A Landlord's Life

So you want to be a Landlord? Ho, ho, ho! Was your father a Garda and your mother a nurse? Or a teacher married to a teacher? No, you're an IT specialist whose father was a garage man married to a hairdresser. Ach so, you are part of the new property-owning democracy of the Little Republic.

Goot! That might stand you , as your small capitalist parents are likely to have filled hundreds of detailed forms and know their way around the VAT maze while retaining their sanity.

VAT on letting? Didn't know that - oh come now! If a commercial lease is created in excess of five years, you have a VAT liability. Don't ask me another, but pack your sandwiches and go to the Revenue web site (www.revenue.ie).

If you can make simple sense of it, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din - and you already have an alternative career as a VAT on Property advisor. With your head reeling from the taxing possibilities of what was a simple letting and your eyes spinning from the wedges of print, consider, then - do you still want to be a landlord?

You do? Back to basics. Having survived the tutorial with the revenue website, let us not diminish the genetic usefulness of Garda/nurse/garage man parentage. You will have inherited some "feeling" for human relations. I don't mean the guff espoused by absurdly named human resources managers of corporate pretension, but the ordinary sensitivities to other people's situations, as say, expressed by most people going about their chores and tasks.

That common sense will undoubtedly help you to deal with tenants, whose attitudes will likely run the full gamut of human behaviour. To know where you stand, legally, you will need to inform yourself on the huge amount of bureaucracy recently put in place to "regularise" the letting market.

For instance, did you know you are legally required to register your letting property with the PRTB - the Private Residential Tenancies Board. No? And you still want to be a landlord?

I suggest you bone up on that, pronto, as the penalties include hefty fines and six months in the slammer for repeated refusals to register or abide by the Board's rulings.

What rulings? The PRTB has the legislative power to arbritate on disputes regarding the behaviour of landlords and tenants. For instance, it can set the rent levels, in accordance with the location, condition and size of property, and prevent them rising above the prevailing market rates.

It can require a landlord to issue a proper lease or rent book, it can prevent a landlord evicting a tenant on spurious grounds, such as giving notice to quit if a complaint is brought to the PRTB or "punishing" them in any way for seeking arbritation.

It can stop a tenant being evicted without due cause, "due cause" being defined by the board and its legal personnel. Helpful info and leaflets at www.prtb.ie. The Board can also stop a landlord being abused, in the sense of a tenant's unreasonable or antisocial behaviour, which usually comes down to late night music or noise and abusive behaviour, upsetting to neighbours. The Board can back a landlord - or a tenant - in more ways than I have space for here.

Which is why I recommend you contact the PRTB, take a large latte for consolation and pore over its leaflets and legislation.

Here's one law, at random. After six months occupancy, a tenant can legally claim a further lease of four years, subject to yearly rent reviews, which could go up or down, depending on the Board's arbitration. If you still Want to Be a Landlord, welcome to the Club.