Renting in Cork is 5% more expensive than it was last year.

According to the latest Daft.ie report, the average monthly rent in Cork City is now €1,443, with an average €1,057 paid by tenants living in the county.

The average monthly rent paid nationally is €1,419, with Leitrim the least expensive county in Ireland to rent a home at €610 and South County Dublin topping the most expensive list at an eye-watering €2,223.

The only part of the country where rents are falling is in Dublin, where Covid-19 has seen a couple of thousand properties from the short-term lettings segment returned to the long-term rental segment. Rents in the third quarter of 2020 were 0.8% lower than a year previously, the first time in almost a decade.

“In most parts of the country, the stock of homes available to rent continues to fall and is at all-time or close to all-time lows, in series stretching back to January 2006.” says economist and author of the report (available in full here) Ronan Lyons.

“In Dublin, however, availability has doubled in the last year – and with it, rental inflation has come to an end.”

Meanwhile, house prices rose by 9% in the third quarter of 2020, bringing the average price of a home in Cork City to €290,653 and €229,142 in the rest of the county.