WITH over 70,000 landlords exiting the sector nationally in the past 28 months, according to the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), the chief economist at Limerick Chamber has called for expanded cost rental and affordable housing.
Chamber chief economist and director of policy Seán Golden cited RTB data showing 189 notices to quit in Limerick City in the most recent quarter alone.
“Landlords are leaving the market, whether to recoup costs or due to regulatory burdens,” Mr Golden explained.
He emphasised that this shortage could worsen if the landlord exodus continues, warning that smaller landlords are being disproportionately affected in Limerick.
Mr Golden also spoke about the broader housing issue in Limerick, stressing the need for more cost-rental and affordable housing.
“We’re simply not building enough homes,” he said.
Cost rental housing is a model where rent is set based on the actual cost of providing and maintaining the property, rather than market rates. The rent typically covers only the base expenses, without providing any profit margin for landlords or developers.
“There’s no kind of silver bullet with housing. I think realistically, we need to be implementing cost rental in Limerick at a large scale,” the Chamber economist said.
“The problem is we built up our reliance on private landlords, and that has led us into the situation where we’re in today.”
Speaking to the Limerick Post, a representative from the Irish Property Owners Association (IPOA) said that landlords are increasingly finding it difficult to operate due to high taxation, inflation, and strict regulations.
The association alleges that policies like Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs) and indefinite tenancies, while intended to protect tenants, are backfiring.
These policies “are harmful to both landlords and tenants, leading to a constriction of supply and higher rents,” an IPOA spokesperson claimed.
The Limerick Post spoke to the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU), which challenged the narrative that landlords are fleeing the market.
A CATU representative pointed to census data that shows an increase in rental properties, despite a decline in registered tenancies.
“The ‘flight of landlords’ narrative doesn’t take into account the actual data,” the CATU spokesperson said.
They also critiqued the impact of RPZs, arguing that rent increases allowed under RPZ rules are still higher than the EU average, arguing that RPZs do not restrict landlords as much as claimed.
CATU agreed with the Chamber economist that the private market should not be relied upon alone to solve the housing crisis.
The union says that various legal workarounds afforded to Irish landlords promote higher rents, skew the numbers, and incentivise eviction.
“In addition, there is a loophole in the policy which allows rent to be increased to market rent if a property is put back on the market, which fuels an ever growing crisis of no-fault evictions, which in turn fuels the homelessness crisis,” the CATU rep said.
