The reality of renting in Ireland: A shared room in a house with 20 tenants for €760 a month

Figures about average monthly rents in the State seem distant, until they become real. If you were told that to rent a shared en suite room with one other person in a house in Dublin city would cost you €760 a month, would you be shocked?

If you then found out that the house had 20 tenants, all crammed into rooms of two and three, how would you feel? In a recently renovated house on Ossory Road, North Strand in Dublin 3, this is the reality.

The halls are tiled, the windows and doors looked new and, according to a Google Maps search, they are. The house looked relatively clean, though obviously lived in, but lacked any sense of personal space – with room numbers on press doors.

There, prospective tenants are told that electricity for the room and bathroom is paid by the tenants of each room via a top-up electricity meter, but the landlord pays for the rest of the electricity in the house.

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There are two kitchens in the house, which have labelled presses for each room, and each room is given between one and 1½ presses. The larger kitchen has two free-standing fridge freezers, but viewing the house this week, we were not shown the smaller kitchen.

A laundry room at the back of the house has three washing machines and three dryers for tenants to use – working out at roughly one dryer and washer between seven tenants.

During the viewing, the two current residents of the room were sitting on their beds on their laptops. The two young women are not moving out until the end of March.

To acquire a bed in the house, prospective tenants must send on their passport, and if from outside Ireland, proof that they had just moved to the country, for example, proof of their flight. If the tenant is Irish, they are asked to provide a previous landlord’s reference.

However, it was clear from the viewing that the accommodation is occupied by young foreign nationals. Indeed, the woman conducting the viewing was shocked when I said I was Irish.

One woman who viewed the house spoke of how she has seven children at home, three of whom are adults. She was viewing on behalf of her son who was working. She wants her adult children to be able to move out, but they cannot find a place to live.

On property website Daft.ie, there are 305 rooms available for rent in non-owner-occupied premises in Dublin city; 107 of these rooms cost over €1,000 a month to rent. Just 65 of them are under €650.

For owner-occupied houses, there are 271 rooms available; 107 of them are under €650 a month, but 49 are over €1,000. One hundred and thirty-nine of those rooms will set tenants back anywhere between €650 and €1,000 a month.

Many landlords now have a prepared list of questions for prospective tenants, which require answers about where tenants work, the type of job, the salary, if the employment is permanent, and proof of salary backed up by payslips.

In addition, those now seeking accommodation are required to produce recent bank statements, an employer reference which also states the annual salary, and a current landlord statement.

These are alongside the usual proof of identity and current address, with landlords usually also requesting two of either previous landlord references, employer references, or character references from friends or family, to show that the tenant is a good person and will pay rent on time.

Seasoned renters have learned now to navigate the rental market, to some extent by asking friends who live in the city if they have a place, or if they know of anybody who is preparing to move out of a room.

Searching local social media groups, doing call-outs on Twitter and the like can work, if tenants are lucky. Knowing people in the area who can ask around can help, too, in the hunt for lodgings.

The search for a tenancy is helped, ironically, by the number of young people who are leaving Dublin and thereby freeing up a room, but they are leaving either to emigrate or to move home for a time because they cannot afford rents, or to save for their own place, or to save to emigrate.

For the many foreign nationals coming to Ireland to work or study though, this luxury is not afforded. As a result, they are left stuck either with nowhere to live or in a less than ideal living situation – such as in a house with 20 people, in a shared room, for €760 a month.

Every young person seeking a tenancy will have their own particular horror story. Recently, I viewed a single box room near Jervis Street in Dublin costing €867 a month; this was not inclusive of bills

In Galway city, there are only 62 rooms to rent on Daft.ie, with 29 of these setting prospective tenants back over €500 a month.

There are only 29 properties to rent in Galway city on Daft. One of these is Kinlay Hostel, which now offers student accommodation from €140 a week for Sunday to Friday for the 2023-24 academic year.

Their advert reads “Typical example: 3 friends sharing: check in Sunday evening, check out Fri morning, €140 per person per week!”

According to the advertisement, this price includes breakfast, wifi, iMac use, a self-catering kitchen and safety deposit boxes. In all, it means that students staying at the hostel pay €560 for 20 nights accommodation monthly in a room shared with two others.

The seven-day rate for four people sharing a room in the 2023-24 academic year is set at €175 per person, per week. If four people wish to share a room from Sunday to Friday, the price decreases to a weekly rate of €135 per person.

Every young person seeking a tenancy will have their own particular horror story. Recently, I viewed a single box room near Jervis Street in Dublin costing €867 a month – a rate set by the landlord, and not the tenant who showed the room.

This was not inclusive of bills, which would have brought the rent up to about €900, and probably more in winter months. The room had no wardrobe, but, rather, just a few shelves by the door, along with a hook on the door for hanging clothes.