A Landlord's life

Odd the way history comes around. First time as tragedy, second time as farce. Such leaden thought occurs on hearing of yet another clutch of landlords who are still in their teens. Last week , they were tensely awaiting their Leaving Cert results.

This week, they have become landlords, moving into the apartment which their parents bought as an investment some years ago and which has more than repaid the monies outlaid.

At the weighty age of 18 or 19 years, they are familiar with the letting game, because they visited older brothers and sisters who as students were already in occupation of the family apartment in a university city. While still at school, they learned discretion about their older brothers' and sisters' lives, as well as observing odd habits of hygiene and diet. Mostly, though, they learned about being a landlord at an early age. With the enormous property boom of the past 18 years or so, there have been more units of accommodation built in some of our towns and cities than in the entire 19th century. The dwellings are, by and large, of good quality, built to reasonable standards.

Most of these early units were bought by parents from the regions, both as an investment and a way of saving on their children's accommodation when moving to third-level education. The parents mainly bought two-bedroom apartments and townhouses, which from next month, will provide shelter to another wave of 80,000 students migrating into towns and cities at the beginning of the academic year.

Did I say two-bedroom? In the student culture, read that as providing bed-space for about five or six people, depending on finances, relationships and kindred bonding. Read that, too, as meaning that the student whose family own the space is likely to be living free for the academic year. He or she will take rent from their fellow students.

All this at 18 or 19 years of age is both a heady brew and a practical induction into the business of being a landlord. It may be fraught with risks as to personal relations - the nominal landlord may be messier and more of a slut than the tenant. Or may borrow from them, or fancy them or bully them.

Or indeed - not unknown - the "power relationship" between landlord and tenant may subtly change over first and second term. Starting out as academic equals in, say, first arts, the tenant may become a star debater and the landlord remain an inept contributor. Or a hockey captain, dashing on the field, may in her domestic life be a tenant to a female landlord who is also a poor half-back. And so on . . .

In the romantic roulette of those late teens, with the hormones still raging and sexual partners swopped after a good night on the town, who knows what domestic arrangement may have to be revisited? Or chairs propped against door knobs and familiar exchanges made outside the bathroom with people one but knew distantly at lectures but are now expected to share towels with . . .?

I asked one of my nieces, as "landlady" of a two-bedroom apartment with three female fellow students, how they managed. She informed me that, practically, they drew up a roster - with Sheila away, it became Sinead's turn in the double bedroom on rotation with a boyfriend.

They agreed "celibate periods" at exam time and parents visiting, when evidence of football kit and stale socks and jocks would be dumped in the hot press. (Parents of course, were never young).

More to the point, a nominal financial charge was made for male overnight visitors. All of this, of course, eminently preparing our teenagers and twentysomethings to become well-adjusted citizens of a Little Republic where landlord was once a term of abuse and now is one of approbation.

As oft said, history - first time as tragedy, second time as farce.