“What’s The Point In Being A Landlord If I Can’t Evict People?”
FURIOUS at a new law banning the eviction of tenants until the end of March, WWN property editor and head of the Irish Landlord League Bill Badbody asks what’s the point anymore in being a landlord.
It’s all I get up for in the morning; the frosty air, the camaraderie with the bailiffs, the screams of children as we rip their parents from their tiny bedrooms while we litter the front yard with smelly toys, dated flat screens and grubby buggies. How I’ll miss that distinctive sound of the locks being changed, the chuckles from snack box munching Gardaí as they flank our raid and enforce our investment fund’s legal documents. That’s all gone now. Christmas won’t be the same this year.
Don’t get me wrong. This government has done plenty by keeping supply down and allowing rents to skyrocket without too much interference. The local councils too, not bothering to use up their budgets to build social housing and their blatant boycott of collecting vacant property taxes. I appreciate that, but this? This draconian ban has my long line of landowning ancestors turning in their protestant tombs.
What is a landlord without an eviction only a landpleb. We’re in this for the money, yes. But more importantly, we’re in this for the power. If I can’t just evict someone paying below the highest rent I see on Daft.ie and replace them with higher paying tenants, then I don’t know if I want to even landlord anymore. If landlords aren’t allowed evict tenants, then where are people looking to rent homes expected to find one? The government? Please. Evicting is the natural order of life; one pleb goes and the other comes and pays a higher rent. Implementing eviction bans only stops the natural pleb flow.
Sure, I’m salivating at the thoughts of all the bars and restaurant units that will come to market now that they’re all at risk of folding thanks to inflation and energy bills. And I’m sure my councillor friends won’t have any issue granting me planning permission to change those premises into build to rents that I’ll rent back to them for silly money for ten years before selling off for a fortune – that’s going to be very exciting, yes, but my main love is kicking the poors out into the rural Ireland wilderness where they belong so wealthier tenants can replace them and more importantly drive up property prices and rent yields.
This isn’t just a ban on evictions, this is a ban on good old fashioned fun.”