Landlords are not being treated with “any fairness across the rental market” according to the CEO of a construction marketing organisation.
Property District CEO Carol Tallon said an ‘anti-landlord policy’ was behind a mass exodus of landlords from the market.
She warned that Government policy is not offering landlords “any balance of fairness”, while tenants are also not seeing any benefits either.
“These weak policies that are designed to be popular and responding to populist notions, because the housing market has become so politicised,” Ms Tallon told Newstalk Breakfast.
Ms Tallon said landlords “are not achieving any balance of fairness” while tenants do not see any benefits.
“These are not affluent people”
Ms Tallon said there is a difference in the treatment of one-off landlords and larger institutional landlords.
Most landlords own no more than two properties, Ms Tallon claimed, and most of those landlords own one property.
“These are not affluent people with big property portfolios. These are people who might have one or two properties and it's their mechanisms of saving for their pension.”
Ms Tallon said these landlords are paying more than 52% of their income in tax, causing a “mass exodus” from the rental market.
She said allowances made for landlords such as allowance for washing machines and rental expenses are “tokenistic”.
Inflation
Ms Tallon told the show that high rent does not mean large income for landlords.
She said Ireland’s Rent Pressure Zone legislation prevents landlords increasing rent by more than 2%, while inflation is running at 8% - so it is costing landlords “four times more” to service their loan and keep their property.
“We can’t say rents are so high, landlords should be happy," she said.
"Clearly that’s not the case. Clearly high rents are not keeping landlords in the market,” Ms Tallon said, “Because those high rents are also linked to high mortgages and exceptionally high taxation."
"We have the highest landlord taxation in Europe.”
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