Soaring rents and falling supply is in the news, again, in the latest daft.ie Rental Price Report, published yesterday. For the second consecutive quarter, advertised rents in Cork City exceeded €2,000 per month. Besides the financial obstacle, securing such a high-cost home is near impossible with supply remaining at a record low.
Our fourth Home Truths paper, How long is an emergency? Routes into and out of homelessness in the Southwest looks at just that – journeys into and out of emergency accommodation here in Cork and Kerry. In examining this journey, the paper also highlights strong links between the private rental sector and homelessness; the private rented sector is a likely pathway to homelessness and an increasingly unlikely route out of homelessness.
As our Home Truths report finds, one in four households new to emergency accommodation in the Southwest ended up there following a ‘no fault’ notice of termination (NoT) from private rented accommodation. This is when a landlord notifies a tenant to leave for reasons related to the landlord or the property and not related to the tenant. Among the most common reasons are the intended sale of the property, a family member moving in and significant renovations. In the 15 months to Q2 2024, 161 households have entered emergency accommodation in the Southwest following a ‘no fault’ NoT, or 10 households every month.
This not only highlights the lack of security in the private rented sector, which has become increasingly evident in recent years, but also the very difficult situation of trying to find alternative rental accommodation amidst falling supply and rising rents.
According to the latest Daft.ie rental report, there were fewer than 350 homes listed for rent across Munster on 01 November, down 13% on the same date a year previous and less than one third of the 2015-2019 average of close to 1,000.
According to the same report, average monthly rent in Cork city now stands at €2,077 – representing a 10.4% year-on-year increase and a 130% increase in a decade. In contrast, the Consumer Price Index records a 21% increase in the decade to September 2024, indicating how significantly out of step rising rents are with inflation and the difficulty placed on households trying to reach these rents.
The RTB’s Rent Index Report drills down into new and existing rents and highlights the particularly stark challenge facing a household searching for new rental accommodation – rents for new tenancies in Cork are 21% higher than for existing tenancies (RTB Q1 2024 Rent index Report). Even if fortunate enough to find new rental accommodation, the significant jump in rent from an old to a new tenancy is one that many households on the receiving end of a NoT cannot afford.
For households reliant on HAP (Housing Assistance Payment), the situation is even more grim. For the second quarter in a row, the Simon Communities Locked out of the Market snapshot studies found no properties available to rent in Cork city or county within standard or discretionary HAP limits. If fortunate enough to secure a HAP tenancy, tenants must make increasingly large ‘top-up’ payments to landlords, in addition to the rent they pay to their local authority, to make the rent. The RTB’s latest Rental Survey highlights how 88% of tenants reliant on rental assistance are now having to make a top-up payment to their landlord averaging €284 per month.
For those who find themselves in emergency accommodation due to the insecurity and inaccessibility of the private rental market, or for any other reason, the chances of exiting to a tenancy are very slim, most especially a private rented tenancy. We explore this topic more in the next post.
