The number of private landlords operating in Ireland has grown by 5.7% in the last year.
That’s according to new figures from the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB).
Their latest report shows there were 104,327 private landlords across the country at the end of September – a figure which was up 5.7% from September 2023.
Numbers have now increased in every quarter since Q2 2023 across most sizes of property portfolio from 1 to 100+ tenancies.
The report also found that registered private and Approved Housing Body tenancies continue to grow. Registered private tenancies rose by 8.4% annually to 236,198, while Approved Housing Body tenancies have also grown by 15.6% annually to 49,195 in Q3 2024.
Despite the increases, the report noted that during the third quarter of the year landlords issued almost 4,000 notices of termination.
The director of the RTB, Rosemary Steen, said that the key thing to note was that "more landlords are coming into the market than are actually leaving it."
She said that this is having "some pressure" on the influences of rent.
"So, one of the more positive things coming out of the statistics today is that we are seeing the average rent for new tenancies starting to slow," she said.
"It's increased by a certain amount, but not as much as it was increasing previously, and that is really important in terms of the trends in the rental market," she said.
"It's not to say that there still isn't a shortage of supply or that landlords aren't leaving, but there are landlords and other operators coming in who are seeing opportunities," she explained.
The figures also indicated that there has been a rise in the number of landlords with over 100 properties - predominantly based in Dublin.
Ms Steen said that this feeds into the increases in rent in the Dublin market.
"It's very much a factor that over 50% of the rental market in Dublin is with this large number of landlords, and I think the statistics show in the past year that these large corporate landlords have gone from 81 to 115," she stated.
"But 66% of all private landlords are still landlords with just one tenancy, so it's different regionally," she added.
Ms Steen said the Dublin market is very much a phenomenon and that small private landlords across the rest of the country are an "important part of the story" around rent levels.
She also noted that 60% of tenancies in Dublin saw no increase in rent.
The counties which saw higher levels of rent increases included Donegal, Monaghan and Leitrim.
"They are coming off a low base, but it may be linked also to landlords moving from the Dublin market to more regional investments, and then those rent levels are starting to increase," she said.
Ms Steen said the data also highlighted a level of "misunderstanding" where landlords in rent pressure zones believe that they can increase rent when a tenant change happens.
"We'll be doing much more communication and engagement with those landlords to say that if there is a change of tenancy and you're in an RPZ, that is not a basis for increasing rent," she added.
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