Dublin rents have risen by over five per cent above their peak in 2008, a new report by accommodation website Daft.ie has found. As thousands of students prepare to move to Dublin in September, the report claims that only 1,400 homes in the city were available to rent on August 1st.
With the number of rooms available in Dublin down by 350 compared to August 1st last year, the report, which comes a day after CAO offers were made to students across the country, finds that rents across the city have risen by over ten per cent since 2015.
A three-bed house in Dublin 7 for instance, which includes areas like Phibsborough and Stoneybatter and is home to many students, had an average monthly rent of €1,626, a 10.2 per cent rise on last year.
From their lowest point in 2010, rents in Dublin have risen by 51.3 per cent, while between April and June rents rose nationwide by 3.9 per cent, the largest such increase since 2007.
Speaking to The University Times at the start of July, the author of the report, Prof Ronan Lyons, who is an assistant professor in Trinity’s economics department, said that the the main problem facing the housing market in Ireland are the high construction costs.
“The costs of construction in Ireland are just too high relative to our own incomes”, Lyons said, adding that the private sector cannot build profitable housing projects that are affordable to most of the population.
In their introduction to the report, President of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU), Kieran McNulty, and President of University College Dublin Students Union (UCDSU), Conor Viscardi, warned that for many young people who can’t find accommodation, deferring their college course until next year might be the only viable option.
Pointing to the lack of short-term solutions to the crisis, and the challenges facing incoming first-years, they emphasise that the “situation in the general market is not going to change over the next few weeks”.
Last month TCDSU and UCDSU announced a new €8,000 campaign, in partnership with Daft.ie, to encourage homeowners to rent out rooms to students in an attempt to provide a short-term solution to the accommodation crisis.
If the scheme, which offers tax relief as an incentive to homeowners, is not successful, McNulty and Viscardi warn that students will otherwise struggle to find accommodation in Dublin.
The average cost for a single bedroom in Dublin city centre is currently €588, a 15.7 per cent increase in a year, while rents in the north of the city have increased by 10.8 per cent, rising to €463 for a single room. The average rent for a property the the north of the city, €1,419, is an 11.5 per cent increase on last year.
Other cities have also experienced dramatic increases in rent. While rents are now an average of 5.2 per cent above their previous peak in Dublin, rents in both Cork and Galway have increased by 4 per cent and 10 per cent respectively from eight years ago. Rents have risen generally across the country, and are now at a record high of €1,037.
In July the government outlined plans to facilitate the creation of an additional 7,000 student accommodation places by the end of 2019, as well as the creation of a national student accommodation strategy in 2017 and a new Student Housing Officer, in a bid to solve the accommodation crisis.
However, since then An Bord Pleanála have refused permission for Trinity to progress with its 52 million development of Oisín House into a 280-bedroom accommodation complex. The decision, which was criticised by students and Trinity College Dublin Students Union (TCDSU), has forced Trinity to think again about the accommodation project, and the university is currently doing up new costs for altering the project’s design.
As the accommodation crisis worsens, some private companies, like the Student Housing Compnay, are beginning to provide purpose-built student accommodation across the city.
