I hear this exact same text read out time and time again on current affairs shows. This is two examples, from today and yesterday. Are property rights being eroded in Ireland? This seems like somebody just trying to create a narrative.

4 comments

1. *Technically*, yes. If you cannot increase rent 20% per year and you cannot throw people out who go into arrears, your rights as a property owner are lower than 5~10 years ago.

   And your rights as a tenant are **greatly better** than 5 years ago. So I agree with the reduction of landlord rights.

2. It’s as if the landlords fold up the house and take it home with them.

   They sell them to bigger landlords or first time buyers.

   Fellas owning two houses and deciding its not worth his while and getting rid of it isn’t a bad thing.

3. The text is probably from someone in the Irish property Owners Association. There are plenty of lobbyists for landlords,

4. There are major issues with eviction of bad faith tenants in this country with evictions taking months or years with thousands in unpaid rent alongside tens of thousands of euro of damage, with the tenants getting away scott free.

   I’m not a fan of bad faith landlords but we can’t pretend that paying 100% of a BTL mortgage on-top of your own mortgage for years because a tenant has refused to pay, on-top of a 30k refurbishment bill because they destroyed the place is in anyway acceptable. Ultimately, unless there is a massive shift in how housing is provided, (which there should be, but there won’t be) we need small time landlords and they need to have their rights respected. People who have higher incomes should be able to invest additional money into something that gives a decent return, unfortunately the only option available in Ireland is providing property to rent. (Thanks to deemed disposable)

   Unfortunately there are people, a majority of Irish people, who would take the shirt off your back if they thought they could get away with it, and these people are the exact type of people that our government consistently has shown a complete inability to deal with.

   Whether it’s bad faith tenants, landlords, or the scumbags who regularly dedicate their entire life to creating as much hassle, hardship and trouble for every single person around them, such as the scum in cherry orchard in recent news, these people are completely untouchable by our legal systems.

   Things like the eviction ban signal to landlords that the government has no interest in defending them and their rights when it comes to bad faith tenants, and is absolutely a factor when it comes to the decision to sell up.

   People forget that interest rate hikes affect BTL mortgages too, and if the landlord can’t raise rents due to rent pressure zones, and there’s a significant risk that the landlord will have to cover both mortgages as tenants refuse to pay, then they could end up completely fucked. At the end of the day, these are everyday working people, and they’re afraid of the massive financial risks posed by being a landlord in a protection-less state.

   Landlords have the right to a decent tenant who pays on time and doesn’t destroy the place, just as much as tenants have a right to security of tenure and no other nonsense landlord bollocks.

   And when you live in Ireland and you have no rights, because realistically none of us have any rights in this country, then you have to just look out for yourself. Which means landlords won’t take the risk to rent out property, which some on here will cheer for while simultaneously crying over the fact that there’s nowhere to rent, and the costs are insane.