Hi all, we’ve been told by a third party that the landlord wishes to get an EA in to measure up the house we live in ASAP. I’m a bit taken aback as it’s our home, but it’s not entirely unexpected either. A few questions/opinions sought:
what are our rights re. notice? We’ve been here coming up for three years. Signed a one year lease originally, then verbal agreement thereafter.
what is reasonable to expect from us re. accommodating viewings? What is reasonable for us to expect from the LL for us accommodating viewings?
We’ve been renting a long time and have been thinking about seeing about houses to buy, but haven’t really got off that fence yet for a variety of reasons. However, this could be the shove that makes it happen. In fact, I’d thought in the last couple of weeks about approaching the landlords to see if they would be interested in selling. The house is quite old and not in the best of shapes.
do you think it would be better to approach the LL now, before the EA comes in, or wait until it’s all in the sales process?
if making an offer to LL, should it be done before a structural report or after?
Can someone also remind me of a rent vs. buying calculator so that we can play around with options? I have no doubt that the house we’re renting has further to fall. However, the length of time to fall could be 5 years, by which time we’ll have paid out rather a lot in rent and will not have paid down any mortgage/mortgage interest, so I’m interested to play around with a calculator to examine the cross-over point.
many thanks pinsters.
grasshopper2 (formerly grasshopper until the captcha got me)
No, it’s for a sale. Valuation already done previously. Don’t know what the result of that was (i.e. number put to it).
Anyone any thoughts? Advice very much appreciated. I know Calina in particular has been sold from under a couple of times at least. Also, I do recall other threads on this topic (at least on ‘rights’, but I can’t find them). I’m not being lazy - honest!
I purchased my first flat from my landlord (and still send him a Christmas card 10 years later) , agreed a six month closing and a deposit of 5% rather than the usual 10%.
However I did have to continue to pay the rent.
Do your research before you make the offer. If it is reasonable (market clearing price -5%) the you might be surprised at the response.
However if you are going to make a low ball offer you are probably better dealing through the EA.
Or take the figure for your annual rent, deduct management fees/property taxes/charges, multiply the figure by a number between 12 and 14, and make that your offer.
If you are paying a grand a month that’s €12k per annum, less charges (1500?+200+100), €10200… so a figure of between €122k and €143k. My 2 cents.
You’re now subject to RTA 2004 which means 84 days if you have been renting the property for more than 3 years. Threshold is here: threshold.ie/page.asp?menu=102&page=269
Speaking from experience, it is likely that they will try to get around this if they are sale agreed.
It’s a grey area. I would try to agree to facilitate one viewing per week, usually Sat mornings in the past; they will ring you for occasionally extra viewings during the week. They must give you 24 hours.
I have had one landlord reduce the rent as a sweetener for a) accommodating the viewings and b) staying in the house while he was trying to sell given the market uncertainty at the time. You could request a rent reduction; you may not get it. But the viewings should not be disruptive to your life and there is a school of thought that suggests you don’t have to accommodate them at all. But I don’t believe that is set in stone.
The offer should be subject to structural report: you may have lived in the house for 3 years but you might still not be aware of all the problems. I chose not to start negotiating for the last house for the simple reason that the problems I could see worried me as I thought they could be indicative of deeper problems.
I think Ronan Lyons of daftmedia had one but I don’t have a link to it to hand.
I realise this is not a huge amount of information but I do recommend checking your landlord knows what the notice period is and doesn’t find out the hard way when he has gone sale agreed.
If you do not choose to buy the house, my advice would be to issue notice and move yourselves without waiting for notice.
Thanks all for the very useful info. Your time input is much appreciated.
Calina, we’re fine with assisting the owner of the house but just want to gauge what is reasonable and what we might reasonably expect in return (rent reduction would be nice!). We know there are quite a lot of structural issues with the house from having lived here- none life-threatening as far as we know, but some that though are liveable with would be expensive to fix - so point taken about those we don’t know as well.
re. indicating an interest - do people think it’s best to do this before EA process - i.e. be in a position to save the seller the EA commission and therefore use that as negotiating tool - or is it best to not appear too keen and let the market/EA set the asking price. EAs hold virtual monopoly on area and are known for ‘optimistic’ valuations.
The house is a classic semiD, so I’d expect a fair degree of interest in it, as there hasn’t been much on sale of late, although there’s quite a lot bursting out in a Spring frenzy over the last couple of weeks. LL - agree, but what is ‘market clearing price’!!?? I know what is similar in the area and still on the market, but am not privy to sales prices. Coles2 - using your calcs give way lower than this place will go for, unfortunately!