LRC Group
LRC “traditionally specialises in buying distressed asset portfolios”: in other words, they’re a vulture fund. They’ve been operating in Ireland since 2017, when they began buying up hotels and residential property portfolios with gusto. No doubt this shopping spree was aided greatly by LRC employee Justine O'Mahoney, head of portfolio management, who used to work managing a portfolio of NAMA loans.
Lone Star sells Dublin hotel in €676m deal with Israeli investor - Irish Times (archive version)
LRC now owns 2,036 rented properties across Ireland. While the majority are apartments concentrated in Dublin and Cork, there are plenty of others scattered across Limerick, Cavan, Kildare, Tipperary, Louth, Meath, Offaly, Galway and Mayo.
However, if you’re renting one of their properties it might take some detective work to figure out that your landlord is, in fact, the LRC Group. Their properties in Ireland are owned through subsidiary companies with names like Xerico, Orkstake, Zokralo and Hazeno Limited. All of these property-owning companies are registered in Cyprus, which makes it tricky for tenants in Ireland to find any information about their landlord.
This rental empire is managed by an agency called Home Club Ltd, run by Michelle Savage. As all the directors of LRC live abroad (in London, Luxembourg, Cyprus), Michelle often represents them in RTB cases. One of LRC’s Irish employees, Tim Moylan, is the secretary of Home Club Ltd - safe to say Home Club and LRC are very cosy.
LRC are adept evictors. Between October 2022 - April 2024, they served at least 100 Notices of Termination (eviction notices) on the grounds of 'Terminating before a Part 4/further Part 4 tenancy commences'.
In doing so they are taking advantage of a loophole whereby tenants who have come to the end of a ‘Part 4 tenancy cycle’ can be evicted without any reason. Terminating a tenancy on these grounds is now illegal, following a change in legislation in December 2021. Unfortunately, this only applies to tenancies that were created after June 2022. Which means any tenancy that started before 2022 can be ended for absolutely no reason after 6 years (or if 6 years have already passed, after 12 years, and so on).
Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2021 - RTB
Part 4 Tenancy - Citizens Information
This practice differs from other landlords who at least claim they want to sell or renovate their property in order to get their tenants out. LRC doesn’t even bother. They just want the tenants out for some undisclosed reason, “because they can”. The Dublin Inquirer calculated that in 2023 alone, LRC evicted 9.4% of its tenants.
Why is one of Ireland’s biggest landlords evicting so many of its tenants? - Dublin Inquirer
This is a particularly glaring abuse of the loopholes in rental legislation. Many of these cases were simply not fought in the RTB, presumably because tenants realised the legislation allowed them to be evicted in this way.
However, some tenants did fight back.
Applewood tenants Vida and Leonardo took several cases against Jersia Ltd.
Initially they wanted the landlord to address severe maintenance issues that made the apartment complex very unsafe and inaccessible:
“LRC have neglected our complex in Swords. I wanted to try buy the apartment and I was told I had to buy the whole complex... Then the maintenance stopped and I got a termination notice. People are afraid to ask for things to be fixed.”
Jekaterina and her young son were also issued with an eviction notice. She is still fighting the eviction, as they have nowhere else to go:
“Fingal County Council has no accommodation for us, so we are in limbo. I can’t find a place, it’s impossible. You can’t even get a viewing. It’s a waiting game now until the hearing. I don’t know what’s going to happen. If we are physically kicked out, we have nowhere to go. I am so stressed”.
CATU Fingal wrote to Home Club asking that they withdraw Jekaterina’s notice and offer her a new tenancy. They refused, saying:
“This property is scheduled for upgrade works and these are not works that can be done with a tenant in occupation”.
Which begs the question, why did they not say the reason they were evicting is to renovate?
In another case in May 2023, a Notice of Termination was served on the basis that LRC wanted to sell the property. The RTB decided the notice was valid, and the tenant was told to leave. In this situation, the landlord has 9 months from the date the property is vacated to put it up for sale.
Report of Tribunal Reference No: TR0223-006015 / Case Ref No: 1022-80783 - RTB
More than a year later in February 2025, there is no record of the property being sold, in either the Land Registry or Stamp Duty Registry. If the property was never put up for sale this would be a breach of Section 34 of the Residential Tenancies Act, and the eviction could potentially be considered invalid or illegal.
Residential Tenancies Act 2004: Section 34 - Irish Statute Book
The tenant in this case had been fighting the landlord/letting agency on various fronts, and it’s very possible this Notice of Termination was served in order to get rid of her.
When LRC came to Ireland in 2017, they did so knowing they could buy relatively cheap and demand high rents. But they also knew that HAP (Housing Assistance Payment) is an opportunity for long-term reliable profit. Tenants who receive HAP have their rent payments supplemented by payments from the Housing department of the local county council. This means LRC’s rental income is heavily supplemented by the Irish government.
It allows them to charge full market rents to tenants who otherwise couldn’t afford to pay this. Arguably, this helps to keep rents high for the rest of their tenancies, and for all other tenants across the country. In 2023, LRC’s HAP income was €2,122,985.76 while from January - October 2024, it was €1,348,961.68.
FOI submitted to Limerick City Council in Oct 2024
This is a total of €3,471,947.44 of what is essentially tax-payers money paid to a company who buys up swathes of housing (preventing individual buyers from buying their own home) and keeps rents high.