Rent prices continue to rise in Donegal despite the increase in stock, according to the new Daft.ie report.
The average cost of renting a home in Donegal is now €1,122, up 20.2% since autumn last year, and up 4% in the past three months.
Rental stock in the Connacht/Ulster region is up by a quarter, according to the latest analysis.
There were almost 280 homes listed for rent in Connacht-Ulster on November 1st, up 27% on the same date a year ago but still well below half the 2015-2019 average (of 630).
Individual room rentals are also rising. The cost of renting a room in Connacht-Ulster was almost 16% higher on average in the third quarter of 2023 than a year earlier. The average rent for a single room in Ulster is €464 per month and €500 for a double bedroom.
Economist Ronan Lyons, the author of the report, commented that the rental market has emerged slightly from its worst shortages of the post-lockdown period.
“But there are two important caveats to this sliver of good news,” Lyons wrote.
“The first is that, by any objective measure, having just 1,800 homes on the rental market for a country that has, as of the April 2022 Census, at least 330,000 households in the private rental market is far too little.
“The market was tight, and rents rising, during 2015-2019 when there were well over twice as many homes to rent at any one time as there are now. So 1,800 is not nearly enough. If there’s a magic number, it’s probably closer to 6,000.
“The other caveat is that the improvement in rental market conditions is concentrated in Dublin. The figure accompanying this piece shows the change in availability across each of four major regions, between November 1st last year and the same date this year.”
Mr Lyons said the answer to Ireland’s rental market woes is, as it has been for the last decade… “supply, supply, supply.”
