A residents' association has said that far from leaving the market in their droves, many landlords are in fact just not registered with the Residential Tenancies Board. 

Under the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, landlords are legally obliged to register a tenant with the RTB within a month of them moving in and of any rent increases.

If they do not do so, they could face a €4,000 fine and could be sentenced to up to six months in prison.

Despite this, Magazine Road Residents Association Chairperson Catherine Clancy feels many in Cork City are flouting the law and not fulfilling their legal obligations.

“For the last six years, we’ve been checking the rented properties in the area that are unregistered with RTB,” she told The Pat Kenny Show. 

“In 2017, we wrote to the RTB and at that stage, we did a survey of about 300 properties and we found there were 150 not registered with the RTB.”

In 2022, they carried out the survey again and found 99 out of 300 were still unregistered. Furthermore, 60 properties that were unregistered in 2017 remained unregistered.

Ms Clancy has calculated that if the figures are reflective of the national picture, then there could be as many as 100,000 landlords who are letting a property without registering it with the RTB.

“The RTB is not an accurate base to define any Government policy or make any cuts in the budget if they’re reflected on the numbers dropping in the RTB,” she said.

“Our understanding and our lived experience is there is no landlord leaving the market; they are changing tenancies, maybe alright, but there definitely is a real issue on registrations.”

Earlier this week, Daft.ie released a report that calculated that rents in Ireland increased by 2.4% in the second quarter of 2023.

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Main image: Property to let. Photo: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie