Private Tenancies

At Housing Rights, we hear from lots of tenants who have all kinds of understandable reasons for leaving a property before the contract ends.  These range from students who’ve had to leave university unexpectedly, to people who have become ill and for whom a property is no longer suitable, to families who are living in substandard properties and whose requests for repairs go unheeded by the landlord

Jim Fraser from Trading Standards considers the need for letting agents to provide important information about protecting deposits to tenants from a consumer rights perspective.

At the end of June 2015 over 42,000 private landlords had registered with the NI landlord registration registrar.  These landlords have provided details of over 89,000 private tenancies.  Using information from the 2011 census, the Department for Social Development suggests that roughly 94% of landlords have complied with the requirement to register.

Private landlords who fail to register may face a fixed penalty of £500 or a fine of up to £2,500.