LANDLORDS are losing the fight about the retrospective abolition of upward only rent reviews, yet they seem incapable of putting forward their point of view in a co-ordinated fashion.
This would be understandable if all of them were in Nama – which is imposing a near-media blackout on developers who have gone into the agency – but many of them are not.
Those who banked with the likes of BoSI/Certus and ACC, both of whom are likely to pull out of the market in the medium-term, are being equally anonymous even though they don‘t have to be. Still, all we hear is a deathly silence.
The complete failure by the pension industry, for example, to push its point of view is alarming – but then this is an industry that performed abysmally during the boom and which then destroyed the savings of many by over-investing in Irish stocks, particularly the banks, when they should have known better.
The landlords come across like a punch drunk boxer, out on his feet and incapable of slugging back. Unless they get the smelling salts out, they’re in danger of being knocked out before they even realise they have to put up a fight.
Legal advice and senior counsel opinions only count for so much. The retailers are roughing up the politicians.
The landlords do not know how to respond.
