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.
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.