What am I hearing about landlords and the private rental sector? Has something happened?
Yes. The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) has revised its data collection methods and this week released figures that, contrary to popular belief, suggest that landlords are not leaving the sector. What’s more, the data shows that the number of private tenancies is actually increasing.
Wow! How long has this been going on?
According to the data, since June last year. Landlords have long been required to register tenancies with the RTB, but recent changes to the system have improved the quality of the data. The changes mean that figures since the second quarter of last year can no longer be compared with those before.
The new data shows that the number of registered landlords rose from 96,702 to 103,035 in the year to March 2024, an increase of 6.5 percent. The number of tenancies also increased quarter on quarter, standing at 230,006, an increase of 7.9 percent over the same period.
And what do I hear about large landowners?
In Dublin, landlords with over 100 leases accounted for 22.55 percent of all leases at the end of the period, up from 19.8 percent at the beginning. These are mostly business operators, such as companies that have built to rent, and are nowhere near as represented outside the Dublin area.
( Landlords with more than 100 properties now own more than 22% of rental properties in DublinOpens in new window. )
However, at a national level, the data shows that small private landlords are still strongly represented in the market. In March, 26.16 percent of all tenancies were with landlords with one tenancy, compared to 26.49 percent a year earlier. There is not much fluctuation. For landlords with two tenancies, there was a decline from 13.03 percent to 12.55 percent.
So the private rental market is growing?
Well, maybe not. According to Bank of Ireland chief economist Conall Mac Coille, the rental market numbers are so chaotic that it’s hard to get excited about the RTB figures. For example, the 2022 census reported around 330,000 households living in privately rented accommodation, which doesn’t come anywhere close to matching the Residential Tenancies Board data. One of the reasons the new RTB data can’t be compared with data from before the second quarter of last year is that registration rules have changed, so it could well be that landlord numbers are being affected by this as much as by developments in the market.
So are private landlords leaving the sector?
Mac Coille believes that, on balance, this is probably the case. It is hardly surprising that Dublin has a large number of corporate landlords, he says.
