Just to add; surely the short term PRS should exclude landlords with large holdings or properties either personally held or across companies (large landlords or institutional). It just feels this is the kind of thing they would use and abuse!!!
"landlords cannot terminate a tenancy due to intention to sell the property or family use"
Have to agree that this has long been a sticking point & one I would agree needs to come to an end - but I think we can mitigate it by changing it marginally so that landlords CAN sell a home but tenant-in-situ - so that long term security of tenure continues for the tenant.
As for the "family use" stipulation - I think we can deal with this fairly by limiting the definition of "family use" in law to mean the direct use of the owner of the home and not an adult child or distant family member, who very often are moved in on a temporary basis in order to remove the property from the PRS just long enough to release it from the two-year rule with regard to rent setting. In those cases where as you correctly note, the owner is temporarily away from the property rather than renting a property in which they never intend to reside, the "family use" stipulation should remain, but only if it is required by the actual owner themselves.
Probation periods
I understand why these exist - they give the landlord a degree of security around the likely future behaviour of the tenant - rather than scrapping outright, why not reduce from 6 months to say, 3-4 months?
Six year tenancies
Not a bad idea, but one feature of the RTB since 2008 is a far greater trend towards living for a very long time in a single tenancy - I think the current unlimited model is better. My last tenancy was 11 years and my neighbours, who rented from the same landlord, also stayed 11 years. 6 years is fine for tenants under 40 years of age who are likely to see changes in circumstances for the better, but not for tenants over 45 who are less likely to be able to move or trade up to ownership.
As to the point about tenant in situ sales hampering the flow between PRS & owner occupiers, this is already pretty common - as we saw during the bust, most repossessions involved PRS properties & in many cases properties were repossessed with tenant still in situ, and sometimes, even sold on to other investors, often without even the tenant being informed. But there was of course also some evictions relating to this - perhaps we could put an absolute ban on evictions-for-sale by non individual entities?
Tenant purchase has been suggested & while it probably is not realistic for most tenants I think its a good deterrent to using the intention to sell as a surreptitious way to evict tenants - it is a good idea.
"Accidental landlords" imo are the ultimate "steel man" argument present by proponents of an unregulated PRS. It had some validity during the years of the bust where there was a reasonable number of owner occupiers who might have been unable to sell due to negative equity, but think through the issue & you realise that all of these people had somewhere else to live, which meant, at least in theory, that they were not ultimately different to traditional landlords. Perhaps we also need to change the language we use - as often "landlord" is used (alongside its steelman prefixes - "amateur-", "mom and pop-", "accidental-", "small-") to distinguish these people from the supposedly "real" bad guys, institutional investors. In reality its like businesses - a business is a business regardless of size, therefore we should not allow pro housing investor ideologues to muddy sentiment with sentimental image that tries to pretend that somehow the individual landlord is more "moral" & therefore deserving of favourable treatment than an institution - anybody who has rented in Ireland in the past 30 years could tell you that in an instant. I suggest we abandon the term "landlord" entirely & simply use the term "investor" to describe anybody who rents properties.
I will add that we are into a big cyclical shift in PRS systems worldwide where we shift away from the easy-credit era of the 90s and 00s & into a new era where credit simply isn't available to new entrants in the sector. We are playing out the damage done by excessive BTL lending (some of it driven by unfairly generous tax treatment of property investors) from the 90s to 00s to a newer era where there unfair generosity has shifted to institutional investors, but that still doesn't mean that we extend the same benefits to smaller investors.
I don't know how we deal with airbnb & other short let problems. I think much of this is the result of overpricing in the hotel & traditional holiday let sector that needs addressing. End of day such lets compete with traditional holiday businesses free of the business rates, VAT, commercial water charges etc. The planning system is underresourced & very poorly operated by councils & ABP alike. Perhaps moving regulation to a dedicated body for planning breaches would help, but also, quite simply I would be inclined to tax short letting of non planned holiday units out of existence - levy VAT, business rates, commercial bin & water charges & finally, a nightly tourist tax, on such properties. I suspect you might see more return to traditional long letting.
Just to add; surely the short term PRS should exclude landlords with large holdings or properties either personally held or across companies (large landlords or institutional). It just feels this is the kind of thing they would use and abuse!!!
Excellent piece - a very well thought-out proposal.
A few points:
"landlords cannot terminate a tenancy due to intention to sell the property or family use"
Have to agree that this has long been a sticking point & one I would agree needs to come to an end - but I think we can mitigate it by changing it marginally so that landlords CAN sell a home but tenant-in-situ - so that long term security of tenure continues for the tenant.
As for the "family use" stipulation - I think we can deal with this fairly by limiting the definition of "family use" in law to mean the direct use of the owner of the home and not an adult child or distant family member, who very often are moved in on a temporary basis in order to remove the property from the PRS just long enough to release it from the two-year rule with regard to rent setting. In those cases where as you correctly note, the owner is temporarily away from the property rather than renting a property in which they never intend to reside, the "family use" stipulation should remain, but only if it is required by the actual owner themselves.
Probation periods
I understand why these exist - they give the landlord a degree of security around the likely future behaviour of the tenant - rather than scrapping outright, why not reduce from 6 months to say, 3-4 months?
Six year tenancies
Not a bad idea, but one feature of the RTB since 2008 is a far greater trend towards living for a very long time in a single tenancy - I think the current unlimited model is better. My last tenancy was 11 years and my neighbours, who rented from the same landlord, also stayed 11 years. 6 years is fine for tenants under 40 years of age who are likely to see changes in circumstances for the better, but not for tenants over 45 who are less likely to be able to move or trade up to ownership.
As to the point about tenant in situ sales hampering the flow between PRS & owner occupiers, this is already pretty common - as we saw during the bust, most repossessions involved PRS properties & in many cases properties were repossessed with tenant still in situ, and sometimes, even sold on to other investors, often without even the tenant being informed. But there was of course also some evictions relating to this - perhaps we could put an absolute ban on evictions-for-sale by non individual entities?
Tenant purchase has been suggested & while it probably is not realistic for most tenants I think its a good deterrent to using the intention to sell as a surreptitious way to evict tenants - it is a good idea.
"Accidental landlords" imo are the ultimate "steel man" argument present by proponents of an unregulated PRS. It had some validity during the years of the bust where there was a reasonable number of owner occupiers who might have been unable to sell due to negative equity, but think through the issue & you realise that all of these people had somewhere else to live, which meant, at least in theory, that they were not ultimately different to traditional landlords. Perhaps we also need to change the language we use - as often "landlord" is used (alongside its steelman prefixes - "amateur-", "mom and pop-", "accidental-", "small-") to distinguish these people from the supposedly "real" bad guys, institutional investors. In reality its like businesses - a business is a business regardless of size, therefore we should not allow pro housing investor ideologues to muddy sentiment with sentimental image that tries to pretend that somehow the individual landlord is more "moral" & therefore deserving of favourable treatment than an institution - anybody who has rented in Ireland in the past 30 years could tell you that in an instant. I suggest we abandon the term "landlord" entirely & simply use the term "investor" to describe anybody who rents properties.
I will add that we are into a big cyclical shift in PRS systems worldwide where we shift away from the easy-credit era of the 90s and 00s & into a new era where credit simply isn't available to new entrants in the sector. We are playing out the damage done by excessive BTL lending (some of it driven by unfairly generous tax treatment of property investors) from the 90s to 00s to a newer era where there unfair generosity has shifted to institutional investors, but that still doesn't mean that we extend the same benefits to smaller investors.
I don't know how we deal with airbnb & other short let problems. I think much of this is the result of overpricing in the hotel & traditional holiday let sector that needs addressing. End of day such lets compete with traditional holiday businesses free of the business rates, VAT, commercial water charges etc. The planning system is underresourced & very poorly operated by councils & ABP alike. Perhaps moving regulation to a dedicated body for planning breaches would help, but also, quite simply I would be inclined to tax short letting of non planned holiday units out of existence - levy VAT, business rates, commercial bin & water charges & finally, a nightly tourist tax, on such properties. I suspect you might see more return to traditional long letting.