Landlords ‘are kind of price takers in the market’, says chair of RTB

The chair of the Residential Tenancies Board has sought to clarify comments he made on Thursday when he said that if people paid higher rents to institutional landlords then they would have more security of tenure.

Tom Dunne told RTÉ Radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show that for institutional landlords their business was renting so they wanted to keep tenants indefinitely.

A lack of supply was forcing people seeking to rent accommodation to bid against each other and this was a big contributor to driving up prices, he said.

The “notion” that landlords could and did charge what they wanted was not quite the whole story, said Mr Dunne.

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Tenants in a market where there was a lack of supply ended up bidding against each other to secure available accommodation.

“It is demand that is increasing rents. People who supply accommodation are kind of price takers in the market.”

Some people were prepared pay more to achieve security of tenure and that was because of the shortage of accommodation to rent, he suggested.

“In any market you pay more for reliability. If you look at the research carried out, the impact of this on people who are most vulnerable is very problematic. There is no doubt about that.”

Mr Dunne said that problem would not be resolved without an increase in supply. When asked if the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) should be increased so people in receipt could also pay more to get security of tenure he replied it should not, warning that people who receive the subsidy would then be able to outbid those on low incomes who do not receive HAP.

However, he did acknowledge that those on “vulnerable incomes” in the private rental market, were in “very precarious circumstances”.

Changing the rules around evictions would create even more problems, he said. If the rules change it could encourage landlords who rent out their accommodation temporarily not to do so because it would mean they could not regain possession.

Attempts to adjust the rules would result in other problems arising elsewhere. The Housing Commission, which was set up to examine long-term housing policy, must come up with a vision that addresses the balance between renting, owner occupation and social and affordable housing, he argued.