Another day, another ludicrous listing on Daft.ie. Last month, one ad in particular is doing the rounds quickstep on social media: a ‘spot’ in a five-bedroom property in Temple Bar. For €200 a month, renters can share with 44 others (sleeping shifts, presumably optional). It follows another grim instance in which beds – four in all - in Dolphin’s Barn were advertised in one room for €500 a month each. That’s €2000 a month for a room.
That the rental market is careening out of control is barely up for debate. That there are coffer-grabbing landlords with dollar signs dancing in their eye sockets is a given. But I’ve started to realise that tenants aren’t entirely without sin either, and the age-old narrative of the greedy landlord isn’t as clear-cut as one might think. There are indeed shades of shady.
Two years ago, I became an ‘accidental landlord’. Six years previously, I’d bought a starter home in Dublin 8. Around that time, you’ll recall a maddening cultural cacophony about bricks and mortar being an unfailingly sound investment, and how owning a home was a milestone to be met in adulthood. We were all at it, if we could manage it (and in some cases, even if we couldn’t). Buyers’ remorse, negative equity, rising interest rates… they weren’t meant to be part of the bargain, but here most of us are anyway.
Once you start looking, you find ‘accidental landlords’ everywhere. Some owners want to upsize, others have split from the partner they bought with, others again can’t afford the mortgage and find it makes sound financial sense of move out and rent entirely. Some simply fancy a change of scene. There’s no law, after all, that says that a homeowner is forever bound to their dwelling.
Most of us have come across the landlord, rent book in hand, who will only take cash. The landlord who has split a three bedroom home in Ranelagh into five apartments; the landlord who has selective hearing at the mere mention of words like ‘broken washing machine’. But here’s the thing. Few of these accidental landlords set out to be profiteering, cunning types. Many of them just want to break even.
In Ireland – some say due to our colonial past – we’ve always been suspicious of landlords. It’s an uneasy tango marked with mistrust and cold hostility. And the current market is doing nothing to assuage that suspicion.
I’m told time and time again that today, it’s a landlord’s market. Right now, we apparently hold all the proverbial cards. But its bears repeating; being a landlord is no cakewalk. And trying to play fair doesn’t always inure you from unfair scenarios.
theories go, it’s an interesting one.
I’ve had to deal with countless unscrupulous landlords in the past, and had hoped I would fare better by being fair and proactive. I wonder how things might have turned out had I filled the place with cheap furniture and ignored all correspondence, as has been the wont of so many former landlords.
In my very first week as a landlord, the couple I found, who had virtually promised their firstborn to get into the place, found a problem with the dampness of the windowless bathroom (it transpires that, a few days after they moved in, they also got accepted into that most holiest of rental grails, a Portobello cottage).
And in the two years since, there has been one disheartening episode after another. No-one tells you about the thousands you spend on fixing bathrooms, flooring and boilers (and don’t get me started on handymen who see a single woman walking down the path on her own. Yet more dancing dollar signs). No-one mentions the tenant who demands a kettle and toaster, citing a legal obligation for a landlord to provide the basics. No-one talks about the tenant who leaves your sofa looking like the sleeping place for five Dobermans and offers a half-hearted ‘soz’ afterwards.
Such outlays are of course par for the course for any landlord, but when rental payments barely cover mortgage costs, they start to become financial grenades. Naturally, my accountant thinks I’m pure demented.
This month, I find myself on the hunt for yet more tenants, the fourth set in two years. Suffice to say that it’s been a headache; the nature of the market means that everyone feels disenfranchised, adversarial and defensive; keen to beat the other to an inevitable punch. In many respects, the market is weighted in favour of the landlord, but it’s worth noting that while tenants can access free advice from Threshold, landlords must pay a sum to the Private Residential Tenancies Board for the same.
It’s worth mentioning that I’m not renting a four-foot wide prefab out the back garden; the apartment is spacious, modern and clean. Because this was once my ‘forever’ home, there isn’t a crappy pleather sofa in sight. I’ve yet to get to the bottom of the eternally departing tenants; perhaps it’s just extraordinarily bad luck on my part.
Talking to a friend - the CFO of an international company - I recently mentioned how much I was renting the property for.
Her face fell into a disbelieving gawp. “You could get hundreds more for that,” she countered. “People won’t respect you, or the property, if they’re getting away with paying that little.”
There’s plenty of talk of adopting a continental model to grease the uneasy relationship between landlords and tenants. It would mean fewer rental increases, rental prices indexed against a city standard, and a longer (and more secure) lease. But on the flipside, this would also mean that every chipped door and broken tile is accounted for in the états des lieues, a thorough inventory document referred to when tenants enter and leave a place. It often means that renters are free to decorate and do as they please, once the property is returned to its original state. But with this bounty of rights comes plenty of responsibilities, for both parties. Are Irish landlords and tenants ready for that? We shall see.
