The number of homes available to rent in Connacht/Ulster has taken a very slight rise, according to the latest Daft.ie report.
The slight improvement is dampened by a jump in prices for renters.
The average cost of renting in Donegal rose 16% in the past year and now sits at €994 per month.
There were 183 homes listed for rent in Connacht-Ulster on May 1st, up from just 126 on the same date a year ago but still just one quarter of the 2015-2019 average.
There are just 959 homes available to rent across the entire country.
“The figures in this latest report offer some crumbs of comfort for those of us gravely concerned about the health of Ireland’s rental market,” said Economist Ronan Lyons.
“For over a decade now, the rental market has been characterized by worsening availability and, as a consequence, higher and higher rents.
“The only exceptions were rural parts of Ireland back in 2012 and 2013, when they were still dealing with issues of housing excess rather than shortage and ‐ more recently ‐ the Covid 19 pandemic, when almost overnight rental demand evaporated in Dublin.
“By early 2021, though, as society reopened, demand re-emerged and at a pace that few predicted. During 2021 and 2022, open-market rents increased by an average of almost 3% per quarter ‐ reflecting an extraordinary mismatch between very strong demand, increased further by the arrival of tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, and weakening supply.”
