Rents are still soaring.

A new report shows that renters in Cork City are now paying a whopping €1,907 per month to hold onto their accommodation – up 7.9% on last year.

The average cost of renting a double bedroom in Cork City is €719, dropping to €692 in the suburbs and €576 in Cork’s commuter towns.

“Across the country, rental inflation halved in 2023 compared to 2022. That is the good news from the latest Daft.ie Rental Report, covering the final quarter of 2023 and reviewing the year as a whole.” explained Ronan Lyons, Associate Professor in Economics, Trinity College Dublin.

“Unsurprisingly, that good news is tempered by further context: the overall rate of inflation remains far higher than the levels one would expect to see in a healthy rental market. Open-market rents rose by 6.8% on average across the country in 2023, compared to a near-record 13.7% in 2022.

“Added to the 10.3% increase seen in 2021, this means that rents in the open market are now, on average, 36% higher than they were at the outbreak of COVID-19.”

In better news there’s been a modest recovery in availability of homes to rent nationally.

The total number of properties available to rent on February 1st was just over 2,200. This is slightly higher than the figure on the same date
a year ago but still less than half the number available on the same date in 2020.