The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) brought leading voices in Ireland’s housing sector together at a recent conference to reflect on twenty years of the Residential Tenancies Act, and to consider the opportunities and challenges ahead for Ireland’s rental sector. At the event, the RTB released new data on the state of the rental sector to inform this conversation.
The results draw on RTB annual tenancy registration data to answer key questions about Ireland’s rental market.
What size is Ireland’s rental sector?
The RTB Profile of the Register series is the most authoritative source of data on the size and profile of Ireland’s rental sector. Q3 2024 data shows that registered private and Approved Housing Body tenancies continue to grow.
Registered private tenancies rose by 8.4% annually to 236,198, while Approved Housing Body tenancies have also grown by 15.6% annually to 49,195 in Q3 2024.
The number of private landlords has increased by 5.7% annually to 104,327. Numbers have now increased in every quarter from Q2 2023 across most sizes of property portfolio from 1 to 100+ tenancies.
What rent are tenants paying today?
The quarterly RTB/ESRI Rent Index tracks price developments in the Irish rental market over time. It provides the most accurate picture of how average rents are changing for new and existing tenancies in Ireland. Q2 2024 data shows that growth in average new tenancy rents has slowed.
The standardised average rent for new tenancies rose by 4.7% annually to €1,644 in Q2 2024. This is down from a growth rate of 8.3% in Q1 2024. This is primarily driven by Dublin, where annual growth in average new tenancy rents was 2.5% compared with 8.9% outside Dublin.
Existing tenancy average rents rose faster than new tenancies for the first time, but sitting tenants still pay less. The standardised average rent for existing tenancies rose by 5.8% annually to €1,415. This is €229 lower than for new tenancies.
How are rents changing at individual property level?
The ESRI’s Individual Property Level Analysis is a peer-reviewed study that tracked the changes in rent reported for individual properties seen at least twice in RTB registration data from Q2 2022 to Q1 2024 (182,250 matched property pairs). The findings show that rents at individual property level grew more slowly than average rents in the market-wide Rent Index.
The average growth rate in rent across all properties tracked was 2.6%, with 60% of tenants seeing no annual increase in rent.
Rent increases were lower in RPZs. Rents for individual properties with ongoing tenants in Dublin grew on average by 1.3% annually to Q1 2024, by 1.4% in other RPZs but by 3.5% in non-RPZ areas. Rents for properties where tenants changed in Dublin grew on average by 2.8% annually to Q1 2024, by 5.2% in other RPZs but by 14.0% in non-RPZ areas.
Large rent increases more likely outside RPZs. 16.5% of ongoing tenants in non-RPZs experienced rent increases of 8% or more compared with 2.8% of tenants in Dublin and 4.8% in other RPZs.
