The landlord: nanny - or daddy cool?

Apartment Living: Young property owners trying to rent out a room may find tenants give them too much grief. What should they do, asks Edel Morgan

It appears that renting an entire apartment is often easier than renting a room - especially if you're the landlord/lady/person and live on the property. Of late, I've heard of a spate of dejected souls bailing out of their properties because they can't afford to pay the mortgage and no one wants to be their flatmate.

The common perception of a live-in landlord/landlady seems to be of an interfering young fogey-type who disapproves of late night gallivanting and is constantly monitoring the furniture for burn marks.

The solution? For some, it appears to be the ultimate turnabout - moving back home to the parents and letting the entire property for the maximum rent.

Not, perhaps, a strategic move in one's development as an independent being, but a sound financial move, it seems.

In the case of one guy I know of, the rental income for his entire suburban apartment of €1,200 a month covers his hefty mortgage repayment. If he was living there himself and managed to find a flatmate, the rental income for his spare double room would have been around €400-€500 per month and around €270-€300 for the single, which he would have been happy with. However given the amount of new apartment developments springing up in his area there was tough competition and the replies to his ad were few and far between.

Also, he didn't want to take on the first person who showed up at his front door. It would have to be someone with whom he shared an easy camaraderie and who didn't prompt a sinking feeling in his stomach when they walked in the door.

Choosing the right flatmate(s) is key. A reader recently e-mailed Apartment Living with his rental tales of woe, saying he felt it became a stressful job looking after housemates. He felt almost as if he had become "their parent". He then imparted the story of the ultimate low-key couple.

"The Finnish couple I rented one double room to were so secretive they actually got married while in the house without even telling me until I discovered tiny gold hearts on the driveway the following week. Another time they disappeared for three weeks without paying any rent and I said enough was enough."

Saying enough is enough doesn't necessarily mean returning to your parents - after all, they might have something to say about this too - but it appears to be a fairly common move, with often disastrous results. After leaving home, maybe renting for a few years and finally getting it together to strike out on your own and buy your own property, it can be a sobering decision.

I know of one scenario where a girl who moved in with her parents received a phone call from her mother at 4 a.m. enquiring where she was. She heard the taxi driver chuckling when she roared indignantly into the phone "but mother, I'm 33 for God's Sake". And I imagine most parents don't want to have to worry what an offspring the wrong side of 30 is getting up to of a night.

The only answer to this phenomenon is a complete rehabilitation of the landlord's image. Maybe a nationwide marketing campaign or the establishment of the Hip and Amiable Landlords Organisation (HALO) . . .