Property crash driving rent inflation

Lars Frisell thought it would be easy to find an apartment to rent in Dublin, the epicentre of western Europe’s biggest real estate crash, after he moved from Sweden to become chief economist at Ireland’s central bank.

Three months later, he’s still looking, joining students, hi-tech professionals, and would-be homebuyers competing for space and pushing up rents in the Irish capital.

“You’d think that there’d be so many apartments and so many houses available,” Frisell told a gathering of Irish accountants last week. “There’s not.”