€250,000 in overcharged rent repaid to tenants after RTB investigation
The RTB is flexing its new powers and has recouped overcharged rents, imposed sanctions, and begun naming and shaming errant landlords. Stock picture
Over a quarter of a million euro in overcharged rent has been returned to tenants by landlords after an investigation by the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB).
And the RTB, in a landmark move, has also begun to name and shame rogue landlords who breach rules on rent increases, publishing details of 29 cases against those who breached the legislation.
This first tranche of rulings is just "the tip of the iceberg", housing charities have said.
The overcharged rent, worth a total of €250,000, was returned as a result of investigations conducted by the RTB’s investigations and sanctions unit. In total, 28 of the RTB's 29 successful cases were brought against landlords who breached rent pressure zone (RPZ) legislation, with another investigated for failure to register a tenancy.
In total, over €20,000 in sanctions has been paid by landlords to the exchequer, with the largest single sanction being just over €1,900.
RPZs are designated areas where rents cannot be increased by more than general inflation of the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). Previously, RPZs could not see an increase in rent of more than 4% annually. Since July 16, the 4% formula was replaced by the HICP.
The sanctions are the first to be confirmed by the Circuit Court and overall investigations by the RTB's Investigations and Sanctions unit have seen over €250,000 paid back to tenants.
However, John-Mark McCafferty of the housing charity Threshold said that this figure was just the tip of the iceberg:
"You'd be at risk of homelessness and most people don't want to do that. So it is very probable that this is a small sample of the transgressions out there. We see many of the same issues and stop them getting to the RTB," he said.
"The recent Daft.ie report indicated that RPZ breaches were happening on a wide scale and rent reviews are the most common thing that people bring to us."
That Daft.ie report found that rents in Ireland are 6.8% higher than a year ago, at an average of €1,516 per month. Mr McCafferty said that tenants should know their rights and can go to Threshold, which recently launched a campaign to encourage renters to be aware of what landlords can and can't do. He said that the sanctions meted out by the RTB were low in a monetary sense, and this raised the question of how much fines, which can be up to €15,000, did to deter landlords:
"The Government has argued that this would cause GDPR problems, but the register of what was paid for a house exists."
In a statement, the RTB said that the publication of the sanctions was an "important milestone" in the implementation of significant new powers given to it with the expansion of its regulatory role.
"These powers allow the RTB to take action and investigate when it appears that a landlord has committed one of the breaches of tenancy law called improper conducts," the statement said.
Of 245 cases approved in 2020 by the RTB, 70 were submitted to independent decision-makers, who decide whether a breach has occurred and on a sanction. The 29 investigations published are where the Circuit Court has confirmed the decision-maker’s sanction.
"The landlords in these cases opted to acknowledge the alleged improper conduct at the beginning of the investigation," the RTB statement said.
"By taking this approach, the landlord speeds up the process and demonstrates that they are cooperating with the investigation. This is taken into consideration by the Decision Maker, along with any steps taken by the landlord to rectify the breach of rental law, when they are deciding on the type of sanction and the amount of any monetary sanction."
