Cork city rents 'far too high' despite falling for first time in nearly 10 years

Rents in Cork City are still “far too high” despite falling for the first time in nearly 10 years, Cork politicians have said.

The latest Daft.ie Rental Price Report for Q1 2023 showed that rents in Cork City fell in the first quarter of 2023 for the first time since the last quarter of 2013.

The average rent for properties in the city now stands at €1,731 per month.

While this represents a 7% increase year-on-year, it marks a decrease of just over 2% on the final quarter of last year.

In the county, the average rent is now €1,370 a month – an increase of 8.9% year-on-year and an increase of 3.2% on the last quarter of 2022.

“The report may be telling us that rents have dipped in Cork [City] since the start of the year but don’t expect to see anyone dancing for joy in the streets over it,” Socialist Party TD Mick Barry said, commenting following the publication of the report. 

“We need to see major cuts in the price of rent.

“That’s not going to be delivered by the market - it’s only going to be delivered by rent cut legislation and by a big increase in the availability of social housing,” he continued.

Fine Gael Party TD for Cork North-Central Colm Burke also told The Echo that he believes rents in Cork are “far too high”.

“The reason why Cork has gone ahead of an awful lot of other places is because the number of jobs created in Cork has been phenomenal in the last ten years,” he said. 

Mr Burke stated that residential accommodation needs to be provided on site “in relation to hospitals, in relation to army barracks, and in relation to a whole lot of other State agencies”.

“The State needs to be far more proactive about doing that."

Mr Burke pointed to government plans to commit up to €750m via the Land Development Agency and other providers to construct between 4,000 and 6,000 additional rental units in urban areas if they are part of the cost-rental system – one of the recently announced measures to speed up the delivery of housing and drive down building costs – and said he is seeking an update on the progress of this measure.

Nationally, market rents have risen by 11.7% in the 12 months since March 2022, according to the Daft report. Nationwide, there were just 959 homes available to rent on May 1. The average market rent nationwide between January and March was €1,750 per month, compared with €1,387 in the first quarter of 2020 and a low of just €765 per month seen in late 2011.

The report’s author, Trinity College Dublin associate professor of economics Ronan Lyons said, while figures in the latest report “offer some crumbs of comfort”, the solution to Ireland’s rental housing shortage requires “significant action” by policymakers.

“The number of rental homes coming onto the market in newly-built developments has held up in recent months but is likely to reduce in the quarters ahead, unless issues around planning certainty and viability are addressed.

“Ultimately, policymakers must have a clear plan on how tens of thousands of new rental homes will be delivered this decade in all major towns and cities.”