Tenants in Cork city currently pay an average of just over €2,000 per month.
According to the quarterly report from property website Daft.ie, rents in Cork city have increased by 11.9 percent over the past year, making Cork one of four Irish cities where average rents have seen a double-digit increase.
In the rest of the country, the situation is somewhat better, with an average increase of 8.7% in the second quarter compared to the same period in 2023.
In the rest of Cork, the average rent is currently €1,533, 47% more than the monthly rent paid at the start of the Covid pandemic in early 2020.
Rising rents in Cork city and county reflect a nationwide upward trend, where market rents rose by 2% in the second quarter alone.
This is the 14th consecutive quarter that rent has increased and the 45th time in the last 48 quarters.
According to the Daft.ie report, the average rent on the open market was €1,922 per month, up 7.3 percent year-on-year and 41 percent more than before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ronan Lyons, associate professor of economics at Trinity College Dublin and author of the Daft.ie report, said there was a slowdown in inflation in open market rents between mid-2022 and mid-2023 and that this was due to the construction of a significant number of new rental properties in the Dublin area.
“This latest report suggests that even in Dublin, improvements in rental housing availability are stalling,” he said. “Without new rental supply, it is likely that pressure on rents will increase in the future, making affordability even more difficult for those on regular incomes.”
A “wild statistic”
Mick Barry, MP for Cork North Central Solidarity/People Before Profit, described the figures in Daft.ie’s report as “wild statistics”.
“That’s more than 24,000 euros per year, which is more than the net salary of many young workers,” he said.
“The government refuses to introduce real rent control. The government refuses to give the green light to the large-scale construction of social housing, which would bring down rents.
“It is a government of the big landowners and it must go.”
According to the Daft.ie report, there were 2,000 houses available to rent across the country on August 1. In Cork city, the number of houses available to rent was 48 on August 25, while across the county there were a total of 95 houses available to rent.
According to Laura Harmon, Labour councillor for Cork City South West and the party’s Dáil candidate for Cork South Central, high rents in Cork have made it impossible for many people to save for a mortgage.
“Rents are rising and property prices have risen by 8% in the last year and are expected to rise by a further 4.5% this year – the average worker is being completely denied a future,” she said. “I have four younger sisters and three have left Cork and Ireland because they see no future here – this has to change.”
