Clare has the joint-highest percentage of unregistered properties in the private rental market nationwide.
A new analysis has found that over 70,000 properties in Ireland listed in the most recent Census as being rented from a private landlord aren’t registered with the Residential Tenancies Board.
The Central Statistics Office has compared the RTB’s private tenancy figures with the Census 2022 data on private landlords to determine the number of potentially unregistered properties in the market.
After subtracting the 246,453 tenancies registered with the RTB as of December 31st 2022 from the 330,632 which indicated in the Census that they rent from a private landlord, the initial exploration found a discrepancy of 84,179.
Excluding properties availing of the rent-a-room scheme, dwellings owned by a local authority and those in which more than one household was recorded in the Census, the final number is 73,002.
The data shows that on average, just 77% of properties listed as being rented from a private landlord in the Census were registered with the RTB while in Clare, this was as low as 60%.
Clare and Monaghan have been identified as the areas with the highest percentage of properties classed as possible formal rentals – meaning properties not registered with the RTB but have characteristics making them likely to be in the private rental market – at 11%.
The data also identifies 29% of properties in Clare listed in the Census as being rented from a private landlord as possible informal rentals such as granny flats, properties that are part of an employment arrangement, sub-lets and low or no-rent guardianship agreements.
