Very little comfort for tenants - Report on housing rental market

Any young family or individual trying to keep pace with relentlessly climbing rents, any pensioner on the verge of losing their home of many years because rents are being increased far, far faster than their income will have been dismayed by yesterday’s report on the rental sector. It offered them little or no comfort much less security.

Professional landlords and investors in residential property, however, will feel that their position has been vindicated and that the argument against State intervention in their business has been strengthened. They will feel that the overriding primacy afforded to property rights by this society has been recognised and reiterated.

The Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB) report suggested that the introduction of rent controls would make the problems in the private-rented sector worse than they are already. It suggested too that rent controls would drive many landlords out of the sector and exacerbate an already critical housing situation, especially in the larger urban centres.