Ronan Lyons | Personal Website
Ronan Lyons | Personal Website

rental market

Buyer power: Latest rent figures suggest review of rent supplement will have an impact

Where is there oversupply in the Irish rental market? And where might there be shortgages? This post reviews the figures from the latest Daft.ie Rental Report, whose commentary is given by Minister Joan Burton. The headline figures suggest stability in rents, but that hides very different trends between the major urban markets, Dublin and Cork in particular, and the smaller rental markets. A comparison of supply and demand across the country suggests that rents should be falling faster in many parts of the country – turning the focus back on to rent supplement levels. Read more

Will the surge of properties on to the market push rents down?

The latest Daft.ie Rental Report shows that rents nationwide have been largely stable over the past twelve months. This post looks behind these top level figures and explores two issues in particular. The first is the stock available to rent in the cities across Ireland, and whether this will push rents down in coming months. The second is how far the rent-house price relationship has adjusted back to normality in the past four years… and how much more of an adjustment is needed. Read more

Scarcity drives year-on-year rents up for the first time since 2007

The Daft.ie Report reviewing the rental market in 2010 was released this week. This post outlines its major findings – including that rents are now at 1998 levels but are rising in the cities. It looks in detail at oversupply on the rental market, and how it has disappeared in some regions, in particular Dublin. It also finds that there is no systematic difference between trends in the 1-2 bed segment and in the 3-4 bed segment. Read more

As rents stabilise, the urban-rural gap widens in the rental market

This post reviews some very interesting findings from the real economy, at a time of great uncertainty about the government finances. In Ireland’s major cities, rents have stabilised, indicating a new floor may have been reached in income and jobs. This is not specific to any particular size of property. Instead, the big gap is between cities, which if anything may look understocked at the moment, and non-city areas, which are still significantly overstocked. Read more

Is it cheaper to buy or rent?

In this post, I take a look at the maths behind buying or renting. Amazingly, even in heady market of 2006, it was cheaper to buy than rent. With rates back down at very low rates, and generous mortgage interest relief, it is once again cheaper to buy than rent – and looks set to stay that way, unless there are significant changes to the tax system. Read more