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HOUSING CHARITY THRESHOLD has said renters and first-time buyers are facing an “impossible situation” after a new report showed an increase in prices outside of Dublin in the past year.
The latest rental report from Daft.ie revealed that the average monthly rent in Ireland during the first quarter of the year was 2.1% higher than the final three months of 2020.
Rents during the first three months of 2021 were found to have had their largest quarterly gain since the middle of 2018.
The report also showed that housing supply has fallen outside Dublin, where the number of homes available to rent was up 20% on 1 May compared with the same date last year.
In contrast, only 1,150 rental units were available to rent outside the capital on 1 May – down one third from the same date in 2020.
The cost of renting increased in every city outside of Dublin in the twelve months to March, with the capital the only city in the country where rents fell from 2020 to 2021.
In the capital, the average monthly rent during the first quarter was €1,974, a drop of 6.5% over the past twelve months.
But rents outside of Dublin are 7.1% higher than they were in the first quarter of 2020, with renters paying €900 extra per year on average.
The highest increase was in Waterford, where the average cost of rent during the first quarter was €1,097 per month, up 8.3% on the same period last year.
The average rent in Cork city is now €1,483 per month, up 6.3% from last year. In Galway, the average rent is now €1,400 per month, up 6.1% from last year. And rents in Limerick city now cost an average of €1,293 per month, up 6.3% from 2020.
Outside of the five main cities, the average cost of rent is also up by an average of 7.3% year-on-year.
Nationally, the average monthly rent stood at €1,443 in the first quarter of 2021, up 1.7% over the past year and up by almost 95% from a low of €742 per month in late 2011.
According to the report, the different trends over the last year have reflected different trends in the availability of homes to rent, with supplies up in Dublin and down elsewhere.
Trinity College Dublin economist Ronan Lyons, who authored the report, explained that the contrast between Dublin and the rest of the country has been driven by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“In Dublin, additional supply moving over from the short-term lettings market coupled with a temporary halt to people moving to the city pushed rents down,” he said.
“Elsewhere, lockdown ground the rental market to a halt, with fewer listings pushing rents further up.”
Lyons warned that these differences would be unlikely to disappear as life returns to normal in the months ahead, with long-standing problems such as an undersupply of new rental homes likely to continue recent trends.
Threshold CEO John-Mark McCafferty warned that findings of the report, which also showed a drop in the number of homes available to rent, were not good for first-time buyers.
“With a year-on-year drop in the number of homes available to rent nationwide, combined with a lack of affordable homes to buy, prospective first-time buyers remain in an impossible situation,” he said.
McCafferty also claimed that rent increases across the country show that rules around Rent Pressure Zones – which limit rent increases in certain areas to 4% a year – are not being obeyed.
“We are seriously concerned about affordability for single people in the rental market, with for example the cost of renting a double room in Galway City Centre up 16% in a year,” he said.
“Given that Galway City is a designated Rent Pressure Zone, it is yet more evidence that the RPZs are not being adhered to.”
He called on the government to invest more in the construction of housing to tackle the problem, urging the government to build 75,000 homes over the next five years, rather than the 50,000 homes set out in the Programme for Government.
The full Daft report can be found here.
Mounting criticism
The report comes as the government faces mounting criticism for the lack of housing supply for renters and would-be buyers across the country.
The issue came to the fore last week after a so-called ‘cuckoo fund’, Round Hill Capital, bought 135 homes at a new development in Maynooth, Co Kildare.
Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe and Public Expenditure Michael McGrat met after Cabinet yesterday to further discuss what proposals are on the table to dealing with investment funds.
While there was a discussion at Cabinet on housing today, a government spokesperson said he could not provide a timeline as to when the measures might be announced or implemented.
A senior source confirmed that such provisions could take a “week or two”.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Journal yesterday, O’Brien indicated that he “isn’t ruling anything out.
While he said he didn’t expect to have the actual measures at Cabinet yesterday, he expected to have options to work through at some stage this week.
Contains reporting by Christina Finn. Note: Journal Media Ltd has shareholders in common with Daft.ie publisher Distilled Media Group.
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Germany Mark’s VE day with a public holiday?
Tune in next week when we celebrate International Women’s Day with Harvey Weinstein…
@Phil O’ Meara: danke
@Phil O’ Meara: Well they got what they wanted, they’ve taken over Europe, just took them another 50 years and less violence.
@Phil O’ Meara: I believe they refer to it as “Liberation Day”. Do you find them acknowledging their freedom from fascism so strange?
@Phil O’ Meara: Easter Sunday with Black and Tans anyone? Leo?
@Phil O’ Meara: what public holiday? No public holiday here in Germany
@Phil O’ Meara: Marking and celebrating are two different things. People all over the world mark the date of the Stephen’s day tsunami in Asia or 11th Sept.
@Phil O’ Meara: it’s not a public holiday in Germany, They do Celebrate Liberation Day, which refers to Freedom from Fascism,
@Phil O’ Meara: In the late 1940s the first Chancellor of post-war West Germany was Konrad Adenauer. He publicly denounced the ideology and practice of nazism. In the schools and elsewhere younger generations of Germans have been raised in a pro-democracy, anti-tyranny and pro-international ethos [ even if minority groups of neo-nazis have arisen despite this ] and Germany has also pursued a comprehensive foreign aid programme in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In the 1970s Willy Brandt as Chancellor visited Auschwitz and, although not religious in outlook, momentarily knelt at a monument to the holocaust. No modern state has publicly acknowledged and repented its recent evils in the way that Germany has.
@Dearbhal Teresa Cannon: I think it just in Berlin Dearbhal.
@KEN L: My IRA grand uncle was killed by the British army in 1921. He is not human sewage and a great many people around Ireland would take exception to your comment.
@Phil O’ Meara: Open a history book sometime Phil. One that explains what life was like for German people during WW2. Why shouldn’t they also celebrate their liberation from fascism?
@Garreth Byrne: Now compare how England has acknowledged and repented its centuries of colonialism and slaughter. Oh wait….
@KEN L: Oppression breeds resistance.
@Phil O’ Meara: Actually, it wasn’t all of Germany,it was Berlin. One of the federal states. A state obviously more progressive than yourself.
My grandfather got kill on that day in Berlin. He fought on the Eastern Front under Soviet command all the way to the Battle of Berlin.
@KEN L: Best and most under-rated war movie ever
My uncle left the Irish army and flew Lancaster’s with the RAF
@Richard Russell: good on him!
Did he return to Ireland after the war and how was he received?
Have read that soldiers who left the Irish army and fought with the British army were charged with desertion and stripped of pension rights etc and barred from working in the public service.
Would be interested in your views?
@Charles Alexander: desertion in wartime is an offence in all armies including those who of neutrals.
@Brendan Greene: I wasn’t disputing that well known fact but thanks.
@Charles Alexander: actually as I understand it some did not leave the Irish army but technically deserted the Irish army and joined the UK forces while still a serving member of the Irish Defence Forces and therefore are, by definition, deserters.
I may be incorrect but my understanding is that there was no action taken against Irish people in general who were free to go to the UK and join the Allied armies… it is only those who joined the UK army (and I assume if would have applied to any joining the German army as well) while a serving member of the Irish Army.
“An estimated 5,000 Irish soldiers joined the Allies in fighting Nazi Germany during World War II but were persecuted upon their return to Ireland for having deserted the Defence Forces.
They were denied all pay and pension rights and prevented from working for the State for a period of seven years” – https://www.thejournal.ie/defence-forces-amnesty-world-war-two-721706-Dec2012/
There were some anomalies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPO_362 – read more here – but most enlisted soldiers who desert are subject to court martial all over the world.
I am not agreeing or disagreeing with what happened just expanding upon the facts.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: my father was in the LDF during the war years while one of his friends was a capt a in in the Irish Armu and another was a Lietenant in the Royal Engineers serving with the 8th Army (Desert Rats) in North Africa. As a teenager I eavesdropped on their conversations.
I was astonished to learn that the higher pay the British Army were offering was an incentive for some to desert rather than higher motives.
@Richard Russell: did he get a medal?
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: my understanding also. A very interesting part of our history.
Many thanks for the attached – much appreciated.
“If the British soldiers who went up the beaches of Normandy could see England now they would not have gone 40 yards up that beach”
- David Irving
@KEN L: Well David Irving doesn’t think the Holocaust was a thing, so that should tell you all you need to know about him and the nonsense you just quoted.
@KEN L: David Irving? Why not throw in a quote from Lord Haw Haw!
@KEN L: Quoting pro-Nazi ‘historians’ is never a good look.
Or as the daily mail called it the other day
Victory OVER Europe day.
Such nonsense
@Barry: Such an educated bunch that work for the daily fail.
@Barry: That would be the same Daily Mail that was very keen on Herr Hitler right up until 1st September 1939.
Fair play. Was anticipating the usual cacophony of Brit bashing and one upmanalship so common on the Journal. Pleasantly surprised and given an insight into the Irish who joined the allies.
@Jack Inman: My dad’s uncle served in the RAF from 1942-43. Ground crew, not sure where. Had to put up with a lot of anti Irish bullying. Stupid Mick, Spud muncher, the usual sort of stuff. Went AWOL and got a ferry back to Dublin.
And in Poland? You know the place that had 1/5th of their population killed?
It was Russia that really defeated and destroyed the nazis,the yanks and brits won the smaller battles
@tuco: Of course The Soviet Union made great sacrifices in the defeat of Nazi Germany and it must be never never be forgotten. But to for example describe the Normandy landings as a smaller battle ..and remember it wasnt just British and American troops that made liberated France, Belgium, Denmark etc but many other nations too. So what is exactly your point?
Why no report on Russia the country that most turned the tide in WW2 and suffered the bigest loss of life?????
Glory to the Soviet Union, victor in chief of the anti fascist war!
Long live the memory of the outstanding leadership of Joseph Stalin!
Mairfidh a ainm go deo
@Micheál: i don’t think the millions who perished in the Siberian labour camps would share your view!
Stalin was an ansolute monster.
@Micheál: Uncle Joe to you little Michael. One of the few men in history who surpasses Hitler for brutality.
You do realise that the Russians beat the Nazi invaders despite Stalin, not because of him.
Idolising a paranoid psychopath says alot about you.
@Micheál:
Anti communist lies and distortions!
The bourgeoisie will never forgive Stalin for his principled and pro human outlook..let alone credit him with the victory over Hitler.
The Soviet soldiers went to battle with the cry “for the Motherland and Stalin!”
Hence, inter alia, the votes for women in France in 1946 and the NHS in Britain and other concessions to the working class after the war
@Micheál:
Who supported The Spanish Republic?
Who asked (in vain) the “democracies” for collective security against Hitler (in vain)?
Who offered to defend Czechoslovakia?
Who wanted the denazification if Germany post bellum?
Whom did the nazis fear most?
Who never fire bombed the German cities?
-Joseph Vissariónovich Stalin
@Micheál:
Whom did the nazis serve after the war?
To whom did they preferably surrender?
Did they have a good reason to do so?
What personnel set up the (West) German intelligence and police in 1949?
It’s all documented!
@Micheál: Yep, that’s the chap who said one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a statistic. Lovely chap, our Uncle Joe.
@Eric Dunn:
Eric, that is black propaganda, he never said that.
Put it beside his factual historical record and his writings and you will see
Arc of Triumph?
Did the BBC not roll out Capt Moore?
@MarkQ: no itv have program about him tonight tho
Victory that ensured Ireland could truly become an independent republic and not at best a puppet State of a new London.
have your say