Absentee landlord

Absentee landlord is an economic term for a person who owns and rents out a profit-earning property, but does not live within the property's local economic region. The term "absentee ownership" was popularised by economist Thorstein Veblen's book of the same name, Absentee ownership.

When used in a local context, the term refers to a landlord of a house or other real estate, who leases the property to tenants, but fails to ensure that proper maintenance is done on it. This in turn leads to what may appear to be abandoned buildings, causing significantly lowered property values and urban blight.

Tax policy seems, overall, to favour absentee ownership. However, some jurisdictions seek to extract money from absentee owners by taxing land. Absentee ownership has sometimes put the absentee owners at risk of loss.

Absentee landlords were a highly significant issue in the history of Ireland. During the course of 16th and 17th centuries, most of the land in Ireland was confiscated from Irish Catholic landowners during the Plantations of Ireland and granted to English settlers who were members of the established churches (the Church of England and the Church of Ireland at the time); in Ulster, many of the landowners were Presbyterians, also known as English Dissenters. Seized land was given to English nobles and soldiers, some of whom rented it out to the Irish, while they themselves remained residents of England. By 1782 the Irish patriot Henry Grattan deplored that some £800,000 was transferred annually to such landlords. He attempted to place an extra tax on remittances to England. But many absentees also reinvested part of their rents into roads and bridges, to improve local economies, that are still seen today. A notable beneficial absentee in the 19th century was Lord Palmerston, who went into debt to develop his part of Sligo; an investment that eventually paid off.

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