Number of private tenancies rose 7.6% in 2024 – RTB
Despite concerns that landlords are leaving the market, new research from the State body which regulates the rental sector shows the number of registered private tenancies rose by 7.6% last year to 240,964.
The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) also found there was a significant rise in tenancies in properties provided by Approved Housing Bodies which was up 14.5% to 50,507.
The number of private landlords increased by 4.5% to 105,594 last year.
Rosemary Steen, a director of the RTB, said the information “may challenge some common narratives on the housing sector but it is based on current data from the RTB’s national register of tenancies”.
Ms Steen said that while the standardised average rent for new tenancies has continued to grow, the rate of increase has started to slow.
“The big issue that we’re highlighting today is that the number of approved housing body tenancies, for the first time, has passed 50,000,” she said.
Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, Ms Steen said that this was significant to highlight in terms of how the market may manage that addition going forward.
She said that the rate of landlords leaving the market is the lowest it has been since the RTB began collecting this data.
“Landlords across all cohorts, from small landlords owning one to two properties, up to those owning over 100 tenancies, they are all growing across all categories,” she said.
“We are seeing some slowing in the institutional investors, there’s been a small drop off in Dublin where that’s clearly starting to slow as some of those developments slow,” Ms Steen said.
Last year, there were fewer landlords ending tenancies to sell properties as the RTB received 16,546 notices of termination down 13% on 2023.
The RTB said the time to resolve a dispute between a landlord and tenant had fallen significantly from ten to seven weeks in mediation cases.
The organisation said standardised average rent for new tenancies rose by 6.4% annually to €1,693 in the third quarter of last year.
It added that the mean rent for existing tenancies rose by 4.7% annually to €1,429 which is €264 lower than for new tenancies.
The RTB has also announced that Athlone has met the criteria for designation as a rent pressure zone.
Nationally, the RTB has it has launched a compliance campaign where rents had increased by more than 2%.
It issued emails to 8,652 landlords with 16,052 tenancies which were of concern.
Ms Steen said that the RTB will continue to target non-compliant landlords who have not registered tenancies.
Article Source – Number of private tenancies rose 7.6% in 2024 – RTB – RTE
