Prices in Dublin stabilising as average rent in Ireland rises to €1,800
Acmodation Has Rental Continues Although Months Report “extraordinary” Slightly In Shortage Improved An This Suggests The Recent Of
The average price of market rents in Ireland has risen over 10% in the last year and now stands at just under €1,800 as the “yawning gap” between “very strong demand and very weak supply” continues across much of the country.
Daft.ie’s latest quarterly rental report shows that while prices in Dublin appear to be stabilising, they are rising sharply outside the capital and also on the up in each of the other main cities of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford.
Furthermore, the report suggests an “extraordinary” shortage of rental accommodation continues although this has improved slightly in recent months. On the first day of this month, there were fewer than 1,200 homes available to rent across the country, according to Daft.ie.
Trinity College Dublin associate professor Ronan Lyons, who wrote the report, said that the levelling off of growth in Dublin — where prices rose 0.3% in quarter two — may be due to the capital being the “focal point” for increased supply of rental homes built in the last five years.
“While Dublin has lost existing rental homes due to landlords selling up, so have other parts of the country. Indeed, only in Dublin has new supply had any chance of offsetting the terminations recorded by the RTB,” he said.
“The good news is that the close-to-stable rents being seen in Dublin at the moment are at least in part another exhibit in the long list of evidence that supply is the solution to a supply shortage and to high prevailing rents.
In rent pressure zones, sitting tenants cannot have their rent increased beyond 2% a year. The Daft.ie report said that, on average, rents for sitting tenants have risen 2.8% each year over the last decade but the increase for the year to mid-2023 at 3.8% is the largest in seven years.
For market rents, these were 10.6% higher than a year ago.
For renters looking for a single-bed rent-a-room in Cork city centre, this had risen 13% to €614 in the last year. This had risen by 21% to rent a single room in Limerick city centre at €552 and by 22% for a double bedroom to €672.
The average rent in Cork city, meanwhile, is €1,793, just one euro above the national average. Rents in the country are highest in South County Dublin with an average market rent of €2,601. The cheapest average rent in Dublin was to be found in North County Dublin, at €2,144.
Mr Lyons said that the rental stock in Dublin has risen significantly but is coming from an extremely low base while other cities are also faring badly in terms of rental stock.
“In both Limerick and Waterford cities, there were just seven homes to rent on August 1st,” he said. “Technically, in the case of Waterford, that’s an improvement on two on the same date a year ago. But nobody would argue that a single-digit number of homes is anywhere close to adequate for some of Ireland’s principal cities.”
Mr Lyons added that conditions remain “far from benign” for prospective tenants and affect some parts of the country worse than others.
“Indeed, in Connacht-Ulster, rents jumped over 6% in just three months pushing the annual rate of inflation to its highest level ever recorded (21.2%) in a series stretching back to early 2006,” he said.