RTB Q2 '26 Data. New tenancy registrations down 39% to a record low. Why the silence?

[stormy]

The RTB published Q2 2026 yesterday. Ex cost rental, total private sector tenancies fell by 179 compared to prior quarter.

Points to highlight

1. New tenancy registrations fell off a cliff. Down 38.8% on Q1 to lowest on record of 10,129 new registrations (previous low 14,742). Interestingly total registration
activity was flat yoy at 57,005. Renewals rose by almost exactly what "new" fell by. There has been no commentary on this collapse in new registrations. (these include cost rentals, RTB doesn't split out private only). Surprising the press are not picking up on this.



Data here.

2. Only four cost rental landlords? 105,555 private landlords including cost rental. 105,551 excluding. A difference of FOUR for 6,186 cost rental tenancies spread across 18 local authority areas. Cost rental is delivered by AHBs, the LDA, local authorities and to a lesser extent private landlords. And 105,551 appears nowhere in the Director's Report - it exists only as a single bar on a webpage.


3. Seventeen of twenty-six counties show declining tenancy numbers. Ex cost rental, Q1 to Q2 2026. Dublin +442. Every other county combined, -621. (Cork -242, Limerick -183, Galway -85, Mayo -80)

Q1 2026 ex-cost-rental at county level was published last quarter and the data has since been taken it down. Only Q2 remains on their website. I've used the file I saved from Q1 (and compared to Q2)).





4. It's the family homes that are going. Apartments have risen every single quarter of the series. Houses peaked at 113,988 in Q4 2024 and have fallen since (includes cost rental as not split out). What's growing is small units. What's leaving is the stock a family can actually live in.


(Above includes Cost Rentals, but even allowing for those inflating the apartment line, the absolute fall in houses since Q4 2024 is the striking part)

5. Compliance campaign is winding down. This matters for the comparisons. 7,008 compliance notices for failure to register in 2025 which inflated the register throughout 2025. In H1 2026: 151 in Q1 and 1,133 in Q2, so 1,284. It does not surprise me to see the register of private tenancies officially declining again as this compliance campaign winds down.

 

[Greenbook]

activity was flat yoy at 57,005. Renewals rose by almost exactly what "new" fell by. There has been no commentary on this collapse in new registrations. (these include cost rentals, RTB doesn't split out private only). Surprising the press are not picking up on this.

Does the cost rental inclusion make the decline on the PRS side worse? A lot of new cost rentals came on stream this year.

5. Compliance campaign is winding down. This matters for the comparisons. 7,008 compliance notices for failure to register in 2025 which inflated the register throughout 2025. In H1 2026: 151 in Q1 and 1,133 in Q2, so 1,284. It does not surprise me to see the register of private tenancies officially declining again as this compliance campaign winds down.

Agree entirely with that. The Register is still inflated even when you include those lower figures. Where is the indication that the compliance campaign is winding down? Q1 may have been a blip. Hard to imagine they've caught all the unregistered landlords at this stage and it is very useful for the fiction that landlords aren't leaving the market.

4. It's the family homes that are going. Apartments have risen every single quarter of the series. Houses peaked at 113,988 in Q4 2024 and have fallen since (includes cost rental as not split out). What's growing is small units. What's leaving is the stock a family can actually live in.

This was predicted by estate agents and posters on here from the start. It only makes sense to rent to mobile tenants under the new rules. Families tend to be much longer term. Also, as we also spotted here, house shares are impossible under the new rules. That's another reason for the decline in 3 and 4 bed houses. Like the bedsits, they've managed yet again to remove the cheapest option for tenants from the market.

The RTB is a political (and anti-landlord) body at this stage. They are cherry picking in their press releases the numbers which feed the narrative that government policy is working.

The RTB said they are delighted with their new fixed penalty powers and will be analysing the data to spot and fine landlords who have breached the rent setting rules, they say. Yet more crimes and fines, that'll really encourage new investors to join.

 

[stormy]

Does the cost rental inclusion make the decline on the PRS side worse? A lot of new cost rentals came on stream this year.

Good point yes - we actually can adjust as we know total cost rentals increase over the period. So, yes, cost rental making it worse by a decent margin. We know cost rental grew from 5,226 to 6,186 in Q2 2026, so at least 960 of the 10,129 new registrations were cost rental. Private-only new registrations were therefore no more than 9,169.



So this is quite stark, private only new registrations actually collapsed 42.9% QoQ (not the 35.2% I had in opening post). The are down 35.2% YoY.

Cost rental was 9.5% of new registrations in the Q2 26 quarter while being just 2.5% of the register. In Q2 2025 it was 4.1%. So it is taking a rising share of a shrinking flow.

Where is the indication that the compliance campaign is winding down?

You're right. I was wrong to call it winding down. Table by quarter below, it actually does show the notices picking up again.



If we stripped these out of the total private tenancy numbers, the decline would be starker.

The RTB said they are delighted with their new fixed penalty powers and will be analysing the data to spot and fine landlords who have breached the rent setting rules, they say. Yet more crimes and fines, that'll really encourage new investors to join.

Indeed, it did seem like they are taking pleasure at the latest set of powers to penalise accommodation providers.

 

[Greenbook]

So this is quite stark, private only new registrations actually collapsed 42.9% QoQ (not the 35.2% I had in opening post). The are down 35.2% YoY.

Yes, it is incredibly stark as these are new tenancies which can increase the rent to market. It shows, as we spotted here, how unattactive the new rules are. The ability to reset the rent does not offset the restrictions elsewhere.

Obviously, we'll have to see if the trend continues. I think it will, not at such a high level though. The NoTs may have tailed off, but landlords are selling up when their tenant leaves.

Indeed, it did seem like they are taking pleasure at the latest set of powers to penalise accommodation providers.

Statement from the RTB on this

"We also need to make sure that we then review the data, particularly in the counties where we're seeing significant increases in rent levels."

Ms Steen added that the RTB "will be applying measures through fixed penalty notices to landlords who set rents higher than would be allowed under the existing legislation."

So we can expect these fixed penalty fines to be thrown about like confetti at a wedding.

 

[patfert1]

The IT article yesterday focussed on rent increases.
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/...w-tenants-as-reforms-took-effect-rtb-reports/ (paywalled)

Headline and byline:

Sharp rise in rents charged to new tenants as reforms took effect, RTB reports​

New tenants charged average of €1,839 per month, while existing tenants paid €1,513​

A couple of quotes:

Analysis of Residential Tenancies Board data found a 9.1 per cent year-on-year rise for new residential lettings between January and March of this year.

For existing tenancies, the year-on-year rate of inflation was 4.2 per cent in the first quarter, bringing the average monthly rent up to €1,513.

Rachel Slaymaker, of the https://www.irishtimes.com/esri (Economic and Social Research Institute), said there was a “slight tip up” in inflation in January and February before a “spike” in March. Annual rent inflation for new tenancies in the last quarter of 2025 was 5.4 per cent, she said.

The usual statements from each political wing:

Taoiseach Micheál Martin acknowledged the changes to the rental market had affected tenants.

“Clearly, for the long-term sustainability of the market, change had to occur, and that was recommended by the Housing Commission that we would change the existing system, which was uncertain and didn’t give certainty for investment into the future,” he told reporters in Dublin.

Supply was the fundamental challenge to the cost of housing, said Martin, for renting and purchasing. He said the Government was “making progress on the supply side”.

Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin called for an “immediate” ban on rent increases and evictions, claiming Government policy is “making the housing crisis worse”.

Rory Hearne, housing spokesman for the Social Democrats, said the rental changes are “causing armageddon in the rental market” and must be reversed to “avoid even further fallout”.

and the usual spin from the RTB, which in it's statements can be clearly seen to be backing up government policy by painting a rosy picture where possible:

RTB director Rosemary Steen said it is a “concern” that nine counties saw average rents for new tenancies increase by more than 10 per cent year-on-year.

However, in a sign that the rental market “continues to stablise and adjust”, she noted eviction notices fell significantly in the second quarter of this year after a record number of people were asked to leave their rental homes ahead of the reforms.

The RTB received 4,031 termination notices from April to June, a sharp drop on the 7,062 filed between January and March.

Steen said the decrease suggests the “unusually high” volumes seen earlier this year were “temporary rather than indicative of a sustained trend”.

 

[JoeRoberts]

But if the new rentals are mainly AHBs and the like.we need high rents as the taxpayer is paying for the houses. So it is good news.

 

[stormy]

So it is good news.

Not if one doesn't qualify for state accommodation.

 

[Greenbook]

I love the way Micheal Martin keeps hiding behind the Housing Commission! Their recommendations were quite different to the current concoction.

and the usual spin from the RTB, which in it's statements can be clearly seen to be backing up government policy by painting a rosy picture where possible:

The previous deliberate inclusion of cost rentals in the PRS to massage the numbers upwards is a prime example of that.

 

[Wavelly]

Yes, it is incredibly stark as these are new tenancies which can increase the rent to market. It shows, as we spotted here, how unattactive the new rules are. The ability to reset the rent does not offset the restrictions elsewhere.

Obviously, we'll have to see if the trend continues. I think it will, not at such a high level though. The NoTs may have tailed off, but landlords are selling up when their tenant leaves.

Yes I agree. We had a tenant leave voluntarily a couple of months ago where they were paying around 60% of market rate. So we could have relet at market rate, but we felt we had no real choice but to sell, as at our ages we really don't want to be tied in to 6 year tenancies. Also, it is quite off-putting that we can easily incur a fine or penalty if we make a mistake with the tenancy registration or rent setting.

We currently have our apartment on the market, but we have noticed the market has slowed down a lot since we sold a similar apartment a year ago. There are multiple apartments the same size for sale in the same town so buyers have a lot more choice (a good thing!). In an ideal world we would rent it out again at around market rent, but this just seems far too risky now, so we will either keep it on the market and hope it sells or leave it empty for a while.

 

[Greenbook]

Yes I agree. We had a tenant leave voluntarily a couple of months ago where they were paying around 60% of market rate. So we could have relet at market rate, but we felt we had no real choice but to sell, as at our ages we really don't want to be tied in to 6 year tenancies. Also, it is quite off-putting that we can easily incur a fine or penalty if we make a mistake with the tenancy registration or rent setting.

For the older landlord (and I'd say the majority of small landlords are of the older vintage these days), it makes little sense to lock yourself into a 6 year lease. What if ill-health or similar means you need to sell? In theory, you can issue an NoT on the hardship ground, but if the tenant challenges the NoT you've months and possibly years fighting it though the RTB Tribunals. That is the last thing you need if you are fighting an illness or bereaved.

The fines and penalties for mistakes in forms are nearly worse. Do we need the stress at our age of letters arriving out of the blue at our homes issuing fines and possibly threatening criminal prosecution.

It would be great to be finally able to rent at something approaching market rent, but all you could be doing is bringing months and possibly years of stress and worry on yourself. It's just not worth it as you get older.

I'm seeing a lot of ex-rentals for sale in Cork as well. I'd say a lot of landlords are, like yourself, selling up as tenants leave. It is good that it is giving more choice to first time buyers.