Everywhere you turn at the moment it seems there is someone bemoaning the lack of adequate housing stock in the capital. (A notion that must seem preposterous to those in the Border counties and midlands who couldn’t find a taker for their home if they put a ribbon around it.)

But proof, if ever it was needed of the scale of the shortages in Dublin, lies in recent figures indicating there are currently fewer houses for sale in the capital than there are in Cork.

A tally of the listings on MyHome.ie shows that there are just 3,354 properties for sale in Dublin, compared with 4,761 in Cork. That’s 42 per cent more homes available to buy in Cork county than in Dublin.

And prospective buyers in Cork city are also beginning to feel the squeeze, with just 825 properties for sale in the city centre and its suburbs. This represents only 17 per cent of the overall volume of stock in the county.

In rental terms, the story doesn’t get any better. Daft.ie which carries the lion’s share of rental listings in Ireland, has 1,832 properties to rent in the whole of Dublin.

Taking the two together, anyone looking to buy or rent in the capital at the moment has about 5,000 properties to look at between the two major property websites.

This clearly becomes an issue when searches are inevitably narrowed down to specific locations and price ranges.

Similarly in Co Cork there are just 810 properties to rent, including 343 in the city. What’s interesting here is that there is a greater proportion of properties available for rent in Cork city (42 per cent) than there is of residential stock to buy (17 per cent) out of all of what’s on offer in the county.