Rental costs climbed as the Government’s new housing reforms took effect on 1 March, according to the property listings platform Daft.ie.
Data shows that rents jumped by 4.4% nationally between December and March of this year — the steepest quarterly rise recorded by Daft.ie since 2002, reports RTE.
Market rents now stand at more than a third above pre-Covid levels and are nearly 80% higher than they were a decade ago, while the availability of rental properties has improved slightly compared with both three months ago and a year ago, the report found.
Report author Professor Ronan Lyons cautioned that the uptick in rental availability should be “interpreted with care,” reports RTE.
“The delay between announcing, in June 2025, and introducing, in March 2026, the new rent control rules appears to have prompted some landlords to delay listing properties until the new regime came into force,” he said, reports RTE.
The Government unveiled a package of rental reforms last year, which took effect from 1 March.
The Government has said the changes will offer greater stability for tenants and increase housing supply, while opposition figures have argued that the measures will push up annual rent costs by thousands of euro and drive up homelessness through evictions.
Any new tenancies starting from 1 March carry a minimum term of six years, reports RTE.
At the end of that period, landlords may increase rents beyond the cap — capped at a maximum of 2% — to bring them in line with market rates.
Large landlords, defined as those with four or more properties, will be prohibited from carrying out no-fault evictions on tenancies beginning from March, reports RTE.
A small landlord may end a tenancy through a “no-fault eviction” in limited circumstances, such as financial hardship or to accommodate a family member, but if they do so, they cannot reset the rent until the six-year term expires.
According to the Daft.ie report, the average market rent for a two-bedroom apartment stood at €2,100 as of early 2026, reports RTE.
The report shows that market rents in the first quarter of 2026 were 18% higher year-on-year in Galway city, up 13% in Cork, 10% in Limerick and 8% in Waterford.
In Dublin, market rents were 6.9% higher in March compared to a year earlier, reports RTE.
There were just under 2,500 homes available for rent nationwide on 1 May, an improvement on both the same date last year (2,300) and three months ago (1,800).
Daft.ie noted that availability remains “well below pre-pandemic norms,” when approximately 4,000 rental properties were on the market at any given time, reports RTE.
Since January, rental listings have grown, with more than 10,600 homes coming to market across February, March and April — a 13% year-on-year increase.
But the recent surge in listings is only around half the size of the earlier decline, reports RTE.
Professor Lyons said the rule changes appear to have triggered “a step-change” in rent levels.
He said: “The first data following the introduction of new rent controls show a sharp increase in rents, alongside a more modest and potentially temporary increase in rental availability.
“The ability to reset rents between tenancies appears to have led to a step-change in rents, with the largest quarterly increase in rents on record.
“At the same time, the increase in listings in early 2026 suggests that some landlords delayed putting properties on the market until the new rules came into force.
“However, the rebound in listings is smaller than the earlier fall, and availability remains far below what would be considered normal.
“Trends in room rentals are consistent with this, with the number of rooms available to rent down sharply over the past year, down by more than one fifth nationally and by almost one third in Dublin.
“This indicates that the recent increase in full-property listings is more likely to reflect timing effects, rather than a sustained increase in underlying rental supply.
“The goal of changing the rules, to increase the supply of rental homes and thereby improve affordability for tenants, depends on whether new rental housing is built.
“As the construction of new homes takes years, rather than months, it will be some time before the ultimate impact of the rules can be assessed,” reports RTE.
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