A lack of supply in rental properties outside the capital is continuing to drive up rents, despite rising unemployment.
Rents rose by over 5% on average last year, according to new data from Daft.ie, with supply on the market this month down 17%.
Prices in Dublin fell however by more than 3%, but every other main city saw inflation.
Professor Ronan Lyons says it’s taken the economic shock of a pandemic to make Dublin’s rental market begin to look normal.
And he adds Carlow and Kilkenny are similar to the rest of the country, telling KCLR News “So this latest report looks at the rental market over the course of 2020 so most of that obviously the key story is Covid and then therefore how Covid affected the rental market and if you look in Carlow and Kilkenny rental markets it’s very similar to the rest of the country outside Dublin so in Carlow rents during 2020 rose by 7%, in Kilkenny they rose by just under 6% similar to the figure for Ireland as a whole, the rental market ground to a halt, the new properties just aren’t coming up onto the market for people to be able to rent and therefore that’s why we’re seeing such a spike in rent”.