Nearly half as many homes available to rent now compared to 2015-2019
Eva Osborne
There were almost 2,300 homes available to rent nationwide on August 1st, according to Daft.ie. This is down 14 per cent year-on-year and close to half the 2015-2019 average for availability of homes to rent.
The latest rental report by Daft.ie also showed that the average open-market rent nationwide between April and June was €2,055 per month, up from a low of just €765 in 2011 and 51 per cent higher than before the outbreak of Covid-19.
Market rents rose by an average of 1.6 per cent in the second quarter of 2025.
In recent years, rents in Dublin had been rising at a slower pace than elsewhere, reflecting the impact of both Covid-19 in reshaping location preferences and significant new purpose-built supply coming on stream more recently.
However, with the volume of new supply slowing considerably, inflation in the capital - at 6.5 per cent - is now close to the average seen in the rest of the country (7.3 per cent).
Daft.ie said there remains significant pressure in the rental markets of Ireland’s other cities. In Galway city, rents were up 8.5 per cent year on year, while in Cork city, they increased by 11.8 per cent in the same period.
Inflation was even greater in Waterford city (up 12.5 per cent) and, as has consistently been the case in recent quarters, Limerick city saw the highest inflation, at 14.9 per cent.
Outside the five major cities, rents rose by an average of 6.2 per cent over the last year.
Rental housing
Associate professor of economics at Trinity College Dublin, Ronan Lyons, said the upward march of rents continues, as availability shows little sign of improving.
As has been the case for almost 15 years, the solution to a deficit of rental housing is ensuring more rental housing gets built, he said.
“The average open-market rent nationwide - at a little over €2,000 a month - is twice the rent seen at the Celtic Tiger peak and 50 per cent higher than the level of rents that prevailed just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
"As has consistently been the case over the past 15 years, the substantial increases in rents are being driven by extreme scarcity of rental housing, relative to underlying need.
“Since the last report, the government has moved to relax some of the strictest aspects of Ireland’s rent controls. While this is likely to help boost investment in new rental supply, those changes will not take effect until next year.
"Further, Ireland’s lengthy planning process means that it will be a number of years before any increase in supply is meaningful enough to start addressing the large deficit of rental housing in the country.”
