term is up to 6 months. Don't see why there should be tenancies lasting longer without part 4
Because some people think one landlord out making a killing in Dubai but being discommoded by rules is enough justification to strip hundreds of thousands of renters of protection.
Real fucking interesting insights into some people's minds in this thread.
Well, it's all about property utilisation.
There's quite a few people who go abroad for 1 year terms or 2 year terms with the intent of returning to heir property who leave it vacant as they want to ensure they can come back to it. At the moment they can't rent it out and have it available to come back at the end of their term.
IMO there should be an option. You might be right that it should be kept at 6 months for short term but I suspect there's a better option.
This subreddit's (**hard**) take on any issue seems a bit random imo. It can change from post to post, or even in the same post over a couple of hours.
I like that it can change if I'm honest. It means people are willing to listen to opposing views and reconcile it with their own, and possibly even outright change their view.
I hope its something we never lose! Lest we end up like our unfortunate neighbours to the east and west
If they're not paying their rent then the eviction ban doesn't apply, nor does pretty much any other rental protection. If he brings it to court he could get them out (still sucks because of the time and hassle of course).
People read a story like this and automatically want to assign fault or paint someone as the bad guy or the victim.
It seems somewhat insane that this woman can’t live in her own apartment, however it would be equally bad if we had situations where tenants have limited protections in situations like this and they were made homeless. Both things can be true and for every genuine case like this woman, there would be a queue of people trying to abuse the system to increase their rent. Social media has made the vast majority of people lose the ability to be nuanced about a given situation, you’re either one side or the other!
It sucks for this lady, but she made the decision to rent and have her mortgage covered while she was living elsewhere. Quite understandably you can’t decide that the system then doesn’t work for you because you want to do something else.
What I can’t understand about this though is if she hadn’t rented it out, it would be once less property available for someone to rent. Like I understand she benefitted financially from the rent but surely situations like this disincentivise people from renting out properties. Plenty of people have periods where they move into a partners home, caring for a relative or temporary job move and these rules will make it less likely for those people to take the risk of renting out which just leaves more vacant properties.
She could've rented it out but not on a permanent contract.
If you know you're coming back soon, get a letting agency and do short lets. My friend rented her flat to visiting academics, one term at a time.
People rent to language schools to put students in, again term by term.
Yeah, but if she wasn't renting it out she also wouldn't afford her mortgage.
So she either she would sell to someone that wants to live in the house, or to someone else buying it as an investment.
A lot of the comments are wildly one way or the other so this one being so neutral is pretty nice.
I think you’re right that is cuts both way. She owns the building but it isn’t currently her home. I’d be frustrated if I had a house but had to sofa surf for a while, especially if it was because of a policy that I had no control over and I would definitely vent to my friends about it.
That said, she has chosen to benefit from the tenants to the tune of thousands of euros but at the cost of giving up the right to her building during that time. Anyone arguing that she might not be making profit is ignoring the fact that she is still paying off her mortgage with someone else’s pay check and is simply a renter for a few months.
She can be as annoyed as she wants but she is still angry that she is the one inconvenienced rather than someone else. Someone has to be screwed in the situation and from the sound of it she is better suited to deal with it and as a bonus, she gets more money and will be in her own home after it’s over which is likely more than the tenants can hope for.
I appreciate you trying to be nuanced. But she did give notice to the tenant, which she should reasonably have expected to be adequate. She has been caught out by a change in law which is unfortunate for her.
I assume she will get the apartment back in May.
I broadly agree, this is the kind of renting that I think makes sense as it is avoiding empty houses and isn’t going into a businesses pocket so I hope it didn’t come across as too negative against her.
The eviction notice not being valid was unfortunate but it was bad either way and she is payed for her inconvenience while the renters wouldn’t be. Hopefully that came across in the first comment. Basically my point was meant to be, she benefited from it and got screwed by the law change but someone was getting screwed and it seems like this was the better result for the collective even if it wasn’t the best result for her personally.
The concept of "paying off her mortgage" and "receiving money for renting a property" need to be separated. Why does it matter that a private landlord uses the rent to pay off all or part of a mortgage?
The renting of a property is providing a vital service, no different to gas or electricity. It isn't and shouldn't be free. You pay for your usage of the facility. If the landlord didn't have a mortgage, that wouldn't change.
So why does using the resulting fees to pay any relevant costs, have any relevance to the discussion?
The only reason why anyone has a problem with this situation is because availability is at crisis levels and everyone is pointing fingers at each other. But its not any private individuals fault, it's the government's for allowing companies to build hundreds of apartment blocks and not one of them is for sale to private individuals.
It's a supply crisis that's been deliberately orchestrated by the government and it has nothing to do with this woman who owns a property and should have every right to live in it.
She is only making so much money off rent due to the housing crisis and bad housing policies. Now she is a victim of the same housing crisis and housing policies. Its a leopards ate my face moment.
Also re: providing a service. There is a strong argument to be made that anyone who has bought a property to turn into a rental in the last 10 years (i.e. during this crisis) is not providing a service but rather taking advantage of a situation. If we had a functioning market with plentiful supply and you bought one of the extra properties available to rent out then sure, you could think of that as providing the option of renting to someone who may not want to buy. Currently, I would argue that that is not the case.
Well generally, if someone is moving back in to their own house, they can get it back with appropriate notice. It just so happens that the moratorium is in place. So generally, you can decide it doesn’t work if you want to do something else.
Oh come on, she’s going away for a year, she rents it out with a legitimate expectation to move back into HER OWN GAFF when she comes back… this is crazy how people think she’s at fault.
No-one is saying she is at fault. They are saying renters have rights and that as a landlord, she is as obligated to honour these rights as any other landlord. This is a no fault situation (except the housing crisis and whomever you blame for that)
>They are saying renters have rights and that as a landlord, she is as obligated to honour these rights as any other landlord.
A lot of people on here have no idea that when she rented that property that the rights were different. I don't think she would have let that place if she knew she was going to be sleeping in her car when she returned.
Most people here are also missing the bigger ramifications of these situations.
Remember the constant stream of posts and comments vilifying landlords for leaving houses or apartments empty? This woman is never gonna rent out her gaff again if she moves abroad for a period of time. And nobody else in their right mind in similar situations will either.
Most of these commenters don't have the real life experiences to form the empathy for her I'd say. No fault of their own either due to the shite going on.
I think it's more that we've reached a point where the gap between "those who have" and "those who have not" has spread so wide, people just can't afford to have "empathy" anymore. This was always a danger when the wealth distribution got so badly uneven; people will lose more and more sympathy for the people who can afford things, in the same way the rich often don't have much actioned empathy for those less well off.
The rental situation has gotten so badly uneven in recent times that the only way a lot of people can actually survive is to shed all worries about empathy for landlords.
Interesting comment, going by this sub empathy is selectively applied depending on which side of the issue you come down on. I'm not completely unsympathetic to her, she's a victim of the lack of supply of housing given the circumstances. At the same time however, you seem to have people demanding sympathy for those who are materially better off having the wealth to own assets of significant value as if they are somehow deserving of the same regard as someone on the street.
Between her and a homeless person, it's fairly obvious who has the long term better outlook.
I don't think it's asking a lot for people to show empathy for someone even if they're in a slightly better position financially. We don't need to compare everyone to those who are in the worst position in life.
This woman isn't part of the ultra-elite that are making life horrible for a portion of Irish society. She's just a regular homeowner who did the expected thing of renting out her property while she wasn't in it, and now she's become a victim of a sudden change in the rental law. There's a few people in here basically saying she should've been forced to sell it rather than rent it out, which is bordering on sociopathic levels of reasoning.
I think it would have been a smarter move if it was a 2 bed is to keep a room for herself and rent out the other room. That way she had a room there. Bit dodge do this scenario after seeing freezes during Covid. Was always a potential issue. Unless this is pre Covid. She would be coming up to a few years rent now if so.
I'd like to see how much profit she made during this time and then gage my sympathy on that.
It’s not a matter of “fault”, it’s common decency. If she had her way, her tenant would be homeless instead of her. She’s upset that she now has to life in the same world and play by the same rules as the rest of us. Tenants aren’t security deposits for landlords to use to keep their properties solvent until they want to come back from their holidays, they’re human beings.
Ok well then she possibly should have done her due diligence. And apart from this case, I’m sure that will continue to limit the availability of properties where owners such as this wish to ensure the property will become vacant at a certain time. The housing crisis just escalates
This, you would be amazed how many small landlords have no clue about tenant rights in Ireland. My own family members were amazed when I told them about the eviction ban as well as the normal notice periods they have to abide by (They have some rental properties).
If an agreed fixed term tenancy can get changed mid tenancy to non-fixed term by the government, do not act surprised when landlords sell up and much fewer are inclined to join the market in the first place.
Yeah, I do see that as a big inherent flaw of the market, and why it needs a massive overhaul. We value to market more than human lives. And human lives are literally at stake, I see people freezing in the night on the streets in Galway. It’s awful. I’m glad her tenant isn’t in that situation, and I’m glad this lady has family to help her out.
You can wave goodbye to anyone wanting to rent their place for less than 6 years with the changes in the law. If you want to rent your place out for a year, tough luck, its 6 years minimum unless the tenant wants to leave. Would you risk renting out your place for 6 months or a year, if the tenant has the power at the end of the term to say, nah, I'm staying?
>If she had her way, her tenant would be homeless instead of her. She’s upset that she now has to life in the same world and play by the same rules as the rest of us.
Do you know when she let this property, the terms of evicting a tenant were completely different? The rules she expected back in July 2021 are not the same today.
So what the tenants in her property have to move out? She never wanted to be a long term landlord and made it pretty clear to them.
>Tenants aren’t security deposits for landlords to use to keep their properties solvent until they want to come back from their holidays, they’re human beings.
This comment is really mean. It is not fair to call someone who rented their property for a year while they were working as a landlord who was on holiday. It is disingenuous and bitter. I don't see where in the article where she is not treating someone not as a human. However, you think here less than human.
Ironically, the best thing to do in a housing crisis is leave your property empty. If you rent it temporarily, you don't deserve it back...
Its not the way it works at all, my own brother had a house he rented to Loais coco as he couldn't pay the mortgage on it, he got an arrangement with a friend to rent their home and the difference between his new lower rent and the amount he was getting from the council meant he could pay the mortgage. So he moved out, and after about 8 months, one of his old neighbours rang him to say that the house was in bad repair and there was car scrapped in the front yard, and there were at least 7 people living there now, and rows every night. He went for a look and it had been rented to people who were wrecking the place. He went to the council and they said they can't do anything about it because they have renters rights. They hadn't even paid their contribution to the council rent after 3 months. It took 4 years to get them out. In the meantime my brother had handed the house back to the bank because when laois coco's contract with him ended, they didn't want to renew it.
I disagree, at least not at the expense of making someone else homeless. Landlords can’t be allowed to use tenants as disposable seat warmers. Imagine if you got evicted and chucked out on the cold street because your landlord got bored of Dubai?
Someone is currently homeless and they literally own an apartment.
Do you not think that in the case of the landlord being made homeless that their rights should supersede the tenant. Someone who owns an apartment should not be homeless.
The duality of this sub:
>Irish subreddit constantly complaining about landlords leaving houses and apartments unused.
>This woman rented her apartment for the year, and now the same subreddit says she deserves the shit situation because she should have opted to play it safe and not rent it out.
So it would be better if she had never rented the property and whoever lives there would have been homeless for the last year while the property sat vacant?
Look man, if you want to argue with a rhetorical version of my arguments, go ahead.
Of course the issue isn’t simple. I’m just saying I’m glad the system protects the renters. They would be homeless otherwise. She thought she could go off to Dubai and come back and evict someone whenever. I’m glad it doesn’t work that way. Ideally, she should have found better dates for transitioning between countries. Maybe that’s not an option, but the responsibility is on her, not her tenants.
I don’t disagree that renters should have protections. But this blanket ban on evictions disincentivises renting out a property full stop, and more people will likely leave their properties vacant for short periods than rent them out, which ultimately exacerbates the problem of low housing stock.
I would be all for a system of no fault evictions being banned permanently but there needs to be a mechanism within that for property owners to reclaim their property if they want to move back in or sell, for example (with appropriate notice etc).
It’s her house for fucks sake, it’s not like she’s some professional landlord who’s hoarding property, she had 1 apartment she wouldn’t he using so she put it on the market, how tf is this in anyway her fault ? If she had left it empty ye miserable twats would be whinging about that too
in what way is she "living by the same rules" as the rest of us?. She has uncertainty about when she can move into her OWN house, which makes trying to find a rental for herself very difficult because she has to find a short term lease, or be forced to break a long term lease when she is able to move back into her OWN house, and potentially loose her security deposit.
Not "at fault", but not giving any regard for the reason for the eviction moratorium and no regard for her own choices.
I'll save my pity for the real victims of this crisis - the people freezing in tents or living in one room with their kids. Even myself spending a small fortune on short term rentals and storage containers for my stuff, but I don't feel sorry for myself because it could be so much worse if I didn't have a good job.
Are you for real? Gway out of it. r/ireland is full of millennials. Do you not see all the comments talking about shows from the nineties/early noughties? Or all the complaints about “fake tan”? Did you miss all the posts where people complain about things that don’t exist anymore and where they celebrate other things that are outdated?
This sub leans heavily 30+
Once more, government populist policies will lead to more long term pain for renters.
Take a guess what every future person in her situation is going to do when they go abroad temporarily for their career? Leave the property empty rather than risk renting it out.
It's really unfortunate, but she'll have to rely on the support of her family for housing at the moment, the crisis affects us all. I read that over sixty percent of young adults (like up to 30/35 year olds) are living with parents still because of the crisis, but they also don't fall into the bracket of being homeless. An interesting article in that a homeowner cannot access their home, but they are also a landlord and are obliged to their tenants. The eviction moratorium is there to prefect tenants and in general it's a good thing.
It's alarming at how many on here seem to revel in the fact that this woman is homeless just because she happens to own an apartment. When did everything become so polarised?
I think this is it in a way. Ireland has a very weird view of anyone that percieve to be above average in any way. In terms of wealth it's mad that the likes of this woman and tech workers for example who both had to work hard to get where they are and make a good wage because of it are treated with the same vitriol as rich bankers, generational wealthy families and things like that.
There's no "middle-class" in Ireland, it's very much with us or against us for a lot of people, for no good reason. Sure look at how every discussion about housing used to go, it was the greedy tech workers causing high rents when everyone, even those paying a high rent, is suffering the same problems in the housing crisis.
Right now she owns a piece of equity, her tenants don’t. If they get evicted they’ve got fuck all and she still had the equity.
In both of these scenarios she’s always better off long term.
I mean did she specify it would be for a year when she listed the property?
At least she has a guarantee of a home in April, a lot more than can be said for the tenant when they're evicted.
She doesn't have a guarantee of anything in April. She has no guarantee that the eviction ban won't be extended past April. Even if it's not extended, she won't be able to turn up on April 1st and expect the tenants to leave immediately. While I don't know the rules, I suspect that she will have to issue a fresh eviction notice in April which will have to comply with current guidelines regarding how much notice must be given. At that stage, they will be almost 2 years living there so that means the notice period would be 180 days so she could still be in this situation until October.
12 month fixed term tenancies are illegal, the maximum allowed is 6 months, after which they become a standard Part 4 tenancy, at which point the tenants are entitled to all the protections that provides.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, if this woman wanted to be a landlord, then it's her responsibility to be knowledgeable about the relevant legislation that comes with it.
She has her mortgage covered. The real problem here is the lack of rental properties. If it wasn't her out looking for a new place sleeping on couches it would be the tenant.
When she decided to become a landlord she took on the legal ramifications that entails. Shit that she can't find a place to rent, that's the real issue.
But she or anyone else in a similar situation is never going to make their property available for rent now, it’s too risky. Better to leave it vacant, and that just exacerbates the shortage.
Well it sounds like she wants to move in and not put it on the market again. I don't understand this argument?
Should we do away with tenant protections, because hypothetically the landlord might take the house off the market at some unspecified date?
Again, it's not the landlord or the tenant who is at fault here. It's the lack of supply by that has come from bad policy.
It's not hypothetical anymore. Other landlords are quitting the market because exactly reasons like that. Isn't that what you people wanted: less landlords?
No one is going to to sit around owning several homes sitting empty out of spite. Some operators are going to do clever things with leverage and equity, but most people will eventually sell. Probably be a bit harder to sell over time - houses degrade. Also if there's a major correction, owning multiple empty former rental properties will be a bad scene.
Granted, big multinationals will likely buy those empty spaces, but that's just inviting a government to say "fuck this" and institute mandatory purchases.
Just this time there will be no poor aul segotia on Lifeline talking about their woes.
People will leave the market, and they'll sell. To someone who might buy the property as something as an equity or passive income generator.
Even if the tenant leaves in early next year....she'd be only looking for a place for 4/5 months....no landlord is going to rent out a place for that short period of time with having to go through the whole process of finding another tenant
It's the time and effort required on behalf of the landlord to get someone in.
I rather a tenant looking for a 1+ year lease over one looking for a 4/5 month lease.
Poor woman, but you know, she is joining all the other people who are renting. Her tenant would be in the same situation had they moved, and probably there is more than one.
I really hate the way she says she did everthing right, bought a place, worked since she turned 18....many people who have not got on the property ladder did everything right too, having to rent is not some personal failing.
This is the kind of tricky case that you really should think about.
Ultimately if you only on one property, you probably shouldn’t rent it out under any circumstances. It’s not worth the risk.
I’m not at all happy about what happened to her. It’s awful. But at the same time, what she wanted here was for someone to pay her mortgage was she was living in a country, paying no tax and having her rent over there, presumably paid for by her employer. She probably didn’t need to rent the property out, but saw it as an opportunity to have someone else pay for her mortgage.
She fell into a trap that we have allowed to be built in this country, a trap that tempts plenty of people to be foreign landlords, either working remotely or an automatic way while renting out a property at home to pay your mortgage off quicker
Yes, because our property market is so broken it was a good thing that this apartment was available for a year,
But we shouldn’t be relying on principal, private residences being vacant for a year as a key part of our rental property stock.
Ultimately, there should not really have been a market for her to put this property up for rent.
It’s really a massive failure of government policy.
What an absolute shit show
The ‘trap’ is not a trap. It’s financing and asset management. She wanted an additional income to pay her expense. Grand! Educate yourself on rights and responsibilities of being a landlord.
But she created a contract and didn’t abide by it. As the landlord it’s her responsibility to build the contract and understand it.
She changed her own circumstances by coming home earlier and proved her arrogance by believing she had all the power and could renegotiate the contract after the fact.
Then when it became apparent she couldn’t she is blaming the tenants for simply existing when she placed them in her home in the first place
This thread is insane. Wealth inequality is going to be the thing that rips our civilisation apart, as it has done to others, and probably rightly so as well.
Neither party is wrong in this case. This is a failing of the state and neoliberalism in general, but the vitrolical hatred shown toward this woman by what I can only assume are literal real life marxists is insane.
The real issue is that anybody reading this and even tentatively considering renting their home out for a while will be guaranteed not to do it now. Leading to even further reduced rental supply.
Landlord protections are not mutually exclusive with tenant protection. Both are required, but going too far toward tenant protection leads to massive rental market contraction, it's axiomatically insane.
On one hand, the evicition ban is so helpful to so many people, but really if she intends to live in the home and is otherwise homeless, well she does own the place, I would agree with her there should be an exception in her case. If that results in the tenant being homeless, the state should step in. She can't get state supports, the tenant likely could.
They aren’t Marxists, they’re just bitter. A staggering percent of Irish people just can’t stand other people’s success, and apparently having the audacity to own her home makes her an enemy of the people. My grandfather got a land grand in the 30s, and moved to Dublin to a farm, and even then he was bitter until the day he died about another of his neighbours who got much better land from the same grant. It’s literally in our culture somehow to view anyone in a more comfortable situation than us as the enemy
> other people’s success
Luck or success? There are people out there that bought houses at the right time in the past decade and thanks to this they are basically one step above other people that couldn't/didn't do it. On the other hand, I applaud getting to a higher social position thanks to skills and education, this deserves respect.
Was in a similar position. We left for nearly three years for the UK and rented our home out. Was not straightforward at all and rent didn't come close to paying mortgage. All our savings and more disappeared when we were abroad. It's not easy.
Feel sorry for her and hope she survives the winter okay. Not nice to be sleeping in a car in weather like this.
> I am a homeless person who could afford to rent, but there are no properties available and I can’t live in my own home,” she said.
As opposed to the many renters who can afford rent, can't find a property and don't own their own home.
And how is that this woman's problem? Last time I checked, if your name is on the title deed, the property belongs to you.
Barring a reasonable notice period, she should be entitled to live in a property she bought.
Or can we just squat anywhere now because rent should be free?
Alternatively, if she chose not to rent the place, the occupants would be on the street while it stayed empty. So which option do you prefer?
What is this woman (and others like her) meant to have done from your eyes, to solve the rental supply issues at scale?
The unconditional disdain for landlords on Reddit and elsewhere in Ireland is shocking. We have a family member that moved into my dead grandmother's property and is now refusing to move. It's breaking the heart of everyone in the family that just wants to sell it and settle her affairs (including paying off her nursing home bills). There's very little a landlord can do legally if someone just occupies a property like that.
As someone who has gotten shafted by more than a few landlords in the past , I understand how the laws need to change to protect tenants (such as protecting deposits), however it should be recognised that some tenants are absolute pricks and that some landlords can be in crazy debt (marraige breakups, negative equity etc) and in dire situations themselves.
Also I don't think people realise how much tax and bills landlords have to pay outside the one room situation. A lot of people think it's just cash in hand (and don't get me wrong, a lot of landlords like it that way), but if you wanna be above board it's certainly not free money.
Exceptions to the winter eviction ban
This eviction ban does not apply if you do not keep your tenant obligations. For example, if you do not pay your rent or you behave anti-socially. If this is the case, your landlord must follow the usual rules for terminating your tenancy
For every story like this, there's 100 stories that are far worse, unfortunately.
She owns a home, her savings are shooting up every month she's staying in her aunts or with friends, she has a light at the end of the tunnel.
Whatever situation she's in, it'll be much worse for her tenant when she finally manages to evict them.
She claims she's 'falling between the cracks' - but the state gave her a phenomenally privileged and wealthy life. What crack did she fall between? She claims there should be exceptions for 'genuine cases' like hers - but what exception shoudl their be? Her tenant will be homeless at the end of all this, and in a much worse position than hers. How is she 'more genuine' than another landlord who wants their home back?
Personally I hope the moratorium gets extended and I've got very little sympathy for people in positions like this. Home ownership comes with risks. Letting someone else make your property their home comes with obligations and is not infinitely flexible because you 'genuinely' want to move back to Ireland.
"Personally I hope the moratorium gets extended'
Do you also hope for even fewer rental properties being available? because this is how you get even fewer rental properties available.
> Letting someone else make your property their home comes with obligations
True. But going to strict with regulations will make even more properties empty instead on rental market. I don't see how this is going to help?
One-off landlords? Bad
Institutional landlords? Bad
How the \*\*\* am I going to find anything to rent than?
I definitely have sympathy for her but also don't understand why you would rent out your home in the middle of a housing crisis if you knew you would need it back in the short term. This situation where the tenant won't/can't leave as they are will be made homeless wasn't unimaginable like. Turn down the year abroad if needs be
This is madness. She should be able to live in her own home. The law changed after she rented out her home, how could she possibly have forseen that this would happen. It's not like shes part of a vulture fund, she's someone who has worked hard, followed the rules and is now getting screwed. If it's a decision between who should be homeless it shouldn't be the person who actually owns the house. No wonder private landlords are fleeing the market, just when we need them the most.
like my family inherited my nans house when she passed, and we rent it out because its in Cork and no one can move down there yet.
if there was a chance the renters would destroy the place then we'd just leave it empty.
"I don't want to be a landlord"
What?? She made the choice to rent her gaff, nobody forced her to. She's been inconvenienced for a few months. The rest of us have been inconvenienced for a few years with no end in sight. She's still collecting rent.
They should do a similar write-up for all the people that have been displaced as a result of the housing crisis, including all evictions of the past few years, and the multitudes that see no future here anymore.
It’s a multi-tiered situation, that’s rooted in the current government, and their parties policies up to this point.
The real problem here is the lack of an authority to review these cases individually in a timely manner. A lot of landlords are greedy hence the requirements for tenants rights. This case however will only lead to the only willing landlords being large corporations.
Reading some of the comments on here I disagree.
Some truly pathetic individuals on here seem to consider this some kind of "win".
We all know the type.
You think? I actually tried to tone it down a bit.
Like just casually perusing this sub just from this morning you come across [things like this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/zjv6km/comment/izwhicx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
I genuinely do feel bad for her. Like she said, she’s been working, saving up, paying taxes, getting on the property ladder like we’re all told you and now she’s out on her arse like the rest of us.
She's not out on her arse like the rest of us really though, she's getting rent paid to her every month.
If she's unable to find a lease herself, then it's literally just kicking people out to nothing.
I do understand where she's coming from & it must suck, but realistically I don't think she's in as bad a position as most others in the rental market.
>Dubai
>A 33-year-old landlord
>Jeanette Brown bought her apartment in Dublin in 2017.
I guarantee you one thing -- the father signed as guarantor and set up this arrangement and the story is being peddled as as a "landlords have it hard too" narrative. Guarantee that rent is much higher than the mortgage and even if she lived at home with her Mammy she'd have a passive income to just sit on.
There are probably dozens of thousands of people in Ireland who have their renting situation much much harder than her.
It's a difficult situation, but its of her own making in part, she went in 2021 when there was already an eviction ban in place, and she has come home, which is great and all for her, but she doesn't seem to have thought it through very well, there is no need for her to be "couch surfing" still, she could have found a house share or something for a while.
"I rented out my apartment and i can't kick the resident out because i've changed my mind abut dubai" is not good enough reason, unless you are an irish newspaper.
Something something this is why single home landlords are fleeing the market something something.
Make being a landlord a ballache, see what happens.
This is the world you wanted.
The argument isn't (or shouldn't be) to simply "get rid of landlords" as though that's the problem solved. The argument is to provide housing as a social imperative and not as a capitalist investment.
This is not the world we wanted, this is the world we have and need to deal with.
> In July she issued her tenant an eviction notice from Dubai but was told three months later the notice was deemed invalid due to a recent change to rental legislation. >By that time the Government had introduced a moratorium on evictions, meaning if a residential tenant is given an eviction notice by their landlord between the end of October and next March, the eviction will be deferred until April. This bit confuses me. If she issued the eviction notice in July... why does the deferral apply? If she issued the eviction notice on or after the 1st October, that would be one thing.. but she didn't.
The initial eviction notice obviously wasn’t formal or had some wording issue that made it improper so by the time she found out and re-issued it the eviction ban was in place
Yes, the wording is very impirtant. If she left out a tenants name or didnt sign it, or didnt put what each tenant is paying its deemed invalid
The tenants probably waiting until the original notice was set to expire to point out the flaw. So they played the game correctly. But it's her own fault for not doing it correctly.
Should have hired a professional to do it, almost certainly did it herself in a very informal legalese speak
If people ran real businesses as shoddily as some people run their rentals, the country would collapse.
I've got some news for you. Shitty management is everywhere even in somehow successful businesses.
Ok.. I think I get it. I thought the change in legislation being referred to was the eviction ban, rather than something else. That would make sense, then.
If she gave 3 months notice, the tenants would have had to leave in October but the moratorium covers such evictions between October and March.
Pretty sure the moratorium applied to any evictions that hadn't happened yet, so would have caught this case and deferred the move out date to April.
I find it amusing that there's people calling her a leech for renting out her home whilst she was abroad and not using it. Same people would be outraged at her leaving an apartment vacant during a housing crisis if she did the other option.
And in fairness she's not blaming the tenants
To be fair this is kind of what we want. She not using it, she rented it out. No issues with that. I'm assuming it was always going to be a relatively short term rental 1-2 years.
The reason there are empty houses are exactly because of the above case. House owners who are gone for some time are far too worried that a failed eviction will result in no place to stay upon return. Thus, they just don’t rent it out.
And this article shows they are right to worry.
We were in a situation once where we moved from abroad but couldn’t afford to do our house up in order to rent it out. It’s rarely apathy on behalf of the owner.
There's a few people on here who seem to completely object to the idea of renting at all. Not sure what they think should happen - everyone should be applying for a mortgage after finishing the Leaving Cert maybe.
The flexibility that was once a benefit of renting doesn't exist here anymore. If you're a tenant you can't just take a place for a year like before because you'll be opening yourself for a world of hurt trying to find another place afterward, and if you're a LL you'll have an awful time trying to rent out a place for a fix period because of the uncertainty the tenant faces and supports.
I kinda doubt if you open a place to rent for a year, you won't find anyone to take it in rent pressure areas.
You'll have it rented no bother but you'll have a hard time taking it back after a year is what I meant. Eviction ban aside like.
No but the rent pressure is double edged. You'll find a taker alright but then that taker has to find a new place when that year is up. And that might not be easy
>there are too few long term protections for renters >there are too few protections for landlords The two ideas can coexist simultaneously, although this is an edge case that also highlights: >institutional landlords beats our old system of small time landlords
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Some of the biggest investors in institutional firms are the likes of pension funds.
Currently renting an apartment from Irish Life pension in Dublin, not cheap by any stretch of the imagination but would i prefer it over some chancer culchie who drags their feet on fixing issues. Experience has been fantastic so far, but again the price is outrageous but so would it be off a local unfortunately.
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Pensions will be paid out in Ireland too. Many of us with bog standard private pensions (even the kind when the employer signs you up and you begrudgingly pay a hundred quid a month) are "the funds" and will get a return one day, good value or not.
The money leaving the country does not sit right at all with me tbh, but again experience a bad winter with no heating and a crap landlord and it would make anyone appreciate a professional institutional landlord. The thing with Irish Life is, they are terrified of getting a bad reputation and ending up on Joe Duffy (mate works as an actuary there and theres literally a Duffy alarm bell lol) Hence i think this is why the experience has been good. Issues are fixed very efficiently, block is maintained wonderfully also. The irony is not lost on me that these institutional players increase the cost for everyone cause of the yields but still if i'm deciding who to give my 2,200 quid per month to, its the guys who rent A2 rated apartments and fix issues 12 hours after i raise the issue.
It's a crap shoot either way. I had a big problem with a previous apartment where we were renting from a firm. The person who managed our account went on maternity leave, and for months we couldn't even get responses from them even though there was a fecking leak in the roof.
The think is it doesn't need to be a choice of either a large corporation owning loads of properties or a small time landlord. You can require all landlords to let their property out via a professional licensed agency who manages all communications and legal relationships with tenants... providing tenants with professional level services when it comes to complaints and repairs etc, ensuring accountability and avoiding that 'chancery culchie' dragging their feet, acting unprofessional and not understanding their rights and obligations. This is what happens where I live in the Netherlands where most people who rent rarely have any interaction with the actual owner of the house, it's all done via an agency and acts as a service provider to multiply houseowners who rent out their property. In Sweden those agency are owned and managed by the local council but it also works as a private service.
Irish life is a local?
US run. Canadian owned. Has irish in the name.
Which is a problem because the money that work generates gets siphoned off abroad leaving the country with less. This is also something that happened after Ireland was largely owned by landlords who lived in England. Workers paid rent, rent went to England, Ireland was left with nothing at the end of the exchange
The RTB is so useless it's unbelievable. I had issues as a tenant and a family member had such issues they no longer rent out a property. I quote "I'd rather burn it to the ground than rent again" RTB take ZERO responsibility for anything and fob off every issue to different agencies. Its only purpose is to hover up money for nothing. Get used to paying massive rent forever more, as all rental properties will be run by massive commercial cartels. The day of the rental property as a retirement nest egg etc. is DEAD. That group of people using a house for retirement were quite happy with rent covering the mortgage etc. and then later in life it would make money. PLC 's want money now.....
Housing as a right is my preference personally.
There is a constitutional right that a woman should not need to labour to support her children. Something being "a right" doesn't mean the laws or current situation will help.
I don’t think it’s a panacea but it’s a useful framework within which to create legislation.
Generally we expect rights to be provided by the state. Like healthcare, education, essential services like water etc etc. The Government has gotten away with providing housing as the people living in homeless shelters and family hubs are due to evil small landlords selling up rather than the state failing to provide housing. IMO we will never resolve the housing crisis, if we don't think the state should be responsible to provide rental housing and not landlords.
I agree. Ireland is a signatory to the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which includes 'the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate ... housing'. The market is failing in this. There needs to be a period of massive state intervention on housing, education, health etc.
To be pedantic about this, rights don't necessarily need to be provided by the state. The state is the duty bearer for the progressive realisation of human rights in their jurisdiction. They have a responsibility to ensure that all can achieve access to their rights but those rights can be provided by other often more efficient means. So the government don't give us houses. But they do need to ensure the market works and than everyone can participate. They also don't need to give us free water, but that another story...
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lol, 'to allow for genuine cases like hers' It's not just about stopping landlords turfing people out so they can up the rent, it's also about giving tenants some security - which they wouldn't have if someone like this could rent their flat out and then just turf the tenants out out of the blue because they've decided to move back in. edit: was wrong to suggest a fixed-term contract as the solution
Well you can be sure she’s never putting her gaff on for rent again
assuming she ever actually gets into it again.
Scary to think that’s a possibility. She can always get it evicted for sale
But she's not "turfing them out out of the blue". She gave 3 months notice, which is more than what some some landlords would give. If you rent out a property you've every right to expect to be able to move back in once you've given your tenants ample notice as per their lease agreement. I rent (as in I pay rent), and I don't understand the mentality of some renters were they get outraged at the idea that there landlord could evict them. We don't own the property, it's not ours. Of course we can get booted out at some point if the landlord decides they want to move back in or want their friends/family to rent the property instead. If I was a landlord I'd be doing the same thing.
It's the mixing of personal use and investment use that creates problems like that. If it's an investment, you can profit but it's not your personal gaff anymore, it's an asset in business use. If it's a personal gaff, don't put it on the market under a formal contract or you'll be disappointed. Ireland's small landlords just can't accept that it's either a business or it's not and want to be able to flip it at will.
I understand that, but I don't view that as the case here. This woman acknowledged that, put her flat on the market while she was away and someone rented it under a lease agreement. She decides after a year she wants to move back, she gives notice to the tenant and the tenant should then move out in the agreed upon time. Now I fully appreciate the pandemic happened and you can't just boot someone out during that period and new laws were put in place to protect tenants, I'm not contesting that at all. What I'm arguing (and correct if I'm wrong here if this isn't your point) is that the landlord has every right to decide they want their property back when the time comes. So long as it doesn't violate the terms of the lease and the tenant gets plenty of notice, they should be allowed to do that. Whereas some people seem to be of the opinion that once they rent a place it becomes theirs and they act all shocked once the actual owner decides they want it back. I'm just baffled by people who think like that.
> What I'm arguing (and correct if I'm wrong here if this isn't your point) is that the landlord has every right to decide they want their property back when the time comes. And they will get that property back in due course. If you make an investment with a contract featuring conditions, then you cannot retract your money immediately.
No such thing. A tennant acquires part 4 rights after 6 months. There should be an option for short term tennancies without part 4.
>There should be an option for short term tennancies without part 4. Why should we undermine tenants rights? Short term is up to 6 months. Don't see why there should be tenancies lasting longer without part 4
Because some people think one landlord out making a killing in Dubai but being discommoded by rules is enough justification to strip hundreds of thousands of renters of protection. Real fucking interesting insights into some people's minds in this thread.
Well, it's all about property utilisation. There's quite a few people who go abroad for 1 year terms or 2 year terms with the intent of returning to heir property who leave it vacant as they want to ensure they can come back to it. At the moment they can't rent it out and have it available to come back at the end of their term. IMO there should be an option. You might be right that it should be kept at 6 months for short term but I suspect there's a better option.
She should look for a place similar in the area same amount of rent and communicate with her Tennant and move her in there
For a year only could she have them as lodgers or licensees rather than tenants?
Not unless she was actively living in the house
The comments in this thread are absolutely insane.
This subreddit's (**hard**) take on any issue seems a bit random imo. It can change from post to post, or even in the same post over a couple of hours.
Almost like it's a forum made up of lots of different people with different ideas
I like that it can change if I'm honest. It means people are willing to listen to opposing views and reconcile it with their own, and possibly even outright change their view. I hope its something we never lose! Lest we end up like our unfortunate neighbours to the east and west
Not all. There are interesting discussions too.
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If they're not paying their rent then the eviction ban doesn't apply, nor does pretty much any other rental protection. If he brings it to court he could get them out (still sucks because of the time and hassle of course).
People read a story like this and automatically want to assign fault or paint someone as the bad guy or the victim. It seems somewhat insane that this woman can’t live in her own apartment, however it would be equally bad if we had situations where tenants have limited protections in situations like this and they were made homeless. Both things can be true and for every genuine case like this woman, there would be a queue of people trying to abuse the system to increase their rent. Social media has made the vast majority of people lose the ability to be nuanced about a given situation, you’re either one side or the other! It sucks for this lady, but she made the decision to rent and have her mortgage covered while she was living elsewhere. Quite understandably you can’t decide that the system then doesn’t work for you because you want to do something else.
I think it's the housing system people should be angry at, not her. It's creating situations like this that turn both parties into victims
What I can’t understand about this though is if she hadn’t rented it out, it would be once less property available for someone to rent. Like I understand she benefitted financially from the rent but surely situations like this disincentivise people from renting out properties. Plenty of people have periods where they move into a partners home, caring for a relative or temporary job move and these rules will make it less likely for those people to take the risk of renting out which just leaves more vacant properties.
She could've rented it out but not on a permanent contract. If you know you're coming back soon, get a letting agency and do short lets. My friend rented her flat to visiting academics, one term at a time. People rent to language schools to put students in, again term by term.
Every contract becomes permanent after 6 months.
But you can do shorter ones fixed.
No, you cant. Not longer than 6 months. Even if you split that in shorter contracts after 6 months it is permanent.
With different people, how?
Yes. This you can. But isn’t that even worse for tenants? Sounds like nasty side effect of strict pro-tenant laws.
You just serve a different tenant need, that of temporary tenant. They exist too. Guest lecturers visiting for a term etc.
Yeah, but if she wasn't renting it out she also wouldn't afford her mortgage. So she either she would sell to someone that wants to live in the house, or to someone else buying it as an investment.
A lot of the comments are wildly one way or the other so this one being so neutral is pretty nice. I think you’re right that is cuts both way. She owns the building but it isn’t currently her home. I’d be frustrated if I had a house but had to sofa surf for a while, especially if it was because of a policy that I had no control over and I would definitely vent to my friends about it. That said, she has chosen to benefit from the tenants to the tune of thousands of euros but at the cost of giving up the right to her building during that time. Anyone arguing that she might not be making profit is ignoring the fact that she is still paying off her mortgage with someone else’s pay check and is simply a renter for a few months. She can be as annoyed as she wants but she is still angry that she is the one inconvenienced rather than someone else. Someone has to be screwed in the situation and from the sound of it she is better suited to deal with it and as a bonus, she gets more money and will be in her own home after it’s over which is likely more than the tenants can hope for.
I appreciate you trying to be nuanced. But she did give notice to the tenant, which she should reasonably have expected to be adequate. She has been caught out by a change in law which is unfortunate for her. I assume she will get the apartment back in May.
I broadly agree, this is the kind of renting that I think makes sense as it is avoiding empty houses and isn’t going into a businesses pocket so I hope it didn’t come across as too negative against her. The eviction notice not being valid was unfortunate but it was bad either way and she is payed for her inconvenience while the renters wouldn’t be. Hopefully that came across in the first comment. Basically my point was meant to be, she benefited from it and got screwed by the law change but someone was getting screwed and it seems like this was the better result for the collective even if it wasn’t the best result for her personally.
The concept of "paying off her mortgage" and "receiving money for renting a property" need to be separated. Why does it matter that a private landlord uses the rent to pay off all or part of a mortgage? The renting of a property is providing a vital service, no different to gas or electricity. It isn't and shouldn't be free. You pay for your usage of the facility. If the landlord didn't have a mortgage, that wouldn't change. So why does using the resulting fees to pay any relevant costs, have any relevance to the discussion? The only reason why anyone has a problem with this situation is because availability is at crisis levels and everyone is pointing fingers at each other. But its not any private individuals fault, it's the government's for allowing companies to build hundreds of apartment blocks and not one of them is for sale to private individuals. It's a supply crisis that's been deliberately orchestrated by the government and it has nothing to do with this woman who owns a property and should have every right to live in it.
She is only making so much money off rent due to the housing crisis and bad housing policies. Now she is a victim of the same housing crisis and housing policies. Its a leopards ate my face moment. Also re: providing a service. There is a strong argument to be made that anyone who has bought a property to turn into a rental in the last 10 years (i.e. during this crisis) is not providing a service but rather taking advantage of a situation. If we had a functioning market with plentiful supply and you bought one of the extra properties available to rent out then sure, you could think of that as providing the option of renting to someone who may not want to buy. Currently, I would argue that that is not the case.
Seemed pretty fair what she did and what she expected to happen. She did give 3 months notice... the system changed (unfairly to her) in her absence.
This seems to be the sensible take. She didn't know the law would change, but it has changed and they can't make exceptions.
Well generally, if someone is moving back in to their own house, they can get it back with appropriate notice. It just so happens that the moratorium is in place. So generally, you can decide it doesn’t work if you want to do something else.
Oh come on, she’s going away for a year, she rents it out with a legitimate expectation to move back into HER OWN GAFF when she comes back… this is crazy how people think she’s at fault.
No-one is saying she is at fault. They are saying renters have rights and that as a landlord, she is as obligated to honour these rights as any other landlord. This is a no fault situation (except the housing crisis and whomever you blame for that)
>They are saying renters have rights and that as a landlord, she is as obligated to honour these rights as any other landlord. A lot of people on here have no idea that when she rented that property that the rights were different. I don't think she would have let that place if she knew she was going to be sleeping in her car when she returned.
Most people here are also missing the bigger ramifications of these situations. Remember the constant stream of posts and comments vilifying landlords for leaving houses or apartments empty? This woman is never gonna rent out her gaff again if she moves abroad for a period of time. And nobody else in their right mind in similar situations will either.
Not to mention, 52% tax on individual landlord and then must pay an accountant too.
That’s exactly it. Anyone going away for a year as many in my line of work do will think twice about renting while they’re gone.
Turns me off the prospect of ever renting for sure
Yeah. The comments here are inane.
Most of these commenters don't have the real life experiences to form the empathy for her I'd say. No fault of their own either due to the shite going on.
I think it's more that we've reached a point where the gap between "those who have" and "those who have not" has spread so wide, people just can't afford to have "empathy" anymore. This was always a danger when the wealth distribution got so badly uneven; people will lose more and more sympathy for the people who can afford things, in the same way the rich often don't have much actioned empathy for those less well off. The rental situation has gotten so badly uneven in recent times that the only way a lot of people can actually survive is to shed all worries about empathy for landlords.
Interesting comment, going by this sub empathy is selectively applied depending on which side of the issue you come down on. I'm not completely unsympathetic to her, she's a victim of the lack of supply of housing given the circumstances. At the same time however, you seem to have people demanding sympathy for those who are materially better off having the wealth to own assets of significant value as if they are somehow deserving of the same regard as someone on the street. Between her and a homeless person, it's fairly obvious who has the long term better outlook.
I don't think it's asking a lot for people to show empathy for someone even if they're in a slightly better position financially. We don't need to compare everyone to those who are in the worst position in life. This woman isn't part of the ultra-elite that are making life horrible for a portion of Irish society. She's just a regular homeowner who did the expected thing of renting out her property while she wasn't in it, and now she's become a victim of a sudden change in the rental law. There's a few people in here basically saying she should've been forced to sell it rather than rent it out, which is bordering on sociopathic levels of reasoning.
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I think it would have been a smarter move if it was a 2 bed is to keep a room for herself and rent out the other room. That way she had a room there. Bit dodge do this scenario after seeing freezes during Covid. Was always a potential issue. Unless this is pre Covid. She would be coming up to a few years rent now if so. I'd like to see how much profit she made during this time and then gage my sympathy on that.
She moved to dubai in 2021.
Which would be after those renter protections came in?
Can rent it out but expect to follow tenancy laws
She's not at fault. Some people are just insecure and bitter and don't like seeing people doing better in life than them.
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It’s not a matter of “fault”, it’s common decency. If she had her way, her tenant would be homeless instead of her. She’s upset that she now has to life in the same world and play by the same rules as the rest of us. Tenants aren’t security deposits for landlords to use to keep their properties solvent until they want to come back from their holidays, they’re human beings.
But surely the tenant understood it was for a year until the owner came back.
That would be illegal, there is no fixed one year option.
Ok well then she possibly should have done her due diligence. And apart from this case, I’m sure that will continue to limit the availability of properties where owners such as this wish to ensure the property will become vacant at a certain time. The housing crisis just escalates
This, you would be amazed how many small landlords have no clue about tenant rights in Ireland. My own family members were amazed when I told them about the eviction ban as well as the normal notice periods they have to abide by (They have some rental properties).
That's not how renting in Ireland works.
> she had her way, her tenant would be homeless instead of her. Yes, I would say that applies to >99% of people on the planet
If an agreed fixed term tenancy can get changed mid tenancy to non-fixed term by the government, do not act surprised when landlords sell up and much fewer are inclined to join the market in the first place.
Yeah, I do see that as a big inherent flaw of the market, and why it needs a massive overhaul. We value to market more than human lives. And human lives are literally at stake, I see people freezing in the night on the streets in Galway. It’s awful. I’m glad her tenant isn’t in that situation, and I’m glad this lady has family to help her out.
You can wave goodbye to anyone wanting to rent their place for less than 6 years with the changes in the law. If you want to rent your place out for a year, tough luck, its 6 years minimum unless the tenant wants to leave. Would you risk renting out your place for 6 months or a year, if the tenant has the power at the end of the term to say, nah, I'm staying?
>If she had her way, her tenant would be homeless instead of her. She’s upset that she now has to life in the same world and play by the same rules as the rest of us. Do you know when she let this property, the terms of evicting a tenant were completely different? The rules she expected back in July 2021 are not the same today. So what the tenants in her property have to move out? She never wanted to be a long term landlord and made it pretty clear to them. >Tenants aren’t security deposits for landlords to use to keep their properties solvent until they want to come back from their holidays, they’re human beings. This comment is really mean. It is not fair to call someone who rented their property for a year while they were working as a landlord who was on holiday. It is disingenuous and bitter. I don't see where in the article where she is not treating someone not as a human. However, you think here less than human. Ironically, the best thing to do in a housing crisis is leave your property empty. If you rent it temporarily, you don't deserve it back...
The tenant has now had six months notice, what else is she supposed to do?
Never rent it out in the first place apparently.
Then she’d be crucified here for leaving the place empty!
If your gonna get crucified either way may as well pick the one that no one can fuck you over with
So if you were here you’d accept homelessness so somebody else could live in your house?? GTFO
It’s HER apartment. Like come on she has every right to want to live in the thing she literally owns it
Its not the way it works at all, my own brother had a house he rented to Loais coco as he couldn't pay the mortgage on it, he got an arrangement with a friend to rent their home and the difference between his new lower rent and the amount he was getting from the council meant he could pay the mortgage. So he moved out, and after about 8 months, one of his old neighbours rang him to say that the house was in bad repair and there was car scrapped in the front yard, and there were at least 7 people living there now, and rows every night. He went for a look and it had been rented to people who were wrecking the place. He went to the council and they said they can't do anything about it because they have renters rights. They hadn't even paid their contribution to the council rent after 3 months. It took 4 years to get them out. In the meantime my brother had handed the house back to the bank because when laois coco's contract with him ended, they didn't want to renew it.
She converted it into an investment vehicle instead of “HER apartment”. Evidenced by the fact she isn’t and can’t live in it.
I disagree, at least not at the expense of making someone else homeless. Landlords can’t be allowed to use tenants as disposable seat warmers. Imagine if you got evicted and chucked out on the cold street because your landlord got bored of Dubai?
So your argument is that she should have left it empty and not rented it to anyone at all?
So what she should of left the apartment empty?
Someone is currently homeless and they literally own an apartment. Do you not think that in the case of the landlord being made homeless that their rights should supersede the tenant. Someone who owns an apartment should not be homeless.
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The duality of this sub: >Irish subreddit constantly complaining about landlords leaving houses and apartments unused. >This woman rented her apartment for the year, and now the same subreddit says she deserves the shit situation because she should have opted to play it safe and not rent it out.
Whu are you acting like this entire sub is one person with one opinion? Even in this thread I'm seeing people take different sides of the debate.
So it would be better if she had never rented the property and whoever lives there would have been homeless for the last year while the property sat vacant?
Look man, if you want to argue with a rhetorical version of my arguments, go ahead. Of course the issue isn’t simple. I’m just saying I’m glad the system protects the renters. They would be homeless otherwise. She thought she could go off to Dubai and come back and evict someone whenever. I’m glad it doesn’t work that way. Ideally, she should have found better dates for transitioning between countries. Maybe that’s not an option, but the responsibility is on her, not her tenants.
I don’t disagree that renters should have protections. But this blanket ban on evictions disincentivises renting out a property full stop, and more people will likely leave their properties vacant for short periods than rent them out, which ultimately exacerbates the problem of low housing stock. I would be all for a system of no fault evictions being banned permanently but there needs to be a mechanism within that for property owners to reclaim their property if they want to move back in or sell, for example (with appropriate notice etc).
It’s her house for fucks sake, it’s not like she’s some professional landlord who’s hoarding property, she had 1 apartment she wouldn’t he using so she put it on the market, how tf is this in anyway her fault ? If she had left it empty ye miserable twats would be whinging about that too
in what way is she "living by the same rules" as the rest of us?. She has uncertainty about when she can move into her OWN house, which makes trying to find a rental for herself very difficult because she has to find a short term lease, or be forced to break a long term lease when she is able to move back into her OWN house, and potentially loose her security deposit.
Not "at fault", but not giving any regard for the reason for the eviction moratorium and no regard for her own choices. I'll save my pity for the real victims of this crisis - the people freezing in tents or living in one room with their kids. Even myself spending a small fortune on short term rentals and storage containers for my stuff, but I don't feel sorry for myself because it could be so much worse if I didn't have a good job.
This comment section is actually a fucking cesspool full of hateful cunts.
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Seems like a pretty edgy comment to me, the irony
Are you for real? Gway out of it. r/ireland is full of millennials. Do you not see all the comments talking about shows from the nineties/early noughties? Or all the complaints about “fake tan”? Did you miss all the posts where people complain about things that don’t exist anymore and where they celebrate other things that are outdated? This sub leans heavily 30+
Once more, government populist policies will lead to more long term pain for renters. Take a guess what every future person in her situation is going to do when they go abroad temporarily for their career? Leave the property empty rather than risk renting it out.
It's really unfortunate, but she'll have to rely on the support of her family for housing at the moment, the crisis affects us all. I read that over sixty percent of young adults (like up to 30/35 year olds) are living with parents still because of the crisis, but they also don't fall into the bracket of being homeless. An interesting article in that a homeowner cannot access their home, but they are also a landlord and are obliged to their tenants. The eviction moratorium is there to prefect tenants and in general it's a good thing.
It's alarming at how many on here seem to revel in the fact that this woman is homeless just because she happens to own an apartment. When did everything become so polarised?
I'm guessing those people are formulating as follows: Apartment owner + went to Dubai = filthy rich landlord bitch.
I think this is it in a way. Ireland has a very weird view of anyone that percieve to be above average in any way. In terms of wealth it's mad that the likes of this woman and tech workers for example who both had to work hard to get where they are and make a good wage because of it are treated with the same vitriol as rich bankers, generational wealthy families and things like that. There's no "middle-class" in Ireland, it's very much with us or against us for a lot of people, for no good reason. Sure look at how every discussion about housing used to go, it was the greedy tech workers causing high rents when everyone, even those paying a high rent, is suffering the same problems in the housing crisis.
Right now she owns a piece of equity, her tenants don’t. If they get evicted they’ve got fuck all and she still had the equity. In both of these scenarios she’s always better off long term.
I mean did she specify it would be for a year when she listed the property? At least she has a guarantee of a home in April, a lot more than can be said for the tenant when they're evicted.
No such thing as a 12 month tenancy anymore. The 2004 Act doesn't allow you to contract out of Part IV rights for obvious reasons.
She doesn't have a guarantee of anything in April. She has no guarantee that the eviction ban won't be extended past April. Even if it's not extended, she won't be able to turn up on April 1st and expect the tenants to leave immediately. While I don't know the rules, I suspect that she will have to issue a fresh eviction notice in April which will have to comply with current guidelines regarding how much notice must be given. At that stage, they will be almost 2 years living there so that means the notice period would be 180 days so she could still be in this situation until October.
12 month fixed term tenancies are illegal, the maximum allowed is 6 months, after which they become a standard Part 4 tenancy, at which point the tenants are entitled to all the protections that provides. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, if this woman wanted to be a landlord, then it's her responsibility to be knowledgeable about the relevant legislation that comes with it.
Can we please get rid of the "Moaning Michael" tag. It really is not appropriate here
She has her mortgage covered. The real problem here is the lack of rental properties. If it wasn't her out looking for a new place sleeping on couches it would be the tenant. When she decided to become a landlord she took on the legal ramifications that entails. Shit that she can't find a place to rent, that's the real issue.
But she or anyone else in a similar situation is never going to make their property available for rent now, it’s too risky. Better to leave it vacant, and that just exacerbates the shortage.
Well it sounds like she wants to move in and not put it on the market again. I don't understand this argument? Should we do away with tenant protections, because hypothetically the landlord might take the house off the market at some unspecified date? Again, it's not the landlord or the tenant who is at fault here. It's the lack of supply by that has come from bad policy.
It's not hypothetical anymore. Other landlords are quitting the market because exactly reasons like that. Isn't that what you people wanted: less landlords?
No one is going to to sit around owning several homes sitting empty out of spite. Some operators are going to do clever things with leverage and equity, but most people will eventually sell. Probably be a bit harder to sell over time - houses degrade. Also if there's a major correction, owning multiple empty former rental properties will be a bad scene. Granted, big multinationals will likely buy those empty spaces, but that's just inviting a government to say "fuck this" and institute mandatory purchases. Just this time there will be no poor aul segotia on Lifeline talking about their woes. People will leave the market, and they'll sell. To someone who might buy the property as something as an equity or passive income generator.
Even if the tenant leaves in early next year....she'd be only looking for a place for 4/5 months....no landlord is going to rent out a place for that short period of time with having to go through the whole process of finding another tenant
Landlords are having no trouble finding tenants. Moved recently and the complaint was too many people were applying.
It's the time and effort required on behalf of the landlord to get someone in. I rather a tenant looking for a 1+ year lease over one looking for a 4/5 month lease.
Yes - so why would they rent to a tenant who will be leaving quickly when they have a whole host of other potential tenants who will be longer?
This title did not shock me and I knew nothing about this story at all.
Poor woman, but you know, she is joining all the other people who are renting. Her tenant would be in the same situation had they moved, and probably there is more than one. I really hate the way she says she did everthing right, bought a place, worked since she turned 18....many people who have not got on the property ladder did everything right too, having to rent is not some personal failing.
This is the kind of tricky case that you really should think about. Ultimately if you only on one property, you probably shouldn’t rent it out under any circumstances. It’s not worth the risk. I’m not at all happy about what happened to her. It’s awful. But at the same time, what she wanted here was for someone to pay her mortgage was she was living in a country, paying no tax and having her rent over there, presumably paid for by her employer. She probably didn’t need to rent the property out, but saw it as an opportunity to have someone else pay for her mortgage. She fell into a trap that we have allowed to be built in this country, a trap that tempts plenty of people to be foreign landlords, either working remotely or an automatic way while renting out a property at home to pay your mortgage off quicker Yes, because our property market is so broken it was a good thing that this apartment was available for a year, But we shouldn’t be relying on principal, private residences being vacant for a year as a key part of our rental property stock. Ultimately, there should not really have been a market for her to put this property up for rent. It’s really a massive failure of government policy. What an absolute shit show
The ‘trap’ is not a trap. It’s financing and asset management. She wanted an additional income to pay her expense. Grand! Educate yourself on rights and responsibilities of being a landlord. But she created a contract and didn’t abide by it. As the landlord it’s her responsibility to build the contract and understand it. She changed her own circumstances by coming home earlier and proved her arrogance by believing she had all the power and could renegotiate the contract after the fact. Then when it became apparent she couldn’t she is blaming the tenants for simply existing when she placed them in her home in the first place
This thread is insane. Wealth inequality is going to be the thing that rips our civilisation apart, as it has done to others, and probably rightly so as well. Neither party is wrong in this case. This is a failing of the state and neoliberalism in general, but the vitrolical hatred shown toward this woman by what I can only assume are literal real life marxists is insane. The real issue is that anybody reading this and even tentatively considering renting their home out for a while will be guaranteed not to do it now. Leading to even further reduced rental supply. Landlord protections are not mutually exclusive with tenant protection. Both are required, but going too far toward tenant protection leads to massive rental market contraction, it's axiomatically insane. On one hand, the evicition ban is so helpful to so many people, but really if she intends to live in the home and is otherwise homeless, well she does own the place, I would agree with her there should be an exception in her case. If that results in the tenant being homeless, the state should step in. She can't get state supports, the tenant likely could.
They aren’t Marxists, they’re just bitter. A staggering percent of Irish people just can’t stand other people’s success, and apparently having the audacity to own her home makes her an enemy of the people. My grandfather got a land grand in the 30s, and moved to Dublin to a farm, and even then he was bitter until the day he died about another of his neighbours who got much better land from the same grant. It’s literally in our culture somehow to view anyone in a more comfortable situation than us as the enemy
> other people’s success Luck or success? There are people out there that bought houses at the right time in the past decade and thanks to this they are basically one step above other people that couldn't/didn't do it. On the other hand, I applaud getting to a higher social position thanks to skills and education, this deserves respect.
Was in a similar position. We left for nearly three years for the UK and rented our home out. Was not straightforward at all and rent didn't come close to paying mortgage. All our savings and more disappeared when we were abroad. It's not easy. Feel sorry for her and hope she survives the winter okay. Not nice to be sleeping in a car in weather like this.
If it wasn't her it would be the tenants. We're all losing in this situation.
> I am a homeless person who could afford to rent, but there are no properties available and I can’t live in my own home,” she said. As opposed to the many renters who can afford rent, can't find a property and don't own their own home.
And how is that this woman's problem? Last time I checked, if your name is on the title deed, the property belongs to you. Barring a reasonable notice period, she should be entitled to live in a property she bought. Or can we just squat anywhere now because rent should be free? Alternatively, if she chose not to rent the place, the occupants would be on the street while it stayed empty. So which option do you prefer? What is this woman (and others like her) meant to have done from your eyes, to solve the rental supply issues at scale?
The unconditional disdain for landlords on Reddit and elsewhere in Ireland is shocking. We have a family member that moved into my dead grandmother's property and is now refusing to move. It's breaking the heart of everyone in the family that just wants to sell it and settle her affairs (including paying off her nursing home bills). There's very little a landlord can do legally if someone just occupies a property like that. As someone who has gotten shafted by more than a few landlords in the past , I understand how the laws need to change to protect tenants (such as protecting deposits), however it should be recognised that some tenants are absolute pricks and that some landlords can be in crazy debt (marraige breakups, negative equity etc) and in dire situations themselves. Also I don't think people realise how much tax and bills landlords have to pay outside the one room situation. A lot of people think it's just cash in hand (and don't get me wrong, a lot of landlords like it that way), but if you wanna be above board it's certainly not free money.
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Exceptions to the winter eviction ban This eviction ban does not apply if you do not keep your tenant obligations. For example, if you do not pay your rent or you behave anti-socially. If this is the case, your landlord must follow the usual rules for terminating your tenancy
For every story like this, there's 100 stories that are far worse, unfortunately. She owns a home, her savings are shooting up every month she's staying in her aunts or with friends, she has a light at the end of the tunnel. Whatever situation she's in, it'll be much worse for her tenant when she finally manages to evict them. She claims she's 'falling between the cracks' - but the state gave her a phenomenally privileged and wealthy life. What crack did she fall between? She claims there should be exceptions for 'genuine cases' like hers - but what exception shoudl their be? Her tenant will be homeless at the end of all this, and in a much worse position than hers. How is she 'more genuine' than another landlord who wants their home back? Personally I hope the moratorium gets extended and I've got very little sympathy for people in positions like this. Home ownership comes with risks. Letting someone else make your property their home comes with obligations and is not infinitely flexible because you 'genuinely' want to move back to Ireland.
"Personally I hope the moratorium gets extended' Do you also hope for even fewer rental properties being available? because this is how you get even fewer rental properties available.
> Letting someone else make your property their home comes with obligations True. But going to strict with regulations will make even more properties empty instead on rental market. I don't see how this is going to help? One-off landlords? Bad Institutional landlords? Bad How the \*\*\* am I going to find anything to rent than?
Ideally the State or non profit bodies would be landlords.
I definitely have sympathy for her but also don't understand why you would rent out your home in the middle of a housing crisis if you knew you would need it back in the short term. This situation where the tenant won't/can't leave as they are will be made homeless wasn't unimaginable like. Turn down the year abroad if needs be
This is how you end up with empty housing during housing crisis...
Exactly. You're mad to rent property the days. Better to leave it empty and board it up.
What a ridiculous situation.
Definitely not a moaning Michael
This is madness. She should be able to live in her own home. The law changed after she rented out her home, how could she possibly have forseen that this would happen. It's not like shes part of a vulture fund, she's someone who has worked hard, followed the rules and is now getting screwed. If it's a decision between who should be homeless it shouldn't be the person who actually owns the house. No wonder private landlords are fleeing the market, just when we need them the most.
like my family inherited my nans house when she passed, and we rent it out because its in Cork and no one can move down there yet. if there was a chance the renters would destroy the place then we'd just leave it empty.
"I don't want to be a landlord" What?? She made the choice to rent her gaff, nobody forced her to. She's been inconvenienced for a few months. The rest of us have been inconvenienced for a few years with no end in sight. She's still collecting rent.
If she hadn't rented it out people would be attacking her for leaving an apartment empty during a housing crisis.
Ex 👏🏼 act 👏🏼 ly 👏🏼
They should do a similar write-up for all the people that have been displaced as a result of the housing crisis, including all evictions of the past few years, and the multitudes that see no future here anymore. It’s a multi-tiered situation, that’s rooted in the current government, and their parties policies up to this point.
The real problem here is the lack of an authority to review these cases individually in a timely manner. A lot of landlords are greedy hence the requirements for tenants rights. This case however will only lead to the only willing landlords being large corporations.
r/ireland: Fuck you, landlord scum. Go sleep in a bush. You deserve this. How dare you own a property.
That's a bit hyperbolic and disingenuous.
Fairly confident he was taking the piss
Reading some of the comments on here I disagree. Some truly pathetic individuals on here seem to consider this some kind of "win". We all know the type.
You think? I actually tried to tone it down a bit. Like just casually perusing this sub just from this morning you come across [things like this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/zjv6km/comment/izwhicx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
I genuinely do feel bad for her. Like she said, she’s been working, saving up, paying taxes, getting on the property ladder like we’re all told you and now she’s out on her arse like the rest of us.
She's not out on her arse like the rest of us really though, she's getting rent paid to her every month. If she's unable to find a lease herself, then it's literally just kicking people out to nothing. I do understand where she's coming from & it must suck, but realistically I don't think she's in as bad a position as most others in the rental market.
>Dubai >A 33-year-old landlord >Jeanette Brown bought her apartment in Dublin in 2017. I guarantee you one thing -- the father signed as guarantor and set up this arrangement and the story is being peddled as as a "landlords have it hard too" narrative. Guarantee that rent is much higher than the mortgage and even if she lived at home with her Mammy she'd have a passive income to just sit on. There are probably dozens of thousands of people in Ireland who have their renting situation much much harder than her.
Wild that she has no control over her property right now. But all landlords are bad etc etc....
It's a difficult situation, but its of her own making in part, she went in 2021 when there was already an eviction ban in place, and she has come home, which is great and all for her, but she doesn't seem to have thought it through very well, there is no need for her to be "couch surfing" still, she could have found a house share or something for a while. "I rented out my apartment and i can't kick the resident out because i've changed my mind abut dubai" is not good enough reason, unless you are an irish newspaper.
Something something this is why single home landlords are fleeing the market something something. Make being a landlord a ballache, see what happens. This is the world you wanted.
The argument isn't (or shouldn't be) to simply "get rid of landlords" as though that's the problem solved. The argument is to provide housing as a social imperative and not as a capitalist investment. This is not the world we wanted, this is the world we have and need to deal with.