Landlords are supposedly ‘fleeing the market’ - despite the numbers of those registered increasing by around 5% since last year.
The number of landlords registered with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) increased by 5.7% between September 2023 and 2024.
Property District CEO Carol Tallon told Newstalk Breakfast that these numbers don’t show the full picture of what is going on.
“I would love if this RTB data was the full story of the rental market – unfortunately it’s not,” she said.
“The RTB is only catching up with last year and the year befores CSO data.
“The reality is Ireland’s rental market has had a serious underreporting that is being corrected in recent years – but up until maybe 2002 and early 2003, there was a gap of at least between 50,000 and 60,000.
“That gap is now shortening – which is welcome – but we need to understand this in context.”
Landlord/ realtor holding out a key to your new home. Image: Sophie McAulay / Alamy. 17 November 2009Ms Tallon said that this 5.7% increase is more likely to be from already existing landlords who were previously operating in a ‘black market’ rental economy.
“I, like the RTB, welcome a more data driven approach to reporting on Ireland’s rental sector – we need accurate data to inform policymaking - but we’re just not there yet," she said.
“The reality is, we know our population is growing faster than housing can be delivered across all types of tenures.
“This isn’t a problem just with the rental sector – it's a problem with housing reporting as well.”
'Poor' rent control
According to Ms Tallon, these issues are a result of ‘poor’ rent control policies.
“The IMF (International Monetary Fund) fly in here on a regular basis; they fly into Dublin and tell us rent control doesn’t work – but it was politically popular, so we adopted it,” she said.
“The Housing Commission has recommended that we move to a system they refer to as ‘reference rents’.
"All of the data shows us rent control doesn’t work, and we didn’t have the political bravery to move away from that at a time when we ought to.”
Ms Tallon said recent data from real estate agencies paints a picture of a rental sector that is ‘running on fumes’.
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