“I’ve been working 30 years in this business, and you’d see the occasional landlord sell off a property and a natural replacement would spring up, allowing new renters to come into the market. But you don’t see that any more. I have never seen the rental market as dysfunctional as it is now to be honest,” he said.
For Tiernan Surlis, final year medical student in NUIG, on placement in Mayo University Hospital, he said that housing for students is “a bit of a lottery”. “But the fact of the matter is, is that the people in places like this aren’t living the Dublin life, and they aren’t earning the Dublin money. To have over a 200 per cent increase in prices over the course of just a few years is an enormous thing for the people who live here and for students coming up here too to deal with.”
“Thankfully we got very lucky, I’ve been living in my current house for the last three years with my partner. When we initially started looking for a house there were loads of properties available, you essentially had your pick, which certainly isn’t the case any more,” he said. Cyril Burke from DNG Estate Agents Castlebar said there is such a tight supply of properties that when a property becomes available there is a “huge demand” as employment opportunities have improved.