Mr. David Hall:

In my experience there is a handful of bad landlords. Despite the good name that landlords have, there is a handful of greedy landlords but there is a handful of greedy people in all walks of life and society. Strokes are being pulled left, right and centre and people will act inappropriately so a stronger mechanism is needed to deal with them.

To answer the Deputy's question, the Residential Tenancies Board canvassed a number of landlords about eviction notices or notices to quit given to tenants. The board learned that there were 5,735 such notices in the second quarter of 2023, and 63 tenants said that they were a direct result of the landlord wanting to sell up. What is proposed seeks to prevent landlords selling up. Will the initiative prevent that? I am not sure that it will. The proposal also seeks to compete with the fact that the REITs have been given a much faster, bigger and more significant phenomenal vulture tax windfall.