Irish household rents jump sharply after rent controls eased

The cost of renting a home in Ireland ​rose by 4.4% in the first quarter ​compared to the previous three months, ‌Ireland's largest ​property listings website Daft.ie said on Wednesday, the largest quarterly jump since it started collecting data in 2002. The scale of the rise suggests ‌that landlords widely took up the opportunity to reset rents to market levels at the end of a tenancy under recent changes the government made to its rent control system, said Ronan Lyons, a professor of ‌economics at Trinity College Dublin who analyses the data for Daft. Here are some details from ‌Daft's report:

* The 4.4% quarter-on-quarter rise beat the previous high of 3.7% recorded in 2022. Rental prices were 7.8% higher than a year ago at the end of March and are on average 40% above their pre-pandemic levels and 75% above ⁠the ​previous peak during the Celtic ⁠Tiger economy of the early 2000s. * The average market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Dublin rose 6.9% year-on-year to ⁠2,600 euros ($3,015) and by 13.3% and 18.4% respectively in Cork (2,120 euros) and Galway (2,290 euros).

* Listings have increased since ​the new rules came into force. While availability is still down in Dublin, the number of homes ⁠available to rent in the four other cities has almost doubled since the start of the year. * Trinity College's Lyons ⁠said ​this may be a timing effect with some landlords delaying listing properties until the new rules came into force in March. Overall supply remains very constrained with availability only slightly above half ⁠the 2015-2019 average.

* "The goal of changing the rules, to increase the supply of rental homes (by encouraging investment) and ⁠thereby improve affordability for tenants, ⁠depends on whether new rental housing is built. As the construction of new homes takes years, it will be some time before the ultimate impact of ‌the rules ‌can be assessed," Lyons said. ($1 = 0.8623 euros)

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