PRTB ?

Following the discovery of a couple of hundred thousand empty homes by Census enumerators recently. I was less than shocked when I unearthed the following statistics published by the Private Residential Tenancies Board.

At the end of 2005, the number of registrations with the PRTB was 83,983 and this was in respect of 53,070 landlords and 150,518 tenants. At 3 March 2006, the number of registrations with the PRTB was 88,593 and this was in respect of 55,685 landlords and 160,251 tenants.

So, as far as the government is concerned, out of an Irish population of 4,200,000, only 160,000 are private sector tenants. Only 88,593 private sector rental properties exist in the state, about 7-8% of the housing stock. When you consider that agents believe that investors purchase roughly 40% of new build output, (running at 80,000 units currently) the disparity between the PRTB’s figures and the probable actuality is remarkable.

There is something remiss in the Irish property market, we have tens of thousands of empty homes, and a private rented sector that barley exists (statistically). Poor Bertie Ahern is labouring in a qualitative information desert, hence his bad tempered fits when pressed on the issue of Irish housing. Shirty Bertie hasn’t a notion, no one has.

http://www.prtb.ie/pubregfStats.htm
http://www.prtb.ie/pubregister.htm
The second link provides a county by county breakdown of PRTB registered properties.