Your MoneyQ&A

How can I check if apartments are being used for illegal short-term lets?

Q&A: Local authorities say they are clamping down; holiday site listings suggest they may not be having as much success as they thought

Planners are trying to clamp down on unregistered short-term holiday lets amid a housing crisis. File photograph: Cyril Byrne/The Irish Times
Planners are trying to clamp down on unregistered short-term holiday lets amid a housing crisis. File photograph: Cyril Byrne/The Irish Times
Dominic Coyle's picture
Dominic Coyle
Tue Aug 15 2023 - 05:00

There is a block of about 18 apartments in my area in Dublin, all owned by a property developer. I understand that Dublin, if not most cities and towns in Ireland, now have strict regulations on holiday lettings.

There is a regular flow to these 18 apartments of holiday makers arriving at all hours and returning noisily late at night. I wonder how can I establish if these are legal short lets? Apparently there is a register but strangely it is not publicly available.

The apartments are advertised on Airbnb, booking.com and other holiday accommodation platforms.

I also wonder are fines enforced and sufficiently punitive. It seems that the owners can make great pickings and not worry too much about paying the fines if caught out. How long does it take to get a conviction before they have to cease their very profitable operation?

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Ms J.B.

Short-term holiday lets are becoming an increasingly contentious issue in a market where thousands of aspiring homeowners are struggling to find a property.

That has led, as you say, to a growing phalanx of restrictions on who can and cannot let in certain parts of the State. But, as you also note, the restrictions seem to date to be very much a case of a toothless tiger.

A report in The Irish Times a few months ago noted that almost 1,600 homes in Dublin have been investigated by Dublin City Council as suspected illegal short-term lets — and that’s in just one of the four Dublin local authorities to say nothing about the rest of the State. As of April this year, the council had secured only one conviction for breaches of the rules — involving a fine of €1,000 and costs of €3,459.

My colleague Olivia Kelly noted at the time that, although Airbnb lists more than 1,000 properties for rent in the city, just 36 property owners had sought the required permission from the council for short-term letting, with the council granting permission in only eight of those cases.

So what are the rules? Going back to 2019, you are required to seek planning permission if you want to let out a property other than your family home for periods of less than 14 days at any one time if it is in a rent pressure zones. There are 54 of these around the State, covering most urban areas and surrounding electoral areas — the most recent to be announced was Westport.

In the case of your family home, you do not need planning permission as long as the home is not rented out for more than 90 days in total in a year.

Even if you are exempt from planning rules, you still need to register your property with the local authority, though I suspect this is not happening in a lot of cases, quite possibly because people simply have not kept up to date with the rules.

All of the 18 apartments you are talking about should have sought specific planning permission.

Further, tighter restrictions are on the way. This relates to the registration of holiday lets to which you referred. The register will be held by Fáilte Ireland and the reason it is inaccessible right now is that it has yet to come into operation.

The Short-Term Tourist Letting Bill was submitted to the EU, as required, last December for what was expected to be a three-month review to make sure it complies with EU law. That review period has now been extended to December.

Under the legislation, property owners offering accommodation for periods of up to and including 21 nights will need to register with Fáilte Ireland. It will issue them a registration number that will have to be included in all listings online.

Failure to do so would mean the property owners fined €300 (with the ultimate sanction of court action and a maximum fine of €5,000). And online platforms would be liable for fines of up to €5,000 for each property listed without a valid registration number.

These registration numbers will be linked to eircodes, which will also allow local authorities to confirm whether or not the holiday lets have the appropriate planning permission.

Assuming that system comes in, it will be much easier to police the sector. However, the EU has raised some concerns that the measures are unnecessarily heavy-handed so they may yet have to be amended.

What do you do now? Well, the new legislation will not be here until next year at the earliest — assuming it passes the EU review. Meantime, your local authority’s planning enforcement office would appear to be the best bet. It is the office charged with policing breaches of planning laws. In Dublin City Council’s case, the enforcement office has set up a specific unit to monitor holiday letting so, if that is your local council, this is where your complaint will end up.

How long will it take to get a response? I’ve written about this before in a slightly different context, but essentially, the council should get back to you within four weeks, though it can take up to seven. And if they concur with your view that the use of these apartments is not in line with planning, they are obliged to pursue it in a procedure that could take close to six months, with various steps along the way.

The obvious thing is to make sure that all communications are in writing.

  • Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street Dublin 2, or by email to dominic.coyle@irishtimes.com. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice

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