Ms Margaret McCormick:

I am in the office all the time. The number of calls we get from people genuinely in fear of this situation and of losing their properties is incredible. Some landlords are not serving notices yet. They are monitoring it and looking at the situation. Many of these people have been in the market quite a while. Their families have been in the market for generations. They saw the damage that formerly rent-controlled properties did. We still see them coming up every now and then. The property basically went down through owners' families, with the rent being so low that the capital gains tax the inheritors had to pay was so huge that sometimes the properties were not even worth it. People just could not sell these properties. There are massive difficulties in that regard.

What we have now is a group of people who should hold onto property, basically until they die because that will be the most tax efficient thing for them to do. They are moving out of that and looking at selling. These are the people you want to keep in the market. These are the people who offer low rents. Their tenants have been with them a long time. They do not want to do it to their tenants. They do not want to give notice. They are at a stage in their lives where they have maybe paid down most of their debt and can afford to keep rents low. Then you have the other group of people who are caught in rent pressure zones. They possibly came into the market later and are now in a situation where their tenants are never going to leave. They have low rents, and they will continue to have then. It will be uneconomic for those landlords to stay in the market, and they will move out.

Somebody asked what needs to be done. The Residential Tenancies Act is incredibly complex. It is a disaster. It is bureaucratic. You would need to be a barrister to follow what is involved, to serve a notice and to get it right. On many occasions, landlords will think they have done things right and will then be told that something is missing. There is a date involved. Some of the stuff can be minor, for example, the statutory declaration. Two people may own a property, but only one person may have always managed it and may have signed the declaration. It is not valid as a result. The two of them were supposed to sign it. The number of things in the legislation that are problematic and difficult is incredible. The timelines are incredible. The dispute timelines to get a case through the RTB are so slow. Even the people now who are considering selling are almost frightened to give notice because of what they are bringing on themselves - like the timeline and over-holding. The legislation is totally unbalanced. The landlord will be penalised if they step out of line in any shape or form, but a tenant who over holds is not. It is hugely difficult.