Tenants in poor conditions across the city complain about the same property manager

On Wednesday 17 July, a crumpled pink mat lay in front of one of the doors to a squat white building sat at the back of 69-71 Harold’s Cross Road.

The door was slightly ajar. When she is home, Domingas Guido often leaves it inched open. It’s the only way to let air in.

Her only window is sealed on all sides. It isn’t built to open.

“I couldn’t breathe sometimes,” said Guido, sat outside at a small table overlooking a barren concrete yard and the main duo of buildings, their walls scarred with big cracks.

Past planning documents from July 2019 describe an “office to the rear”, at the back where Guido lives. There’s no planning application to convert any outbuildings to homes on the council website.

Guido’s lease calls her home a “garden flat”. She has rented her studio apartment there since January 2019.

When she talks about living here, she cries.

Guido is far from the only tenant renting through Martin Property Consultants – but from different landlords – who say the condition of their homes and the lack of basic upkeep has left them at best deeply frustrated and at worst seriously stressed and unwell.

Laws generally put responsibilities for maintenance and rental standards, as well as adherence to planning laws, on the owners of properties, rather than property managers.

Guido’s landlord is Ireland Israel JV Fund Limited, of which Miceal Martin of Martin Property Consultants, is a director.

But for other properties, Martin’s firm is simply the property manager, with no role in the companies that ultimately own the apartments.

Still, tenants in apartments let by Martin Property Consultants say staff at the company is who they deal with day to day – and that there should also be a mechanism for making sure that property managers are held accountable for poor conditions in properties and neglect of tenants in the homes that they manage.

But there’s no sign that the government plans to change the current system.

The Department of Justice looked at making estate and letting agents responsible for checking the standards of homes before they rent them out, but dropped the idea.

And, in its recent long-awaited rental sector review, Department of Housing officials didn’t propose any substantial changes to how standards are enforced in the private-rental sector.

The Residential Tenancies Board should “take a more active and dynamic approach” to educating landlords about minimum standards, the review said.

Ireland Israel JV Fund Limited didn’t directly address queries about the flat where Guido lives.

Martin Property Consultants didn’t respond to queries sent by email, and delivered by hand.

Soon, soon

Inside the main building at 69 Harold’s Cross Road, Kamel Benaddane has wedged rocks into two small holes in the walls midway up the carpeted stairs that lead to his top-floor flat.

To stop rats getting in, as there has been a problem with them in the past in and around the building, he said on 24 July.

Inside his apartment, Benaddane points to the big cracks that extend either side of the kitchen window, running down into the apartment below, and up along the join where the ceiling meets the top of the wall.

When he returned from holiday last summer, they were there, he says. Builders have been adapting the ground floor into more flats with months of construction – and he worries about the damage that he thinks has been caused by that to where he lives.

His front door has a big gap under it now. To open and close it takes so much force that he accidentally pulled the outer handle off, leaving a stump. The floor squeaks and dips.

The stress is immense, he says.

He wants his daughter, who is 12 years old, to be able to let herself in after school but she can’t open the door by herself, he says.

Conscious that the noisy floor disturbs neighbours, he asks his daughter to tread softly – but he doesn’t want to constantly nag her about it. “I’m feeling like I’m squeezing her. She shouldn’t worry about these things.”

He feels anxious walking about too early in the morning, he says.

He worries that the building is going to collapse around him, he says. “I expressed my worries. When you open the door and you find your place with this big cracks like that, you wonder how long it’s going to fall over you.”

In July 2023, Benaddane put in a maintenance request to Martin Property Consultants, flagging the big cracks, show emails.

On 18 October, he wrote that the front door needed fixing. “And nothing,” he says, scrolling through his phone.

On 7 November, he wrote again: “I wrote to you multiple times about the property need’s fixing, it’s been a long time since I’m dealing with this and it is really stressing me out.” He told them about the holes and the rats, too, the emails show.

The issues had been logged and they would let him know about a call-out, they wrote back.

On 21 November, he got a generic email sent out by Martin Property Consultants, apologising to all for maintenance delays, but saying they would begin scheduling appointments soon.

Cracks in the outside of the building have been filled in. But nobody has ever come to see him and fix the cracks inside, or his door, said Benaddane on 24 July. He believes, he says, that “They didn’t care.”

After a media query, a spokesperson for Dublin City Council said that someone from the council’s dangerous buildings section went to look at the building on 19 July and didn’t find anything of concern.

They didn’t go inside the building, said the spokesperson.

Ireland Israel JV Fund Limited said they had last year undertaken development at the property on Harold’s Cross Road.

“Although every care was taken to limit the inconvenience caused to the current tenants residing in the building we understand that due to the nature of the work involved some inconvenience was caused,” they said in an email.

“We at all times take the greatest care to ensure the peaceful enjoyment of our tenants and look forward to the completion of the project which will benefit the entire building for all residing there,” they said.

Turning to the regulator

Neither Benaddane nor Guido have yet filed disputes with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) outlining their complaints.

But even for those tenants who have gone to the RTB, it hasn’t always led to problems being fully dealt with, two other tenants who have embarked on that route said.

By the end of November last year, southwards in the city in Terenure, Carolina Agnolon was also beyond frustrated with Martin Property Consultants and sewage issues, her emails show.

She got home one evening and saw water again starting to come up from the drains in the courtyard just beyond her living room and kitchen window, she says.

“When I see a little bit coming out, I know the lid is going to come out and all the shit is going to come,” she says. Another early symptom is when the toilet stops working, she says.

She wrote an email to Martin Property Consultants.

“I am writing to urgently address a recurring plumbing problem in my rented residence, making the 5th instance this year,” she wrote on 30 November 2023. She and her wife couldn’t use their toilet, she said, because of what they thought was a clog in the sewers.

Since then, it’s happened twice again, said Agnolon, on 1 July. In December and in June.

Photos and videos show the courtyard spread with brown lumpy sewage.

In the backyard on 1 July, Carolina and Juliana Agnolon pointed to a drain pipe still specked with sewage and dried toilet paper.

When the pipes get clogged, either they or Martin Properties Consultants call a drain services company to clear them, and the workers often bring a power washer, says Carolina.

It makes the sewage splatter onto their kitchen windows. It’s a biohazard, says Carolina. “I had to clean it myself.”

“This is a health issue, you know,” she says.

Emails show Martin Property Consultants promising to fix the problem properly.

A plumber had taken a look and said they needed to do a drain survey, said an email from someone on reception at Martin Property Consultants in September 2023. “We are committed to finding a permanent solution to this issue.”

The plumber had said the drain survey would be done that week, the email says.

“However, there is a slight delay as we are awaiting the necessary supplies to ensure the survey is conducted accurately and comprehensively,” it says. It would keep them updated, says the email.

But Martin Property Consultants hasn’t kept them updated at all, said Agnolon on 1 July.

The overflowing sewage is the biggest complaint that the two renters have – but not the only one.

In the kitchen, there’s a square hole in the ceiling. It was sliced out to get at pipes and fix a long-running leak, says Carolina.

Behind the door in a bedroom off a short corridor, there’s a big patch of mould on the flaking wall. “It’s more than a year like that,” she says, pointing to it.

Carolina thinks she has figured out that it’s down to water coming through from the shower in the bathroom on the other side of the wall, she says.

In the corridor between the two rooms, she pushed her foot down onto the squelchy floor. “Sometimes you step, and you see the water coming up.”

She has complained to Martin Property Consultants about it many times, she says. “Many many many times.”

Carolina did once, in April 2022, get an email with a file attached explaining how to manage challenges like mould, with advice like a reminder to ventilate, she says. “Clearly, this isn’t just about proper ventilation.”

Earlier this year, the RTB issued an order after a mediation giving the landlord, OHR Developments, until 23 February to remedy the mould, fix the hole in the ceiling, and to try to fix the recurring sewage issue and tell the tenants how they are getting on.

A mediator had told them that the sewage block could be an issue with the public drains outside the property, said Carolina, and so down to a public body to fix.

Carolina says she thinks it’s related to the laundry room out back, as often the water that appears first up through the drains is blue with detergent.

The RTB deadline in February came and went.

On 20 August, Carolina said that Martin Property Consultants still hadn’t updated them about resolving the issues in the RTB’s order so it’s not clear whether the sewage issue is fixed or not.

OHR Developments said, in a letter on 9 September, that it had reviewed the issues raised at 2 Mount Tallant Avenue.

“And are satisfied that the property managers took all appropriate steps to minimise and ultimately resolve the situation,” they said.

Frustration on Stamer Street

It was early 2023, about 18 months after he moved in, that Graham McNulty first heard the leak in the ceiling of his ground floor apartment on Stamer Street in Portobello.

Small drips at first, he says. A plumber did come out and fix it up – but told him it wasn’t going to last, said McNulty recently.

He had a hole in the ceiling for months, he said, and could hear rats. “It sounded like they were playing football above your head.”

Martin Property Consultants sent out pest control but didn’t catch anything, he says.

Anyway, the patch didn’t last, he said. He could again hear the dripping in the ceiling and then it broke through, he says.

Water would leak from the shower above on the cooker, the fridge and the floor – and his dog Luna would lick it up, he says – an account he also told an RTB tribunal when he took a case against his landlord, Asset Resi Limited.

Martin Property Consultants never fixed the leak for him, he says.

Two Mondays in a row, his day off, McNulty was promised a plumber was coming, he says, after he sent in loads of requests, emailed, phoned and even went down to the office.

The first Monday he called and they said they had no record of a plumber being ordered, he says, and would organise one for the next week.

He rang the second Monday, he says, and was told one would definitely turn up that day. By 2.30pm, no plumber had arrived, though, and so he walked around to the office.

He heard them ring a plumber, and told them he would wait, he says. After a stand-off in the office, Martin told him he would send a plumber the next day, says McNulty. McNulty took the day off.

A plumber turned up late on a motorbike with no tools, he says, and said he needed a ladder and tools and would come back later. McNulty called him later that day – and the plumber said he was on his way home.

He took time off work the next day too – and the plumber came around the afternoon of the following day, he says. The plumber said he would do the same as before, and left, and that was the last McNulty heard.

“Nobody ever got back to me ever again,” he says, who has since moved out.

Slow or nonexistent follow-up mirrors what tenants such Benaddane, the Agnolons, and others, say too. Requests or emails are met with unfulfilled promises or silence.

The boiler broke in July 2023, says Ed Costello, in late March this year, as he packed and cleaned up his apartment – rented from Asset Resi 3 Limited through Martin Property Consultants – on Mountpleasant Avenue Upper in Rathmines.

There’s an actuator which you have to pull a lever to get it to work and to switch it off, he said. “Technically, while I still have heating, it’s a bit of a pain in the arse.”

He did report it to Martin Property Consultants, he says, mostly on the phone. Emails show him raising it in July, and September.

A plumber did then come around, and say he had to go price the work, says Costello. “I never heard from him again.”

On 29 February, Costello emailed in to end his tenancy.

“The central heating system in my home has been broken since July 2023. I have been forced to spend long periods away from my home during this period,” he said. “Mould has also begun to grow substantially in the bathroom.”

“Since that time I have made repeated efforts to have your company carry out the necessary repairs,” he wrote. “All to no avail.”

On Stamer Street, the shower leaking into McNulty’s apartment was in the flat above, where Vitor Bertocci lived. He had his own problems with it.

After Bertocci moved in October 2020, he quickly noticed that the stream of water was weak. “It was just not enough water for a person to shower.”

He did eventually get that replaced and sorted in early 2022, after months of back and forth, and filing a case at the RTB, he says.

Great in a sense, he says. But, also “that just made the leak between my apartment and Graham’s worse”.

One good thing to come out of it all was a very Dublin love story. The leak was how Bertocci and McNulty, his boyfriend, met – and the relationship paved the way for escape from the building.

Bertocci moved out a month later. McNulty much later moved in with him. “I wanted to take him out of there,” says Bertocci – away from the leak, mould, and rats.

At an RTB tribunal hearing, McNulty guessed at how many maintenance requests he had put in about the leak. Seven maybe, he said.

But it was an estimate. While tenants sometimes call and email, Martin Property Consultants does have a portal for filing maintenance requests – but that doesn’t automatically send any confirmation of receipt to tenants, tenants say.

In June, when Juliana Agnolon again filed a ticket about the recurring sewage overflow, she called afterwards, she says, and the person on the other end of the line said they hadn’t gotten any ticket through.

“So I don’t know what to do. Because when you fill out the form on the website, it doesn’t send you a copy,” she said.

At the RTB hearing about McNulty’s case, Miceal Martin said that he didn’t dispute the evidence that McNulty had given there about the leak, according to the tribunal report.

“He said that his company made efforts to deal with the problem but he accepted that their efforts fell short of what was needed,” the report says.

After McNulty moved out, he checked back on the website of Martin Property Consultants, curious about what would be on the listing.

In the photos re-advertising the property, there was still a hole in the ceiling. The rent had been increased just a little, said McNulty. “Maybe it was the water feature.”

Valpre Capital, the investment fund behind Asset Resi Limited and Asset Resi 3 Limited, were asked for their response to these issues and said in an email, “We take the welfare and comfort of our tenants very seriously.”

The fund can’t comment on specific cases but the questions raised have been passed to the relevant management agent, they said. “The agent assures the Fund that they will investigate matters thoroughly and, where appropriate, take the necessary steps to address the concerns raised.”

What responsibilities?

Legally, landlords are mostly responsible for the maintenance of homes that they own and are renting out.

But the nature of the agreement in place between the landlords and any property managers also comes into it, says Gareth Redmond, a policy advisor at the housing charity Threshold.

Neither Martin Property Consultants nor any of the landlords mentioned responded to, or addressed, queries about responsibility for maintenance and conditions in the properties.

Overall responsibilities of property managers are laid out in the law, and a code of conduct overseen by the Property Services Regulatory Authority. They have to act in the best interests of clients – but also always in a lawful manner, says its guide.

“Licensees must be aware of not straying beyond lawful actions, even if requested to do so by their client,” says the guide.

Redmond says that arguably, not doing maintenance to the extent that, say, a prohibition notice is issued, could count as a breach of that.

Four rental apartments flagged by Dublin City Council in recent years as in such poor condition that they shouldn’t be relet without works to bring them up to code – and issued with prohibition notices – link back to the same investment managers at the Ireland Israel Fund and Martin Property Consultants.

Another five flats at 45 Anna Villa in Ranelagh – owned by Asset Resi Limited and let by Martin Property Consultants – were recently issued with prohibition notices too.

The PRSA database doesn’t list any case of breaches of the code by Martin Property Consultants.

Valpre Capital said in an email that: “All properties within the estate are fully compliant with local and national regulations.”

“Where matters are brought to the Fund’s attention by Dublin City Council or any other relevant regulatory body, our representatives engage fully to ensure a satisfactory resolution is found within a reasonable timeframe,” they said.

Redmond said he would advise tenants to be aware of the PRSA and put in a complaint, if a property manager isn’t willing to comply with the legislation.

The PRSA has a different view on what falls under its remit though.

“Matters relating to violations of the planning laws, inadequate maintenance of a property or the renting of a property that falls below the required standard in law do not fall under the 2011 Act and would be referred to the respective Authority / Body responsible  for their necessary attention,” said a spokesperson for the PRSA.

In 2022, the Department of Justice did consider the idea of making estate and letting agents responsible for checking the standards of homes before they rent them out.

But they recommended against it, to the Department of Housing. Among the reasons for ditching it were concerns that estate agents weren’t qualified to do that, and that it could lead to a conflict of interest between serving their clients and serving local authorities, said a department analysis.

It could also lead to fewer rental properties being available, it said.

No changes

In January 2023, Simon Harris, who was then Minister for Justice, suggested an alternative to putting more responsibility for standards on estate agents.

Requiring landlords to get certificates of compliance before renting a home out should be considered instead, he said in a letter to Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien.

Others, like the housing charity Threshold have also pushed for that.

Members of the Housing Commission meanwhile have recommended that the rental inspections system be reformed to target those most likely to be substandard, and create a new agency to do inspections.

It should also make breaches of standards “improper conduct” under the RTB regulatory framework, making a broader array of penalties available for non-compliance, the commission said.

“Multiple or repeated breaches of a serious or material nature should attract more significant sanctions or affect the ability to act as a landlord,” it said.

The maximum level of damages in respect of disputes (currently €20,000) and sanctions (currently €15,000), should be revisited too, it said, “considering the high levels of rent in Ireland”.

“This is to enable appropriate compensation to victims of breaches in the case of disputes and to act as an appropriate deterrent to serious misconduct,” it said.

When the Department of Housing finally released its review of the rental sector in July this year, it didn’t suggest any changes to inspection, or the enforcement of rental standards, aside from more education of landlords by the RTB.

A spokesman for the department said that it had looked at the idea of a certificate of compliance for rented homes. But “a number of issues were identified in the context of the potential implementation of such a system”, they said.

It would have to be designed in a way that “protects tenants, can be implemented by housing authorities, and avoids disrupting the rental market through unintended consequences”, they said.

Issues included a time lapse between a property being available and being certified, and the time to resolve issues flagged, they said, and how long a certificate would last. Also, there’s a constrained labour market,  they said.

“It is worth noting that in 2023, a total of over 76,000 new tenancy registrations were received by the RTB,” they said, so certification would require “a significant lead-in period in order to minimise market disruption”.

The Department of Housing spokesperson pointed to current penalties.

A landlord who contravenes the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019, and fails to comply with council notices, will be guilty of an offence and will be liable, on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding €5,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or both, they said.

If the offence continues after conviction, the person will be guilty of a further offence on every day on which the offence continues and for each such offence will be liable, on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding €400 per day.

“There are no current plans to increase the penalties in respect of non-compliance with the rental standards,” said the spokesperson.

Very few cases progress to court, though, figures show.

McNulty was awarded €500 from his landlord by the RTB, for failure to carry out repairs and maintenance.

Carolina Agnolon says she thinks the penalties for poor maintenance should be much more substantial to give the threat of them any impact. “Like a very big fine.”

Checking standards

Already, homes rented with support from the government subsidy HAP are supposed to undergo an inspection to make sure they meet minimum standards, within eight months of a first rental payment, say the council website.

Tenants renting through Martin Property Consultants pay rent to an entity called Arckwood Property Management.

Arckwood Property Management has been paid €6.38 million in HAP and Homeless HAP payments since the beginning of 2022, show records released under FOI.

Guido’s rent for the converted office without what she considers adequate ventilation and with a window that doesn’t open – is supported through Homeless HAP.

Environmental health inspectors from Dublin City Council have looked at her home, she said. But she hadn’t seen a copy of any inspection reports, she said on 17 July.

After a press query, Guido got a copy of the report that followed an inspection done in November 2023.

Mould was all over the flat, it said – around the wardrobe, and the window, the door, the ceiling and the bed. The landlord should look into what was behind it and carry out remedial works, said the improvement notice.

Inside her studio flat on 17 July, Guido pointed to a patch on the ceiling, a brighter white than the area around it.

Earlier this year, workers had come in and painted over any mould that had been there, she says. “They just covered.”

Videos show the repainting underway. The camera scans the room, and the water stains, and patches of black mould that blanketed the walls, and spread across the ceiling.

On 17 July, Guido dragged the bed away from the wall to show new smaller patches of black mould. “It’s started again.”

What she really needs is ventilation, she says, a window that opens.

Guido opened the door to her oven, where she stores pots and a wooden rolling pin. The oven doesn’t work at the moment, she says. Neither have the two hobs on the right side of the cooker. Switched on high, they stay cold to touch.

Meanwhile, Guido also lived for months with noisy construction and a cement mixer on her doorstep, as builders worked to convert the bottom of the main building – once a pub, later a charity shop – to apartments.

The work was constant and loud for months, she says, and would start early at 7am. “I was studying, I couldn’t study, I was crying because I couldn’t get my studies done.”

She has to repeat some modules for her healthcare course, she says. She went to a doctor begging for help, crying, she says. “The stress, lots of stress.”

“I told my doctor, I don’t know what to do anymore. For me, life is not … you know …”, she says, trailing off and her voice breaking up.

There had been a laundry area in the yard that she used, she says. But construction workers took away those washing machines last year, so she had to ask a neighbour for a key to the main building to use machines, she says. “I have to go all around the building and go to door 69.”

Benaddane, who lives on the top floor of 69, says that having so many people use one washing machine and one dryer means they run at all hours, and shakes the building. “It’s pure disorder.”

The washing machines sit on a landing in the building. The pipes disappear through a wall, and open out onto the flat roof, and the waste water pools there, below his kitchen window. “Sometimes, it does stink,” he says.

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to queries sent on 27 August about its inspections at 69-71 Harold’s Cross Road, including of Guido’s flat.

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said that there is an open planning enforcement file relating to 69-71 Harold’s Cross Road, with investigations ongoing. But “no further information available at this time”, they said on 18 July, so it is unclear what this relates to exactly.

The property isn’t the only building connected to Martin Property Consultants that has the attention of planning enforcement.

In late 2020, neighbours of a property on 59 Leinster Street North reported the illegal conversion of a workshop at the back of the house to apartments.

The property owners, Keren Ireland Israel Limited – with an address at Martin Property Consultants – had noted at one point on its website that it planned to build apartments in the warehouse area at the back of the building.

Dublin City Council sent a warning notice to Keren Ireland Israel Limited in September 2020, show emails.

In September 2021, the council gave Keren Ireland Israel Limited until 3 January 2022 to cease its  “unauthorised residential use of the structure to the rear of 59 Leinster Street North”.

As of 6 September, the RTB’s register said there were active tenancies in flats 8 and 9, the same numbers as the doors in the structure at the back of the building.

The planning enforcement case is still going through the courts.

Ofri Kadosh, a co-owner of Keren Ireland Israel Limited, said that the property has been subject to enforcement proceedings.

“We employed the services of Martin Property Consultants to bring us in compliance with the order and to date all parties are satisfied with the progress,” he said by email.

In Harold’s Cross, Guido really wants to move out from her studio, she says. She is looking all the time but the competition is just too fierce. “What can I do?”

And, if the council considered that she was leaving voluntarily, she would have to find a new place with the lower, standard-rate HAP rather than the Homeless HAP rate that she currently gets.

That, she says, would make what feels like a near-impossible search even harder.

On Mount Tallant Avenue, Juliana Agnolon says they’ve been searching in vain also. “We just want to leave,” she says. “But we just couldn’t find a place.”

Benaddane says some days, he will open the front door to the building at 69 Harold’s Cross Road, smell the mould and must from the bin room by the entrance and see the grimy stairs and just want to turn around and go anywhere else.

Miceal Martin and Martin Property Consultants didn’t respond to queries sent by email and delivered to their office, regarding the matters dealt with in this article.