Landlords may have front-loaded rent hikes

Driven by fears of a Coalition clampdown, landlords likely hiked rents to pre-empt potentially worse controls.

CSO figures published yesterday showed rents rose again sharply in October as Environment Minister Alan Kelly and Finance Minister Michael Noonan hotly disputed a range of measures to cool a red-hot rental market.

Those measures — only finally unveiled this week included proposals to freeze rent hikes for two years — but did not embrace a mooted measure to link rents to the overall consumer price index.