Landlords are "very frustrated" with the bureaucracy of the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) and are removing their properties from the rental market, the chair of the Irish Property Owners Association has warned.
Mary Conway said there had been some improvement with registration and addressing backlogs at the RTB, but there were still issues with buildings that have multiple units, each of which had to be registered separately.
The RTB is a quasi-judicial public body set up under the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, to support and develop a well-functioning rental sector. Under law, tenants and landlords can bring disputes to the RTB.
Ms Conway told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that the “biggest difficulty” for landlords was the delay in accessing mediation when there was a dispute.
“It takes 12 weeks approximately to get to a mediation, which is the first point where you try and resolve the problem with the tenants,” she said. “If that doesn't work, you go to adjudication. That can take five to six months. And then if you get a termination order from the adjudication, that can take ten weeks. So if you were a rogue tenant, it can take a year to get any kind of engagement or a decision from the RTB. And that's terribly frustrating.”
Ms Conway called for more training and more support for people trying to register their tenants. “Landlords are paying a fee for this. They're paying €40 per year. So, you know, it should be self-funding.”
It would also help if rent could be lodged with the RTB during the adjudication stage, she said. “But that's not happening at the moment and landlords are very frustrated and they're voting with their feet and they're leaving the market.”
She said the exodus of landlords was a combination of frustration with the bureaucracy of the RTB and concern at the pace of resolution. “If a tenant is in the property for six months or more, they're entitled to go as long as they want to. Everybody is very nervous that if they get a rogue tenant that moves in and stops paying rent after two months that they won't be able to get them out. The system does not move quickly enough.”
