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LAST UPDATE | 22 Nov 2022
THE IRISH RENTAL market has seen record levels of rent inflation in the last 12 months, as there continues to be an “extreme” shortage of properties available to rent according to the latest Daft.ie report
Their latest report found that market rents have jumped by 14.1% in the third quarter of 2022, compared with the same period last year.
This is the highest year-on-year price hike since Daft began its reports in 2006 and is higher than the previous record of 12.6% recorded last quarter.
The average market rent during the Q3 was €1,688 per month, which is a 4.3% rise compared to Q2. This is also the highest quarter-on-quarter rise ever recorded in a Daft.ie rent report.
The average market rent in Q3 is also 120% higher than the average market rent seen in late 2011, which was €765 a month.
However, rents may be higher or lower depending where in the country you live.
Dublin has continued to trend higher than the national average in rent inflation, with it rising 14.3% year-on-year.
Cork city has seen a slightly smaller jump, but rent inflation has still risen by 12.1% compared to Q3 2021.
While both Dublin and Cork are seeing large jumps in rent inflation, larger hikes in rent are being seen in cities like Galway (16.4%), Limerick (17.1%) and Waterford (17.1%).
Here’s the overall picture:
Lack of properties
Alongside rising prices, the Daft report also highlights the ongoing shortage of properties available to rent throughout the country.
As of 1 November, there were 1,087 homes available to rent nationwide.
While this is an increase compared to figures recorded on 1 August, when only 716 homes were available, it is down a quarter compared to the same period in 2021.
It is also only a quarter of the average number of homes which were available to rent between 2015 and 2019.
In Dublin, there were just 345 rental properties available as of 1 November, which is up slightly from the 292 which were available on 1 August.
The latest report also includes an analysis of rent paid by sitting tenants.
According to this survey, rents for sitting tenants has risen by 3.4% each year over the last decade. Sitting tenants in Dublin have a higher than average rise year-on-year at 4.9%.
Under current Rent Pressure Zone (RPZ) legislation, rents can only be raised either by the rate of inflation or 2%, whichever is lower.
Due to the current rate of inflation running at 8.2%, rents in RPZ’s cannot be hiked more than 2%.
Collapse in availability
Report author Ronan Lyons, an Associate Professor of Economics at Trinity College Dublin, said that the continued rise in rents is due to a collapse in availability.
“Over the past 20 years, the best predictor of future changes in rents is the number of homes available at any particular point in time. As that has collapsed over the past 18 months, it was apparent that there would be significant upward pressure on rents all across the country,” Lyons said.
“This has been confirmed in these latest figures, which show record quarterly and annual increases in market rents, despite rents already being at very high levels.”
Sinn Féin’s Housing Spokesperson, Eoin Ó Broin has also reacted to the report, calling on Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien to take “emergency action” to tackle the rising rents.
“The Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, must take emergency action to tackle runaway rents. This means a three-year ban on rent increases. It means a properly designed refundable tax credit to put a month’s rent back into every private renter’s pocket,” Ó Broin said
“It also means increasing and accelerating the delivery of genuinely affordable cost rental homes.”
He also criticised the Government for placing too much bureaucracy on both Local Authorities and Approved Housing Bodies, saying that this is preventing the development of affordable cost rental homes.
Ó Broin called on the Government to support a Sinn Féin private members motion, which would declare a housing emergency.
Social Democrats Housing Spokesperson Cian O’Callaghan also criticised the Government, calling the continued rent increases proof of the “abject failure” of the Housing for All plan.
“The Government is busy patting themselves on the back and congratulating themselves as 28,000 homes are predicted to be delivered this year, despite a general consensus that at least 40,000 new build homes are needed each and every year,” O’Callaghan said.
“We need an end to the constant Government spin on housing and a relentless focus instead on delivering homes that are affordable to rent and buy.”
Speaking outside Leinster House this morning, People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett, calling the Government’s Housing for All plan “an absolute shambles”.
“I mean, there are so many aspects to the Government’s failure on this housing disaster that we are facing, it’s difficult to count them but we now have, with rents going up to over €2,200 on average in Dublin, €2,400 in South Dublin.”
“That means a whole generation of young and working people on average and below-average incomes have no chance at all of being able to afford the rents out there or have even the remotest chance of being able to buy a house at the house prices, if they could even find places to rent or to buy.”
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No need to panic folks. FFFG and eamonn are sorting it out as I type.
@Paul Gorry: he’s dreaming up a new tax. Adult living with older adult.
@Paul Gorry: this is the desired result of FFG free market policy. They intentionally curtailed the supply social housing. Reducing the supply to increase demand and therefore profit. Them FF ministers pretend that they haven’t been in government or shoring FG up in government over past 6/7 years and they have ‘ inherited’ the problem. They are both the problem.
It’s great to see the No increasing rent in pressure hot spots working so well it’s absolutely great work from our leaders
@Blackie Connors: our “leaders” are landlords so yes great work from them in lining their pockets yes. :-)
@Joanne Stokes: assuming they are landlords surely a ban on rent increase would serve as a disincentive ?
@Blackie Connors: no worries lad you’ll get 20 euro one off lump sum towards the rent .
Mehole & Leak doing well with their rental properties in
@Pádraig Ó hAirtnéada: indeed
@Pádraig Ó hAirtnéada: you can go check this if you wish. Register of members interests on the Dail website. According to the one published in February 2022 Martin owns his constituency office and has no property supplied or lent. Varadkar has a private home and no property supplied or lent.
No fan of either or there parties but to say it helps themselves is not true from what I’ve seen.
@Maurice Bourke: Robert Troy didn’t list something like 11 of his properties so I wouldn’t be so sure about their declarations Maurice.
@Maurice Bourke: when they’ve a near 1/1 of being hired as consultants and lobbyists by fund management companies after they finally get wedged out of office, everything they do to push up prices of EVERYTHING is in their best interests, and they’re well aware what side their bread is buttered on when it comes to actual public benefit vs. the line on the chart.
@Pádraig Ó hAirtnéada: What’s happened to the spirit of “mol an óige”? I’d prefer to hear people giving credit where it’s due, instead of constant negativity and assuming that everyone else is doing their worst. I didn’t vote for either of them but at least credit those not exploiting people, instead of giving free publicity to imaginary villains.
@David Corrigan: while that part about troy is true, we are talking about the leaders here. Anyone else in ff or fg with leader ambitions would find out they were a landlord and didn’t declare it would leak it to the media. MM of LV would have to resign – like troy did. Or is everyone in ff or fg too moral to contemplate such a move.
@Maurice Bourke: genuine question – can their partners own properties and they don’t need to be declared?
@Podge: yep
@Maurice Bourke: I wonder if the property is in the wife (or husband) name would it have to be declared ?
Quick tell Leo Varadkar! Once he becomes aware of this new shocking revelation, he will no doubt take immediate action to address it..
Lol!
@David Van-Standen: yes up his rent in his properties to line his pockets of course he will :-)
@David Van-Standen: while Mehole is chewing a pencil trying to take the lesson in.
@Joanne Stokes: what properties? He’s not a landlord but sure throw out misinformation and get the likes why not
Mehole & Leak doing well with their rental properties
Nothing will be done it suits the TDs as majority of them are landlords especially FF/FG. Their plan work, lock ppl out of possibly buying so they have to rent. Shame on them all.
@Joanne Stokes: please state what TDs have done to favour small landlords. If what you are saying is true then you should easily show it. Where as I can point to the increased charges and taxes added to landlords proving they are not doing small landlords any favours.
@Craic_a_tower: then stop being (terrible ) landlord. Simple. Get a job a twitter or something.
@Craic_a_tower: hence we find ourselves in the sh1 t we are in. If it was as lucrative as everyone would like to make out there would be far more rental properties
@transik: what makes me a terrible landlord? Is it upgrading the BER rating or providing accommodation for people for over 40 years? I also have a job. What are you doing to provide housing? I am actually providing a service and if you want less landlords I will soon oblige by selling up
@Joanne Stokes: they’ll squeeze as much out of it as they can for themselves then let the next lot in charge to deal with the mess!
Honestly I think they are making hay while they can ..rent increases, pay increases while the rest of the country is scraping by.
@Craic_a_tower: so after 40 years I’m sure you’re ready to sell up now as property has increased again to Celtic tiger levels. Handy pension assets after tenents paid of those mortgages and assets grown so high. So hardly mister social philanthropist as you attempt to
portray.
Dail td landlords are laughing.naked greed.
@Lee Casey: indeed
Lots of criticism of the Government in the comments but really no practical advice on how to solve the crisis. Typical Irish response.
@Roger Bond: but it’s the governments job to solve the issue not Joe Publics and god knows the government are getting paid very well to do so.
@Roger Bond: Good man Roger. Playing a blinder as usual. Well done you.
Come to “Raise the Roof” housing rally in Dublin this weekend.
Government sitting on one of the biggest social housing budgets ever but are delivering them at a snail pace. One can only read that as not wanting to reduce property prices for their developer buddies or reducing rents for their own properties. Keep the rich rich and keep the poop poor, in fact make the poor poorer.
@Jason Walsh: or maybe there is a massive labour shortage in the building industry and the planning system has so many hoops and costs that everything takes ages to happen for 2x the cost it should be, not to mention the not in my backyard crew that hold up eveything up. Odd they’d bring in rent control if they were concerned about increasing landlords bottom line
@Damon16: Well then publish the reasons why it’s not working. Tell the people why things are not working instead of telling the people lies that the Housing for All scheme is working perfectly.
It’s not that difficult to be honest for God’s sake.
@Jason Walsh: I wouldn’t blame the government for the lack of spending of the budget (they have made a mess of housing in general). It’s the governments job to provide the funding and the housing authorities (councils) to spend it. If it’s not been spent then questions need to be asked as to why councils aren’t drawing this money down. It may be planning delays or some other reason.
@The next small thing: If that’s the case, then where are county councils spending all their extra revenue from the property tax plus all the other utilities added on? It was hard enough to save enough for a mortgage when the idea was to own your own place. Now people are supposed to be wealthy enough to pay for the fact that they have a roof over their heads, having taken out the biggest loan of their lives. I’d be fine with people paying more tax on second or fourth holiday homes, but it still strikes me as warped to tax people who managed to scrape enough together when homes were generally affordable.
@Fiona Fitzgerald: the property tax is spent on day to day expenditure e.g. wages, street lights, housing repairs etc, the money the government department supply is for the capital projects i.e. new houses, major refurbishments. It’s why some councils will leave properties vacant as when the cost of getting the house back into circulation goes over a certain amount it becomes capital works and they can claim the money back off the government department.
Most councils are currently going through their budget process for next year so if you check your councils website you can see exactly where the money from property tax, commercial rates etc is being spent.
You may agree or disagree with property tax but if you scrap it then it needs to be replaced with another tax and in my opinion it’s better to tax something like property rather than increase payroll taxes.
Illegal in Germany to increase rent more than 15% over a 3 year period. Nearly impossible for landlords to terminate rental contracts. Ireland needs better tenant protection.
@Johannes Baader: they also have long term leasing unlike here.
@Paul Clancy: the tenants also have to repaint when they leave, can be kicked out for non payment of rent along with needing to supply their own kitchens and furniture.
@Craic_a_tower: yip, I like that idea, you can sell your kitchen to the people taking over the lease or it goes with you. Plenty of options. Would be interesting to find out a comparison of private to corporate landlords in both countries.
@Paul Clancy: landlords just really want the part where people have to pay their rent and not wait over 2 years. The landlords in Germany get the property back in the condition they rented it out in. That means the kitchen tends to be removed. Here we have to provide all white appliances too. Germany also got huge amounts of free money to set this all up after WWII along with free land due all the dead people as a result of the war.
No country for modest earners anymore.
Magnificent from our government. A generation of young people either spending all they earn to line the pockets of boomer landlords or being forced into emigration. Destroying the fabric of society when nurses/teachers/gardai can’t even afford to work but shur it’s all the fault of Putin/Covid/global markets.
Make sure to keep voting for FF & FG everyone, they’ll surely fix the problems next time!
@Rochelle: you do understand boomer doesn’t really relate to Ireland and is about an American demographic.
345 properties in Dublin this is untrue. There are few big landlords with few hundreds properties. Cherrywood for instance over 500 apartments.
So there are much more properties at the moment so problem is price not quantity.
@artur fil: don’t understand the article then. People are living in places so they aren’t available to rent. It isn’t a count of what is rented
And some yobs still think there’s a crash on the horizon… Current supply and demand don’t allow for a collapse in the next 10-20 years.
have your say