Sir, – Keith Lowe of the estate agents Douglas Newman Good criticises the rent regulation legislation on the grounds that tenants of buy-to-let landlords are now likely to be evicted if their landlord decides to sell up ("New laws mean landlords will sell and tenants will be evicted", Opinion, Property, January 31st).
Focus Ireland’s work with homeless families has identified that this practice of evicting sitting tenants from buy-to-lets is one of the major routes into homelessness, affecting up to 20 families a month.
Long-standing legislation specifically allows landlords to walk away from tenancy agreements to achieve “vacant possession” for a sale. This practice is so widespread that it is hard see how Minister for Housing Simon Coveney’s attempts to put some limitation on runaway rent levels can be blamed for making it worse.
The real concerns about the rent control legislation I think are elsewhere – largely in the huge difficulties, and limited resources invested, in policing it. Many agencies have already heard of landlords simply ignoring the 4 per cent limit and, given the limited penalties for landlords who do this, there’s very little that tenants can do except pay up. Similarly, since there is no way of monitoring increases in rents for new tenancies, the 4 per cent limit is likely to be widely ignored by landlords facing eager potential tenants.
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As for the large number of households being rendered homeless due to the sale of buy-to-lets, which quite rightly concerns Mr Lowe, this could be effectively dealt with by reforming the legislation so that existing tenancies in buy-to-let properties would have to be honoured even where the landlord or bank want to sell up. This would bring the residential rental market in line with the commercial rental market, an objective which most landlords seem to favour. It would also be one of the most effective measures for preventing homelessness that is immediately available to us. – Yours, etc,
MIKE ALLEN,
Director of Advocacy,
Focus Ireland,
High Street,
Dublin 8.