For those renting, or looking to do so, the headline was grim enough: rents in Ireland jumped 13.7 per cent on average last year from already stratospheric levels.
But increasingly strict rent controls mean these are the increase in rents on similar-sized homes that are new to the rental market — or at least, have not been rented out over the past couple of years. What’s the position for those lucky enough to have already secured a place to rent?
Daft has been polling this cohort as well. It found that, on average, rents for sitting tenants have risen by 2.9 per cent a year over the past decade. In Dublin, where some of the tightest rental markets are, the figure was noticeably higher at 4.2 per cent while outside the capital it was a more reasonable 1.3 per cent.
That compares well with the average of 7.1 per cent a year for new tenancies over the same period but, nationally, that still means a tenant is likely to be paying almost 50 per cent more in rent last year than they were a decade ago. If they live in Dublin, the figure is closer to two-thirds more. And certainly, that 10-year average in Dublin sits well ahead of the current 2 per cent upper limit for rent increases in rent pressure zones that feature in most urban areas.
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What about landlords? One way of looking at how well or otherwise they are doing is to examine the yield on their investment properties — the annual rent as a proportion of the market value of the property. According to the latest Daft figures, yields nationally range from just under 5 per cent on a four-bed house to a much more generous 9 per cent on a one-bed apartment.
Those figures fall as low as 3.4 per cent for a four-bed home in Dublin 6, one of the most expensive property markets in Ireland, where the yield on a one-bed apartment is also more modest at 5.5 per cent. In general, parts — but not all — of Dublin feature lower yields.
Ultimately, as other figures in the Daft report indicate, unless you are buying a large house in the most sought-after parts of Dublin’s commuter belt, it remains comfortably cheaper to pay a mortgage on a property in this State than to rent it —assuming you can persuade a bank to lend you the money to do so.
