So I have currently begun the commencement of my search of the rental market for a new place so I thought why not a thread on the subject. I feel the rental market is often overlooked & overshadowed, the poor cousin of the home owners market.
So rents have risen, right? Will they stay this way for long if inventory keeps rising. It seems not only house prices but rental price too also follow the spec more than location & state of repair.
I’m seeing 1 bed palces in the city centre for €1400, which is way out of wack. Most City centre 2 bed houses hover around the €1350 pm mark, regardless of location.
Then fly out to the burbs 3 beds are all hovering around much the same €1350pm regardless of location.
It seem pricing is hevily weighted on the (x,beds+y,bath-z,location)=price.
It seems as such there is no competition in this market, this suggests cartel like pricing. Perhaps those looking like myself need to wait for inventory to go up but we don’t all have timing on our side.
My outlook is Dublin centric, thus mysentiment at the moment is
1)Rental market choice not great,
2)Prices have edged up a bit
3)Price uniformity is unreasonable & un quantified.
Would love to hear other peoples feelings on the matter or anything they are hearing on the ground (any lurking EAs like to contribute?!?!.
I just moved into new rental accomodation (2 bed apt) recently, spent about 2 weeks looking at places before that.
I found very little price differentiation between apartments. In the area which I considered, the cheapest place was 1200 per month, this would be for the most basic shabby-looking poke of a place. For 1400 you could have a modern, spacious beautifully furnished top floor apartment. The difference in standards really is not reflected by the difference in the rents. Needless to say I went for one closer to 1400. My opinion is that if you’re going to have to pay 1200, an extra 200 is not a big deal to have some luxury for the year.
I know of a place in the area which was looking for 317.5k at market, but is now renting for 1200. Similar places to the one I rent are listed at around 510k, yet the rent is not that much more expensive.
Anyway, like you say, not everyone has timing on their side. I feel like I caught the top of the rental market. That’s preferable to catching the top of the purchase market though.
If you ask me. The simple fact is that there is a shortage of 1-bedroomed apartments in the City Centre (anywhere within 15 minutes walk from O’ Connell Bridge). It’s ridiculous. Places outside the M50 like Balbriggan, Lusk, Mulduhart and Tallaght have apartments coming out of their ears. The one place where this kind of accomodation is actually needed, there’s only overpriced rubbish.
Also Open window, if you are moving out, could I direct your attention to a fantastic web site which allows you to share you experience with you fellow renters:
I live in sexy Dublin 15 (Castleknock outskirts but really Carpenterstown). I began renting in August and all two beds were between 1100 and 1200 a month and there wasn’t much variance. 3 Bed houses in the area were starting from 1300. From recent views this has not only gone up slightly but there now is a huge pricing variance that wasn’t previously in existance. I am wondering, though, if enough investors begin renting and idiots just pay high rents, could this push up the cost of renting? Could “investors” control the market in this manner?
I will be looking for a 2 bed apt in the near future in south Dublin near transport. I was concerned that there wasn’t much on the market and spoke to an EA who said that most places were going in the first or second viewing. However, the prices didn’t seem too bad - 1500 pcm seemed a sufficient budget and maybe I can go lower.
There does seem to be a very high variation in the quality of rentals though, that isn’t necessarily reflected in the price. I’m hoping to avoid new builds and amateur landlords which may make the search somewhat prolonged!
Yea the variaiton in quality but uniformity on price is very annoying indeed! Rental market is a black market backwater AFAIC
A lot of places I am looking you could apply this average formula, rent x 2 = montly cost of buying to the 1200-1400pcm price range I am intertested in you get the follwoing.
rent)€1350pcm x 2 = (mortgage) €2700 pcm
Why the hell would you buy! (doens’t mean the rents shouldn’t be cheaper )
Which is exactly my ballpark for rents vs financing. That means the properties are roughly valued correctly - until rents or interest rates go up/down.
Issues when buying versus renting also must factor in
Maintenence and management fees and Insurance.
Capital depreciation.
Loss of mobility in competitive labour market.
Davec, I am not sure I am following you on this one, so are you saying that rents that are 50% cheaper than cost of buying on pcm basis are fine/normal market?
I would thyink that we have reached the complete end of the cycle and are back to square one as anecdotally a friend of mine was telling me back in the 80s they were renting as it was cheaper than buying (but people thought they were mad told them they should have bought) but they only bought when it became cheaper to buy (pre 97/98 purchase I believe) I suppose. So I think in relative terms we are back at the start point.
I admire that persons luck of timing & applied logic they got a beauty of a house for €65K, of course they are 2 decades older than meself!
Maybe we are reading this differently. Let me explain my position and apologies if I oversimplify.
I believe that, on average, it costs twice as much to buy somewhere as to rent it. OF course, this is an average, therefore sometimes you could borrow and get the rent to cover the borrowing (as 2000-2005 perhaps) and sometimes (mostly) you’d have to subsidise your tenants. Of course, you get a capital gain over the long haul and the whole thing isn’t such a bad bet. For all my investments I use the rent/buy=50% equation. It’s held reasonably over 20 years but I doubt it is very accurate. I’m sure, however, that if I had used, say, 110% then I’d be looking very silly now and if I’d used 10% I wouldn’t have bought property.
So - “yes” there is a margin of safety (if you have the cash to cover the difference) and “no”, it is not a buy signal.
If you want a buy signal, then buy when you know (huh!) interest rates are about to drop for a few years.
Looks like we have hit an all time high of rental availability on daftwatch. How long before this translates to cheaper rents? And less stories of people stuck in horrible share houses?
I know that house - its directly opposite a primary school so the traffic is chaotic in the mornings. There are 3 or 4 of them in a row and the others have already sold.
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