What’s this I hear about landlords and the private rental sector? Has something happened?
Yes. The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) has rejigged the way it collects data and this week issued figures that suggest, contrary to the popular narrative, that landlords are not fleeing the sector. Not only that, the data indicates the number of private tenancies is actually growing.
Wow! How long has that been going on?
Since June of last year, according to the data. Landlords have long been obliged to register tenancies with the RTB but recent changes to the regime mean the quality of the data has been improved. The changes mean figures since the second quarter of last year can’t be compared with what came before.
The new data show that in the year up to March 2024, the number of registered landlords went from 96,702 to 103,035. That’s an increase of 6.5 per cent. The number of tenancies, meanwhile, also increased quarter by quarter, ending at 230,006, a rise of 7.9 per cent over the period.
And what’s this I hear about large landlords?
In Dublin, the number of landlords with 100-plus tenancies accounted for 22.55 per cent of total tenancies at the end of the period, having started out at 19.8 per cent. These are mostly corporate operators, such as built-to-rent businesses. They are not nearly so prevalent outside the Dublin area.
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Nationally, however, small private landlords are still prominent in the market, according to the data. For instance, in March, 26.16 per cent of all tenancies were provided by landlords with one tenancy, a figure that was 26.49 a year earlier. Not much fleeing there. For landlords associated with two tenancies, the fall was from 13.03 per cent, to 12.55 per cent.
So the private rental market is growing?
Well, maybe not. According to Bank of Ireland chief economist Conall Mac Coille, the figures on the rental market are such a mess that it is hard to get excited by the RTB numbers. For instance, the 2022 census noted approximately 330,000 households who said they lived in private rented accommodation, which doesn’t nearly match the Residential Tenancies Board data. Furthermore, one of the reasons the new RTB data can’t be compared to data from before quarter two of last year, is that the rules on registration have changed. So it could just be that the landlord numbers are being affected by this as much as by what is happening in the marketplace.
So are private landlords leaving the sector?
Mac Coille’s view is that, on balance, they probably are. As for the significant presence of corporate landlords in Dublin, that, he says, is hardly a surprise.
