Responding to the recent RTB Rental Sector Survey 2020, IPAV, the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers, said policymaking in the area is “flying on one wing” without critical data that the RTB is, as yet, unable to capture.
Pat Davitt, IPAV Chief Executive said properties new to the rental market are exempt from the RPZ (Rent Pressure Zone ) rules on first letting.
“The RTB is not, as yet, able to differentiate between properties that are let for the first time (or have not been rented for the previous two years ) and new tenancy agreements in properties previously rented.
“Landlords offering properties for rent for the first time are free to charge whatever rent they can achieve - on the first rental even though the property may be inside a designated RPZ area.
“Rent levels on such properties could be way out of line with new rent agreements that are subject to RPZ rules. We simply don’t know because they are published as one in the regular RTB rental reports with questions being raised and landlords in general being blamed for charging more than the 4pc allowable under RPZ rules (changed in this week’s legislation to the level of inflation ),” Mr Davitt stated.
Mr Davitt said the issue is creating confusion and leading to ill-informed policy decisions, noting that IPAV has written to the RTB and recently received the following confirmation.
‘The RTB is not currently able to identify brand new leases separately to new tenancy agreements in properties that have previously been rented. However, the RTB is currently undertaking an Eircode matching exercise, which will match an Eircode to almost every tenancy ever registered with the RTB. The exercise along with the RTB’s new tenancy management system, RTB360, will assist the RTB in identifying new stock never before registered with us. This information should be becoming available to use early next year.’
“We need a full set of transparent statistics to fully assess the impact of the RPZ legislation or its removal,” Mr Davitt said. “Without this data policy making is effectively flying on one wing,” Mr Davitt added.
Referring to the loss, confirmed in today’s RTB report of 9,514 private landlords from the market in the four years up to the end of 2020 he said private landlords are treated much less favourably than commercial landlords from a tax perspective.
“Despite record high rents the reality is many private landlords are not finding it economically viable to continue,” he concluded.
