It’s bizarre that a sector once as tightly regulated as hotels and B&Bs has effectively been handed over to anyone who decides to turn a rental property into a hotel like accommodation, with almost no structure or oversight, all because an app says it’s fine and it makes tech bros wealthy.
Anyone who dares say it's needs to be regulated back to the rock it crawled out from under is of course hushed up as it's making landlords a lot of money, and there are powerful lobbyists at play. The state dances around the topic but won't do anything drastic.
We let big tech disruptors walk all over us, and I don't just mean Ireland - this stuff is a scourge everywhere be it short term let platforms or the most toxic social media platforms imaginable, seems it's just a free for all for the tech bros again and again. Any amount of disruption is fine, as long as someone's making loads of money and it's a slick app.
Fully aligned. AirBnB is a parasite. Every government in the industrialised West just seem to have been collectively bought off and allowed their homeless and stateless to be housed in hotels and BnBs all over the country, their tourists to be housed in apartments and family homes in every major city and every scenic town and village, and their own citizens left fighting for the grotesquely overpriced scraps in dormitory towns a 2 hour commute from their places of work. And it's all been allowed to happen because tech bros are the new robber barons and nobody seems able to say "no" to them. AirBnB needs to be either banned outright or forced to return to its original pitch, which was owner occupiers renting out spare rooms to visitors for a couple of nights.
It's legislated for but it's not regulated. That's classic Irish politics - pass laws and don't resource the regulatory systems to enforce them. It's the same with anything to do with property - derelict buildings and local authorities that basically refuse to act despite having plenty of powers.
It's regulatory capture and a type of sophistry - they keep claiming they can't act, but the reality is they just don't want to.
It's fucking disgusting. I went away from Ireland for an extended period, and the choice was rent to a family at a reasonable rate, rent to them and shaft them royally as they have no choice, or AirBnb via a third party who handled everything for a small fee.
I chose option 1 - Then during a few major Dublin events I checked up what was happening on AirBnb and I could have made the monthly rent in 3-5 days.
I'm not asking anyone to weep for me who is after all was a landlord since I was renting out my family home while I was away, but fucking hell the financial incentive to flout the law is huge.
I would have made more than quadruple what I did renting at a reasonable rate as there was no enforcement. Plenty of pricks out there who are doing this.
Yep. My home town has about 1 place up for rent at any one time, sometimes none. I looked a few times since my mother told me and I couldn't believe it. Then I learned that a local family who also own a hotel and a bar had build a load of apartments a bit out of town a few years back, rent them as Air BnBs and are empty half the year.
Yes! This used to be solved by getting adjoining hotel rooms. I just can't fathom the notion that my desire for affordable convenience when I travel with my toddler should trump the housing needs of the local population.
Traditional BnBs are not suitable either. Our kids are very young, we need child friendly spaces. If we put them in their own room they'd be able to walk out by themselves and fall down the stairs. The owners ornaments, etc wouldn't be safe.
What we want is an apartment with 3 bedrooms and a kitchen. That's what meets our needs
The sad part is that it is really not, it would be so much easier to blame it on. A lot of it was done with genuine good intention like improving the living conditions for people and a whole pile of incompetence. I remember people being so happy when bed sits were removed from the market, however they did nothing to increase the supply of rental properties. No wanted another Ballymun so they worked hard to prevent it but it also stopped a lot things that could have improved the rental market.
It’s been done due to incompetence, politicians and civil servants with no experience listening to the lobbyists from select groupings.
They listened to Threshold, Focus etc on the tenants side and entertained IIP on the large institutional investors side. What they didn’t do is engage with the organisations that represent the largest cohort of landlords in the country, the small ones.
Previous and current Ministers and civil servants wanted to increase tenancy rights, which is admirable and needed. However, the issue is that we’re in the middle of a housing crisis and don’t possess the available housing stock levels needed to cope with a seismic policy shift.
Add to the fact that the RTB isn’t and has never been fit for purpose. If anyone hasn’t dealt with the RTB personally I’d advise watching the below…
Less rental properties on the market means less homes for individuals seeking accommodation, which leads to higher demand for the scarce housing stock, which means higher rents for renters and an increase in homelessness… it’s a complex issue that needs all aspects and factors to be analysed and addressed when policy changes are being made.
Boiling it down simply to “landlords bad” remarks does nothing for nobody, and simply shows you up as uneducated on the topic.
Housing crisis has nothing to do with the government's level of engagement with small landlords. Biggest problem in this country is astronomical rents, you think small landlords have good ideas on how the government can help them to make less money? Or you think that small landlords are somehow involved in building housing?
When the first rental regulations came in (regarding bedsits in 2008), 86% of the housing stock that was in the rental market was owned by landlords with one or two properties.
Housing market crashed in 2008 and we stopped building houses driving construction workers out of the country. Since 2010 the population has increased by 1 mn and we've built less than 250,000 houses. That's why there's a housing crisis not because it's more difficult to subdivide a 2 bedroom house built 75 years ago into 6 bedsits.
Also, if it's any consolation, there's no shortage of people living in squalor in Ireland.
Irelands property market is so messed up because it’s small and highly illiquid and therefore very easily manipulated.
Successive governments have applied sticking plasters and partial solutions all over the place such that you now have a chronically ill patient with tubes sticking out of his big toe, plasters on his ear lobe and only partially being treated for what ails him.
We need something like a citizens assembly to define a top to bottom set of rules that will govern the system in near perpetuity. Or that should be done by a televised cross-party committee based on all the best expertise. I think the Dutch call it poldering - all parties coming together to hammer out a complete compromise because if they don’t the country will be under water.
Some of the solutions are obvious. Others not so.
RTB is a joke. Turnaround times for something like disputing an eviction notice should be no more than 2 working days and tenants should have to dispute within 30 days of receipt
Non-payment of rent (in the absence of material, pre-existing failures on the landlord’s part which have led to withholding rent) should result in near immediate ending of a tenancy
The idea that we would have even 1 derelict site in this country in a time of peak homelessness and demand is an abomination. We have tens of thousands, up and down the country. Local authorities just sit twiddling their thumbs. Government busily rearranges deckchairs but does nothing meaningful.
Any property vacant more 90 days should start attracting a meaningful and increasing tax. And no, the RZLT is not it. They nearly had it in the Vacant Sites Levy (initially 3%, then 7% but FGFF’s property sector friends put the kibosh on that) but then they replaced it with the RZLT.
The question that always arises when these reports get released is “would these units of accommodation be available if the short term rental market was not available” and “are these units of accommodation in the places we need them to be, that is: where the homeless people actually are”. And the answer is never addressed.
Yeah this is the crux of it really. A bunch of AirBnBs in Dingle or Doolin aren't going to be of any use to us in a homelessness crisis, nor are some log cabins or small extensions on houses in Dublin that get rented out each weekend.
Rather than just banning AirBnB or short-term rentals, I'd prefer if they just taxed them properly and taxed second properties higher than they currently do.
Exactly. Many will be in villages and rural areas in the west of Ireland, which won't have employment prospects in winter months. Many of those holiday homes were only designed to be lived in in the summer, so they'll be freezing cold in winter.
AirBnB has literally destroyed rental markets around the world. There are numerous articles about it from the last decade. It’s the same way Uber has destroyed income for taxi drivers in many countries.
You want to share any of those articles??? Most research in countries like the UK and Ireland found that homes listed on Airbnb make up a very small fraction of the total housing stock and that increases in short-term rentals are not the root cause of overall rental shortages or price hikes. These studies have noted that the shortages are largely the result of slow housing construction, population growth, and lack of supply relative to demand. Across most of Western Europe and North America, the persistent housing shortage stems from fundamental imbalance between supply and demand — construction hasn’t kept up with household formation, zoning and land-use restrictions constrain new housing, and capital inflows have pushed prices up. Even when cities have dramatically cut back Airbnb listings, rents and prices continue rising because the structural supply problem remains. AirBnB has certainly taken some stock off the long-term market and made affordability worse locally but the broader crisis is rooted in lack of construction, restrictive planning rules, demographic shifts and investment dynamics that go far beyond any single platform.....and Uber didn’t kill taxi driving. It killed scarcity, and the income that depended on it.
This housing stock should be returned to long rental to address the growing demand. The government should introduce policies that incentivize landlords to offer properties for long term lease, reduce barriers to rental availability, and curb the rise of short term letting, which worsens the housing crisis.
Every single policy they have introduced has been a disincentive to long term lets. Even worse, every party in Ireland appears to be on board with these policies or even more extreme versions so the likelihood that we see an improvement is close to nil.
Airbnb can easily be 200-400 per night. You rent that out for one week a month and it's about the same as the rent for a month and you don't have issues with nightmare tenants who don't pay, don't leave and you can sell it to anyone not just another landlord
It offers more flexibility. You don't have to deal with the complications of being a landlord, and given most of these are in areas that attract tourists, you can get more money per night for them than if they were a long-term rental. It also allows you the option to have them available for yourself or friends/family when needed.
They’re about to introduce a policy one that massively disincentivises landlords renting long term. If I had a second house I would never rent it under the new laws coming in march
Theres a large stock of houses that are owned by old people in care. Once the new rules about tenure came in , it made it much less attractive for long term lets. I would have preferred to rent it out to a family, however if we inherit the house with in situ tenants , selling it becomes more difficult.
I don't want to become a long term landlord.
I just wanted to rent it out to keep it occupied and offset some of her care costs.
It would need modernisation, new electrics, furniture and kitchen.
Once it's sold it'll go to someone who actually wants to live in it, or someone who will rent it out. Either way it provides accommodation to someone in the very same way it would have before the new law was brought in and you would have gone through the torture of sitting on your arse for 12 months receiving more money than a minimum wage job for your hardship.
The ownership of a house adds absolutely nothing to the accommodation equation. Whether it's a landlord or a homeowner that owns the house, chances are it'll be used at it near capacity for accommodation, so it doesn't matter a fuck if you do sell it.
Given that most people don't know how long they will need care for , a long term rental is not a sensible option now .
The properties will in a lot of cases either be short term let if possible or left vacant.
Most people have to avail of the fair deal to pay for their care. It's about 2000 a week without the fair deal.
The rules have made renting more than six months a six year commitment, unless you can find someone to buy the house with tenants in situ.
Most buyers are not interested in buying as a rental. You have to settle with the fair deal within a year of death. Any longer and there's interest and penalties.
So this legislation discourages elderly people to rent their homes long term while in care. So this ties up a large cohort of accommodation.
If a lot of people do this it will be much more difficult to rent but easier to buy and Airbnb. So much worse for the young and others with no deposit. It absolutely does matter
That's probably not how it'll work in practice though. I'd imagine a lot of landlords will pull their property out of the long-term rental market and into the short-term rental market, so they're not stuck with a tenant for six years and don't have to take a big hit on the price of their property if they sell it.
I bought my own house a year ago after renting for years, and I'm glad I did because I can imagine my old landlord would try to get us out before the new regulations come in March.
They probably won’t get permission for short term lets, most of the large cities and towns have been told not to grant any new short term lets more or less.
Well they still have several months to get in before the new regulations come into force (assuming they don't get watered down). The population threshold of 10,000 is also pretty arbitrary and would mean a large number of properties would still qualify for planning permission.
I'm all for regulation that stops landlords acting the maggot and protects tenants, but regulation isn't going to solve this housing crisis. Everyone who is up in arms over AirBnB will just be up in arms over something else once they realise there is still an enormous shortage of housing supply and a worsening homelessness crisis.
Yeah I do agree with that, although I'm concerned that their blanket approach will do significant damage to tourism in some more remote parts of the country.
I really don't think it's the 6 year term - it's the fact that if the tenant breaches their lease, they can go years without paying rent as the system is slow for legal evictions
Oh not a 6 year contract. That would suggest the responsibilities are mutual. But in fact the new law puts the onus entirely on the landlord, whereas tenants get full flexibility.
I actually think encouraging longer term contracts are a great idea. It wouldn't be unusual to sign a lease for 3 or 5 years in for example Germany. One that lays out penalties and conditions for both parties if they want to break the lease. Giving both parties some stability and allowing flexibility for individual circumstances on both sides. What they're planning to do here is just punitive
Your dead right, I think one of the main things if is that someone has not been paying rent for 2 or 3 months it should at least be possible to remove them from the property.
This is what is really keeping a lot of properties from the market is the fear that you can’t remove a tenant.
I’d make them tax free but so long as they are at an affordable level. A two bed gets €2k plus in many areas, say tax free if €1200 per month that way the landlord still makes more money (they get €1k after tax as it is) and tenants get €800 per month to spend in the local economy or investing in themselves.
Wouldn’t be as good for larger corporate landlords though as they pay a lower rate of tax but still some rooms for savings.
It's almost like the government has created a set of policies so overwhelmingly crap for private landlords that it is more appealing for them to rent via short term lets for only 25% of the time.
In the real world it's quite clear that the over regulation of the rental market is having a detrimental effect.
If I moved away for a while I'd leave my house empty. I'd love to rent it - but the risk is too great. 50% tax depending where I moved, actually getting vacant possession when I want the house back could be a nightmare if they went the legal route. A bad tenant could stop paying rent and I would be screwed for potentially years if they dig their heels in and have a mortgage to pay. It's fucking delusional to be told the same thing for years by industry experts and still coming up with the usual "all landlords bad" nonsense.
Irish couples cannot have kids because they can't get houses and don't want to start a family in unsure circumstances. The government makes moves to give these families a few years of stability and you cry for the landlords.
He is saying that if someone owns a property, it is being made less appealing to rent it and more appealing to just leave it idle. He is saying the policy that encourages this is terrible
You're a wee bit delusional, if you don't understand the substance of what these posters explained to you about the impact of stupid State policies on landlords and why it makse far more sense for many to do short term lets then you clearly have no interest understanding the issue.
And spare us the hysteria, its a complex & tough issue to resolve, happening globally but if that's too much for you to engage with and your only solution is some communist like compulsory appropriation of individuals private property then once more best leave this to the adults to debate.
I think a lot of stupid, stupid people are seeing the waves of landlords selling this year as somehow a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, it's a massive inconvenience for the people short term affected, but these units are being sold to the market. The overall supply is not being hurt. People aren't burning down these units.
Short term "solutions" to a long term problem. Giving one family stability over a 6 year term while making to overall supply problem much worse during that term for many many more families trying to find accommodation doesn't make it correct.
They have destroyed the rental market and it will get much worse.
It is not obvious that this would make the overall supply problem "much worse". Almost no rental home in this country had a tenant in it in 2025 that will lie empty in 2026.
I would never be a landlord. I think it's morally sick to have advantage of people in that way. I put my extra income into less profitable growth opportunities, and I pay my deemed disposal without too much grumbling.
Which ETFs are you invested in? Do you morally review each ofcompany to ensure they abide by your moral standard. Are you aware a large portion of the all world ETFs invest in REITs ?
I don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I am sure that I benefit financially from injustice (I mean, we all do whenever we drink coffee or eat chocolate. Those things are cheap for us because of violence done on our behalf in the developing world).
But I don't say "being perfect is impossible, so I may as well steal coins from blind beggars". I think being a landlord, and having some poor fucker who can't afford to buy because people like you have bought up all the housing to rent it out, and taking that guy's wages month in month out. It's just unconscionable. You'd have to be a fucking scumbag to do it.
Even in your ridiculous world of moral superiority you’re just out sourcing your exploitation of other people so you don’t have to get your hands dirty.
So you believe investing in massive landlords like REITs which have a much larger impact on society than small time/accidental landlords is more closer to perfect than being a landlord yourself.
I’m not a landlord btw.. I just find your strange logic and arguments completely delusional
I think that's very silly of you. Is only buying fair trade coffee stupid and pointless because the farmers are still exploited? Minimising harm is minimising harm. Making money investing in these large corporations is a fraction of the harm of taking a whole house off the market and directly exploring one person or family in particular.
Wait till the effects of the “improved protection” for tenants are seen post March. Effectively, long term squatting by tenants who refuse to pay has been enabled.
Which sane person would run the risk? (for the record, I am NOT a landlord).
So… you should pay your mortgage while having to live miserably at your mam’s place in a single room while your tenant won’t pay rent for the house that you have rented out … nor will he/she move out although you need the place yourself.
It even 1% of landlords were as you describe them here, you would have had some reason to write this comment. As enough, this is just a strange example of you delving into fantasy to justify your poorly thought out notions.
Hardly surprising, that’s the premise of short term letting.
There’s a higher vacancy rate during the off-peak periods and during the week with an uptake at peak times and weekends.
You factor your costings into the model that the on-peak/weekend periods will achieve enough of a return/profit that the vacant periods are mitigated.
The real attraction of short term letting is the convenience and flexibility it offers the owner, they’ve no administrative heavy responsibility, they can utilise their own property when they want, it can be easily managed etc.
Air BnB needs to be banned or highly regulated in the cities anyway. It’s crazy. On the flip side, how was it that we could house so many Ukrainians at such a short notice , while it’s great and all and I fully support it- why can’t the same be done for the homelessness numbers now?
It's the same point that is missed every time this comes up - a listing on AirBnB is not a equivalent to a long term rental location, it's just a list of places that range from a bed in a room for a few days a year to an entire house some time in the year, at some time in the past or future.
Even if these 17,000 places were brand new apartments, for free, in Dublin city, it would satisfy just 4 months backlog of the housing crisis, but it's a nice clickbait for when the journalists are on holiday.
Split the country into zones, use parishes or counties or whatever. Set a max number of short term rentals allowed per that zone based on population size or area or some other metric combo. Then announce the cap per zone to all short term letters, if over threshold announce voluntary converters to be paid a year rent bonus to convert to long term letters for min 10 years. If max reduction not reached by 3 months from now, lottery for the remaining short term lets to convert but without the 1 year rent bonus.
Maintain this cap going forward based on whatever metrics. Establish a registry of short term lets that you to register with before airbnb can accept you. The cap controls the max number of short term lets per area. Enables more touristy areas to have higher caps, and population pressure zones to have higher caps.
It seems simple to implement but maybe I’m just so stupid, this is so hard that it’s not possible.
This also stops any shock selling or anything like that as there are many parts of country where there would be minimal impact.
It’s bizarre that a sector once as tightly regulated as hotels and B&Bs has effectively been handed over to anyone who decides to turn a rental property into a hotel like accommodation, with almost no structure or oversight, all because an app says it’s fine and it makes tech bros wealthy.
Anyone who dares say it's needs to be regulated back to the rock it crawled out from under is of course hushed up as it's making landlords a lot of money, and there are powerful lobbyists at play. The state dances around the topic but won't do anything drastic.
We let big tech disruptors walk all over us, and I don't just mean Ireland - this stuff is a scourge everywhere be it short term let platforms or the most toxic social media platforms imaginable, seems it's just a free for all for the tech bros again and again. Any amount of disruption is fine, as long as someone's making loads of money and it's a slick app.
Fully aligned. AirBnB is a parasite. Every government in the industrialised West just seem to have been collectively bought off and allowed their homeless and stateless to be housed in hotels and BnBs all over the country, their tourists to be housed in apartments and family homes in every major city and every scenic town and village, and their own citizens left fighting for the grotesquely overpriced scraps in dormitory towns a 2 hour commute from their places of work. And it's all been allowed to happen because tech bros are the new robber barons and nobody seems able to say "no" to them. AirBnB needs to be either banned outright or forced to return to its original pitch, which was owner occupiers renting out spare rooms to visitors for a couple of nights.
I mostly agree but it is actually regulated.
It's just not enforced as is usually the case here.
It's clearly illegal and easy to locate but they send out warning letters instead of fines.
https://www.reddit.com/r/galway/comments/1md3g7m/illegal_airbnb_sign_shop_street/
It's legislated for but it's not regulated. That's classic Irish politics - pass laws and don't resource the regulatory systems to enforce them. It's the same with anything to do with property - derelict buildings and local authorities that basically refuse to act despite having plenty of powers.
It's regulatory capture and a type of sophistry - they keep claiming they can't act, but the reality is they just don't want to.
Exactly, I don’t understand why have the law if it is not enforced
It's fucking disgusting. I went away from Ireland for an extended period, and the choice was rent to a family at a reasonable rate, rent to them and shaft them royally as they have no choice, or AirBnb via a third party who handled everything for a small fee.
I chose option 1 - Then during a few major Dublin events I checked up what was happening on AirBnb and I could have made the monthly rent in 3-5 days.
I'm not asking anyone to weep for me who is after all was a landlord since I was renting out my family home while I was away, but fucking hell the financial incentive to flout the law is huge.
I would have made more than quadruple what I did renting at a reasonable rate as there was no enforcement. Plenty of pricks out there who are doing this.
If regulations aren’t inforced the are they really regulations
American neoliberalism and tech bros have run havoc.
It's time ro reign them in and deamericanize Ireland.
My suggestion: begin with throwing AirBnB out of the country!
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Yep. My home town has about 1 place up for rent at any one time, sometimes none. I looked a few times since my mother told me and I couldn't believe it. Then I learned that a local family who also own a hotel and a bar had build a load of apartments a bit out of town a few years back, rent them as Air BnBs and are empty half the year.
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Yea it's disgusting, changed how I view them because I know them well enough. Could have improved the town a bit but went the greedy route instead.
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Do you mean for travel? I’d argue that fixing the fundamentals of our society is probably a little more important than our travel experiences
Also there’s hotels with designated holiday cottages
Yes! This used to be solved by getting adjoining hotel rooms. I just can't fathom the notion that my desire for affordable convenience when I travel with my toddler should trump the housing needs of the local population.
If you want to fix the fundamentals then build more housing instead of trying to dictate what people can do with their property
More housing doesnt help so much if the majority of it is allowed to remain empty.
I don't think a single new house is being left empty.
Did u read the head line at least
We cannot build at the scale required to reduce pricing. 500k+ is out of reach for most families who want to live somewhat close to the capital.
Who Are u saying this to ?
the tone deafness of this sentence is astounding
This is a very minor problem compared to people having a home to live in. Holiday woes are the definition of a first world problem.
Ah so we should just accommodate you then
If only there was some business model where you could have a bed and breakfast without relying on Airbnb.
Traditional BnBs are not suitable either. Our kids are very young, we need child friendly spaces. If we put them in their own room they'd be able to walk out by themselves and fall down the stairs. The owners ornaments, etc wouldn't be safe.
What we want is an apartment with 3 bedrooms and a kitchen. That's what meets our needs
So don’t travel then, if it’s not suitable for you?
Nobody cares about your holiday, chief.
It’s called self catering most hotels have them
The current market rental market has been done deliberately.
There is absolutely no other way to explain how it has become so dysfunctional.
One of the few lucrative markets absolutely nobody will touch.
The sad part is that it is really not, it would be so much easier to blame it on. A lot of it was done with genuine good intention like improving the living conditions for people and a whole pile of incompetence. I remember people being so happy when bed sits were removed from the market, however they did nothing to increase the supply of rental properties. No wanted another Ballymun so they worked hard to prevent it but it also stopped a lot things that could have improved the rental market.
It’s been done due to incompetence, politicians and civil servants with no experience listening to the lobbyists from select groupings.
They listened to Threshold, Focus etc on the tenants side and entertained IIP on the large institutional investors side. What they didn’t do is engage with the organisations that represent the largest cohort of landlords in the country, the small ones.
Previous and current Ministers and civil servants wanted to increase tenancy rights, which is admirable and needed. However, the issue is that we’re in the middle of a housing crisis and don’t possess the available housing stock levels needed to cope with a seismic policy shift.
Add to the fact that the RTB isn’t and has never been fit for purpose. If anyone hasn’t dealt with the RTB personally I’d advise watching the below…
https://youtu.be/YJiZI3H8vpg?si=sAdYMjoEVmHV-fkZ
Would someone please think of the landlords
Less rental properties on the market means less homes for individuals seeking accommodation, which leads to higher demand for the scarce housing stock, which means higher rents for renters and an increase in homelessness… it’s a complex issue that needs all aspects and factors to be analysed and addressed when policy changes are being made.
Boiling it down simply to “landlords bad” remarks does nothing for nobody, and simply shows you up as uneducated on the topic.
Housing crisis has nothing to do with the government's level of engagement with small landlords. Biggest problem in this country is astronomical rents, you think small landlords have good ideas on how the government can help them to make less money? Or you think that small landlords are somehow involved in building housing?
When the first rental regulations came in (regarding bedsits in 2008), 86% of the housing stock that was in the rental market was owned by landlords with one or two properties.
They were basically forced out of the market.
Housing market crashed in 2008 and we stopped building houses driving construction workers out of the country. Since 2010 the population has increased by 1 mn and we've built less than 250,000 houses. That's why there's a housing crisis not because it's more difficult to subdivide a 2 bedroom house built 75 years ago into 6 bedsits.
Also, if it's any consolation, there's no shortage of people living in squalor in Ireland.
Irelands property market is so messed up because it’s small and highly illiquid and therefore very easily manipulated.
Successive governments have applied sticking plasters and partial solutions all over the place such that you now have a chronically ill patient with tubes sticking out of his big toe, plasters on his ear lobe and only partially being treated for what ails him.
We need something like a citizens assembly to define a top to bottom set of rules that will govern the system in near perpetuity. Or that should be done by a televised cross-party committee based on all the best expertise. I think the Dutch call it poldering - all parties coming together to hammer out a complete compromise because if they don’t the country will be under water.
Some of the solutions are obvious. Others not so.
RTB is a joke. Turnaround times for something like disputing an eviction notice should be no more than 2 working days and tenants should have to dispute within 30 days of receipt
Non-payment of rent (in the absence of material, pre-existing failures on the landlord’s part which have led to withholding rent) should result in near immediate ending of a tenancy
The idea that we would have even 1 derelict site in this country in a time of peak homelessness and demand is an abomination. We have tens of thousands, up and down the country. Local authorities just sit twiddling their thumbs. Government busily rearranges deckchairs but does nothing meaningful.
Any property vacant more 90 days should start attracting a meaningful and increasing tax. And no, the RZLT is not it. They nearly had it in the Vacant Sites Levy (initially 3%, then 7% but FGFF’s property sector friends put the kibosh on that) but then they replaced it with the RZLT.
The question that always arises when these reports get released is “would these units of accommodation be available if the short term rental market was not available” and “are these units of accommodation in the places we need them to be, that is: where the homeless people actually are”. And the answer is never addressed.
Also, the actual numbers given aren't comparable with housing stock that can be used to live in.
A "bed space" isn't equal to 1 house, nor can you just divide the bedspaces by the number of homeless.
100 bedspaces with 20% occupancy doesn't mean 20 have 100% uptime and the other 80 are empty and available.
As with nearly all the analysis of short term lets and their impact on housing that I've seen, theres virtually nothing of value to take from this.
Yeah this is the crux of it really. A bunch of AirBnBs in Dingle or Doolin aren't going to be of any use to us in a homelessness crisis, nor are some log cabins or small extensions on houses in Dublin that get rented out each weekend.
Rather than just banning AirBnB or short-term rentals, I'd prefer if they just taxed them properly and taxed second properties higher than they currently do.
Exactly. Many will be in villages and rural areas in the west of Ireland, which won't have employment prospects in winter months. Many of those holiday homes were only designed to be lived in in the summer, so they'll be freezing cold in winter.
Outlaw AirBnBs or mega tax the bejesus out of them.
Maybe just ban tourism all together, sure that'll solve it.....don't think AirBnB can take the blame for the housing crisis....
There are these new things called Hotels, excellent places.
Hotels are great for tourists. They don’t create new homes for people who need somewhere to live. That problem existed long before Airbnb showed up.
AirBnB has literally destroyed rental markets around the world. There are numerous articles about it from the last decade. It’s the same way Uber has destroyed income for taxi drivers in many countries.
You want to share any of those articles??? Most research in countries like the UK and Ireland found that homes listed on Airbnb make up a very small fraction of the total housing stock and that increases in short-term rentals are not the root cause of overall rental shortages or price hikes. These studies have noted that the shortages are largely the result of slow housing construction, population growth, and lack of supply relative to demand. Across most of Western Europe and North America, the persistent housing shortage stems from fundamental imbalance between supply and demand — construction hasn’t kept up with household formation, zoning and land-use restrictions constrain new housing, and capital inflows have pushed prices up. Even when cities have dramatically cut back Airbnb listings, rents and prices continue rising because the structural supply problem remains. AirBnB has certainly taken some stock off the long-term market and made affordability worse locally but the broader crisis is rooted in lack of construction, restrictive planning rules, demographic shifts and investment dynamics that go far beyond any single platform.....and Uber didn’t kill taxi driving. It killed scarcity, and the income that depended on it.
This housing stock should be returned to long rental to address the growing demand. The government should introduce policies that incentivize landlords to offer properties for long term lease, reduce barriers to rental availability, and curb the rise of short term letting, which worsens the housing crisis.
Every single policy they have introduced has been a disincentive to long term lets. Even worse, every party in Ireland appears to be on board with these policies or even more extreme versions so the likelihood that we see an improvement is close to nil.
Why are property owners currently choosing to go with a short term model where they are receiving no income for 75-95% of the time?
Airbnb can easily be 200-400 per night. You rent that out for one week a month and it's about the same as the rent for a month and you don't have issues with nightmare tenants who don't pay, don't leave and you can sell it to anyone not just another landlord
It offers more flexibility. You don't have to deal with the complications of being a landlord, and given most of these are in areas that attract tourists, you can get more money per night for them than if they were a long-term rental. It also allows you the option to have them available for yourself or friends/family when needed.
Because of govt over regulation
They’re about to introduce a policy one that massively disincentivises landlords renting long term. If I had a second house I would never rent it under the new laws coming in march
So there's 1 less person driving house prices up.
Theres a large stock of houses that are owned by old people in care. Once the new rules about tenure came in , it made it much less attractive for long term lets. I would have preferred to rent it out to a family, however if we inherit the house with in situ tenants , selling it becomes more difficult. I don't want to become a long term landlord. I just wanted to rent it out to keep it occupied and offset some of her care costs. It would need modernisation, new electrics, furniture and kitchen.
Grand, sell the place, who gives a fuck?
Once it's sold it'll go to someone who actually wants to live in it, or someone who will rent it out. Either way it provides accommodation to someone in the very same way it would have before the new law was brought in and you would have gone through the torture of sitting on your arse for 12 months receiving more money than a minimum wage job for your hardship.
The ownership of a house adds absolutely nothing to the accommodation equation. Whether it's a landlord or a homeowner that owns the house, chances are it'll be used at it near capacity for accommodation, so it doesn't matter a fuck if you do sell it.
Given that most people don't know how long they will need care for , a long term rental is not a sensible option now .
The properties will in a lot of cases either be short term let if possible or left vacant.
Most people have to avail of the fair deal to pay for their care. It's about 2000 a week without the fair deal.
The rules have made renting more than six months a six year commitment, unless you can find someone to buy the house with tenants in situ. Most buyers are not interested in buying as a rental. You have to settle with the fair deal within a year of death. Any longer and there's interest and penalties.
So this legislation discourages elderly people to rent their homes long term while in care. So this ties up a large cohort of accommodation.
If a lot of people do this it will be much more difficult to rent but easier to buy and Airbnb. So much worse for the young and others with no deposit. It absolutely does matter
How would it be easier to AirBNB?
AirBNB is probably more work but not a long term commitment.
That's probably not how it'll work in practice though. I'd imagine a lot of landlords will pull their property out of the long-term rental market and into the short-term rental market, so they're not stuck with a tenant for six years and don't have to take a big hit on the price of their property if they sell it.
I bought my own house a year ago after renting for years, and I'm glad I did because I can imagine my old landlord would try to get us out before the new regulations come in March.
They probably won’t get permission for short term lets, most of the large cities and towns have been told not to grant any new short term lets more or less.
Well they still have several months to get in before the new regulations come into force (assuming they don't get watered down). The population threshold of 10,000 is also pretty arbitrary and would mean a large number of properties would still qualify for planning permission.
I'm all for regulation that stops landlords acting the maggot and protects tenants, but regulation isn't going to solve this housing crisis. Everyone who is up in arms over AirBnB will just be up in arms over something else once they realise there is still an enormous shortage of housing supply and a worsening homelessness crisis.
100% building more is first thing we need to do but freeing up some short term rentals for the wider market is a small help if nothing else.
Yeah I do agree with that, although I'm concerned that their blanket approach will do significant damage to tourism in some more remote parts of the country.
That will just encourage landlordism not reduce it.
You’d be mad to rent a house out for a 6 year contract, repeatable for another 6 years.
This will get worse.
I really don't think it's the 6 year term - it's the fact that if the tenant breaches their lease, they can go years without paying rent as the system is slow for legal evictions
Oh not a 6 year contract. That would suggest the responsibilities are mutual. But in fact the new law puts the onus entirely on the landlord, whereas tenants get full flexibility.
I actually think encouraging longer term contracts are a great idea. It wouldn't be unusual to sign a lease for 3 or 5 years in for example Germany. One that lays out penalties and conditions for both parties if they want to break the lease. Giving both parties some stability and allowing flexibility for individual circumstances on both sides. What they're planning to do here is just punitive
Your dead right, I think one of the main things if is that someone has not been paying rent for 2 or 3 months it should at least be possible to remove them from the property.
This is what is really keeping a lot of properties from the market is the fear that you can’t remove a tenant.
Make long-term rents tax free for a decade while we increase housing stock
I’d make them tax free but so long as they are at an affordable level. A two bed gets €2k plus in many areas, say tax free if €1200 per month that way the landlord still makes more money (they get €1k after tax as it is) and tenants get €800 per month to spend in the local economy or investing in themselves.
Wouldn’t be as good for larger corporate landlords though as they pay a lower rate of tax but still some rooms for savings.
Even better idea.
It's almost like the government has created a set of policies so overwhelmingly crap for private landlords that it is more appealing for them to rent via short term lets for only 25% of the time.
The government is literally full of landlords, don’t be daft 😂 This is all to line the pockets of the rich.
It's not like that at all. Jesus. You think the government should do more for landlords? That's fucking delusional.
In the real world it's quite clear that the over regulation of the rental market is having a detrimental effect.
If I moved away for a while I'd leave my house empty. I'd love to rent it - but the risk is too great. 50% tax depending where I moved, actually getting vacant possession when I want the house back could be a nightmare if they went the legal route. A bad tenant could stop paying rent and I would be screwed for potentially years if they dig their heels in and have a mortgage to pay. It's fucking delusional to be told the same thing for years by industry experts and still coming up with the usual "all landlords bad" nonsense.
Irish couples cannot have kids because they can't get houses and don't want to start a family in unsure circumstances. The government makes moves to give these families a few years of stability and you cry for the landlords.
I have no respect for your position whatsoever.
Hmm that’s not what he said.
He is saying that if someone owns a property, it is being made less appealing to rent it and more appealing to just leave it idle. He is saying the policy that encourages this is terrible
You're a wee bit delusional, if you don't understand the substance of what these posters explained to you about the impact of stupid State policies on landlords and why it makse far more sense for many to do short term lets then you clearly have no interest understanding the issue.
And spare us the hysteria, its a complex & tough issue to resolve, happening globally but if that's too much for you to engage with and your only solution is some communist like compulsory appropriation of individuals private property then once more best leave this to the adults to debate.
I think a lot of stupid, stupid people are seeing the waves of landlords selling this year as somehow a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, it's a massive inconvenience for the people short term affected, but these units are being sold to the market. The overall supply is not being hurt. People aren't burning down these units.
Short term "solutions" to a long term problem. Giving one family stability over a 6 year term while making to overall supply problem much worse during that term for many many more families trying to find accommodation doesn't make it correct.
They have destroyed the rental market and it will get much worse.
It is not obvious that this would make the overall supply problem "much worse". Almost no rental home in this country had a tenant in it in 2025 that will lie empty in 2026.
Would you rent out your house for 6 year contracts at a time?
I would never be a landlord. I think it's morally sick to have advantage of people in that way. I put my extra income into less profitable growth opportunities, and I pay my deemed disposal without too much grumbling.
Which ETFs are you invested in? Do you morally review each ofcompany to ensure they abide by your moral standard. Are you aware a large portion of the all world ETFs invest in REITs ?
I don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I am sure that I benefit financially from injustice (I mean, we all do whenever we drink coffee or eat chocolate. Those things are cheap for us because of violence done on our behalf in the developing world).
But I don't say "being perfect is impossible, so I may as well steal coins from blind beggars". I think being a landlord, and having some poor fucker who can't afford to buy because people like you have bought up all the housing to rent it out, and taking that guy's wages month in month out. It's just unconscionable. You'd have to be a fucking scumbag to do it.
That won't ever be me.
You are such a clown.
Even in your ridiculous world of moral superiority you’re just out sourcing your exploitation of other people so you don’t have to get your hands dirty.
Your philosophy is "You can't be perfect, so it's stupid not to hurt everyone you can."
That's a silly philosophy. I do think it's morally superior to adopt a different one.
No I don’t think you’re hurting people by exchanging goods and services.
That’s the moral outlook of an idiot.
If you can't recognise something as immoral just because money is changing hands within it, that's a paucity in your imagination and understanding.
So you believe investing in massive landlords like REITs which have a much larger impact on society than small time/accidental landlords is more closer to perfect than being a landlord yourself.
I’m not a landlord btw.. I just find your strange logic and arguments completely delusional
I think that's very silly of you. Is only buying fair trade coffee stupid and pointless because the farmers are still exploited? Minimising harm is minimising harm. Making money investing in these large corporations is a fraction of the harm of taking a whole house off the market and directly exploring one person or family in particular.
You should get a medal
I should be president. Owning a second home would be illegal.
Pay attention- that’s exactly what’s happening.
Use your brain lad. Come on.
Wait till the effects of the “improved protection” for tenants are seen post March. Effectively, long term squatting by tenants who refuse to pay has been enabled.
Which sane person would run the risk? (for the record, I am NOT a landlord).
Now that most people will rent for their whole lives, protections like these are absolutely necessary to get young couples to start families.
So… you should pay your mortgage while having to live miserably at your mam’s place in a single room while your tenant won’t pay rent for the house that you have rented out … nor will he/she move out although you need the place yourself.
Sounds like the perfect solution. 🤣🤣🤣
It even 1% of landlords were as you describe them here, you would have had some reason to write this comment. As enough, this is just a strange example of you delving into fantasy to justify your poorly thought out notions.
Fantasy? 🙄🤣 Is that why you think small landlords are exiting the market in ever larger numbers worsening the housing crisis?
Spoken like a true commie.
Are they burning their houses down?
Hardly surprising, that’s the premise of short term letting.
There’s a higher vacancy rate during the off-peak periods and during the week with an uptake at peak times and weekends.
You factor your costings into the model that the on-peak/weekend periods will achieve enough of a return/profit that the vacant periods are mitigated.
The real attraction of short term letting is the convenience and flexibility it offers the owner, they’ve no administrative heavy responsibility, they can utilise their own property when they want, it can be easily managed etc.
Houses given over to tourists. Hotels given over to asylum seekers. The whole thing is gone backwards
That is criminal. Wasn't the government all about stopping short-term letting a few years back? Did they just decide they couldn't be bothered.
Air BnB needs to be banned or highly regulated in the cities anyway. It’s crazy. On the flip side, how was it that we could house so many Ukrainians at such a short notice , while it’s great and all and I fully support it- why can’t the same be done for the homelessness numbers now?
Because we are a nation of hypocrites.
This is just ragebait.
It doesn't say where these properties are and which of them would be available to rent if they weren't short-term lets.
It also doesn't identify the type of homes. Is it a room in a house? A holiday cottage in Donegal? What?
It's the same point that is missed every time this comes up - a listing on AirBnB is not a equivalent to a long term rental location, it's just a list of places that range from a bed in a room for a few days a year to an entire house some time in the year, at some time in the past or future.
Even if these 17,000 places were brand new apartments, for free, in Dublin city, it would satisfy just 4 months backlog of the housing crisis, but it's a nice clickbait for when the journalists are on holiday.
Split the country into zones, use parishes or counties or whatever. Set a max number of short term rentals allowed per that zone based on population size or area or some other metric combo. Then announce the cap per zone to all short term letters, if over threshold announce voluntary converters to be paid a year rent bonus to convert to long term letters for min 10 years. If max reduction not reached by 3 months from now, lottery for the remaining short term lets to convert but without the 1 year rent bonus.
Maintain this cap going forward based on whatever metrics. Establish a registry of short term lets that you to register with before airbnb can accept you. The cap controls the max number of short term lets per area. Enables more touristy areas to have higher caps, and population pressure zones to have higher caps.
It seems simple to implement but maybe I’m just so stupid, this is so hard that it’s not possible.
This also stops any shock selling or anything like that as there are many parts of country where there would be minimal impact.
Hold on are you describing… planning?
Guessing by the same amounts of up and downvotes planning is not what people want!
I would genuinely welcome why the downvoters feel this is a bad idea. Even for my own sanity