Rise in number of properties to rent but still below pre-Covid levels despite rule changes
New rental rules that came into effect in March have led to a modest increase in the number of properties available on the market, property website Daft.ie said, but availability remains well below pre-Covid levels. The new rent legislation overhauled the existing rent pressure zone (RPZ) system and allowed landlords to reset rents to market rates between tenancies for the first time in more than a decade. On Wednesday, Daft said there were 2,461 properties available to rent on April 1st, an increase of about 5 per cent year-on-year. This compares favourably with the situation on January 1st, when just 1,200 homes were available, a significant decline of 50 per cent from the same month in 2025. READ MOREPTSB to be sold and the coming inflation stormRolling Donut acquires new premises on Dublin’s Naas Road Viral Danish discount chain Normal to open new store in WestmeathRetail investment at The Square in Tallaght guiding at €1.2m“While this means that availability is back to levels seen a year ago, before the new rules were announced, availability remains far below pre-pandemic norms,” Daft said. “Between 2015 and 2019, the average number of homes available to rent nationwide in early spring was around 4,366, almost double current levels.”[ Irish housing market no longer ‘overheating’, but price pressures remain, says Daft.ieOpens in new window ]According to Daft’s analysis, some 2,300 fewer homes were put up for rent in the second half of 2025 than the same period last year. However, just before and after the new rules came into force, there were some 7,225 listings nationally, up by some 900 from the same period last year. “This uptick reflects increased market activity and a renewed willingness among landlords to advertise their rental properties,” Daft said. Commenting on the report, Ronan Lyons, professor of economics at Trinity College Dublin, said the Government’s decision to postdate the introduction of the new rules was “unusual”. “This gave landlords whose tenants left the option of waiting until new rules came in,” he said. “Since then, it has been unclear if the fall in numbers of homes being rented reflected landlords waiting or landlords leaving the market.“These new figures suggest that holding off cannot explain the full decline in rental listings since last summer,” Lyons said. “The 900 additional listings in February and March, compared to the same two months last year, are less than half of the fall of 2,300 in homes listed for rent between July and January. “In other words, while the introduction of the new rules has been followed by a rebound in listings, the increase so far has only partially reversed earlier declines.”
