Sir, – I am a pensioner and in danger of losing my house.
I bought it some years ago with a large loan from my bank to provide me with some income in my retirement. Each month my bank insists on me repaying part of the loan and I need regular monthly income to do so.
Before making my repayments I lose 50 per cent of the rent in personal taxation. Some months the net rental income I receive is not sufficient to cover my loan repayment.
Every day I am seeing in the media populist politicians promising their followers that they can soon expect to get possession of a house for their lifetime by simply signing a lease. They are saying that leases of indefinite duration and lifetime leases are coming soon for all tenants.
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This will result in me having my security of tenure in the property that I bought and am still paying for, effectively taken away by the State, just because I have made my house available to a tenant.
I have other much less stressful investment possibilities available to me so I am selling my house because if I do not do so now, I fear I will not be able to sell it in the future because I may well not have a marketable security of tenure.
For this and other reasons, as the statistics show, many rental properties are presently being taken out of the rental market by private landlords .
The populist politicians can then regulate to death what’s left of the rental market, by then probably just top-end corporate lettings, while of course making the right noises in the media.
– Yours, etc,
ROBERT WALSH,
Dublin 2.