RTB Rent Register

stormy said:
The net effect: real signed leases for identical units in the same complex were displaced by an averaged index figure plus an unquantified wear-and-tear discount.
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That's what we'll see in the Tribunals going forward.

Real world evidence such as EAs valuations will be ignored and the rent will be based on low comparators from the Rent Index, plus further discounts for vague things like wear and tear, mould in the bathroom etc.

Somebody will come in with a high rent, say €2,500 for a two bed in Cork. The RTB will knock that back and that will then mean that other properties rented at a similar price are too high as well. That will then impact on the next tier of rents, these are too high now, and so on to the next tier.

So we're pretty much in a situation where we have eviction bans/permanent tenancies topped off with RTB controlled rents outside the 2% annual increases.
 
Greenbook said:
Real world evidence such as EAs valuations will be ignored
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Exactly. It happened in this Mardan case. All evidence was taken on oath, and they confirmed they engaged professional valuers. Also worth bearing in mind the Landlord here is Grant Thornton.


Gerard0 said:
Looks like the RTB have stopped publishing the Rent Index? This indicated average rent per County.
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The RTB/ESRI index is still maintained and published quarterly (latest is Q3 2025)
rtb.ie

RTB/ESRI Rent Index - Residential Tenancies Board

rtb.ie rtb.ie


Gerard0 said:
Hopefully as a result of the new Published Rent Register the RTB will be in a position to provide more detailed information for each Local Electoral Area, eg average rents for 2 bedroom apts, 65 sq metres, in Dublin city centre etc. ideally this information should be published every quarter.
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The Mardan case suggests a register or even more granular data won't actually get a property owner to open market rate. The landlord there had an unbeatable evidential package: nine signed leases for two-bed apartments in the same complex, dated within months of the review, including one let on the very same day at €1,000. The Tribunal's response:

"The Tribunal finds that the most useful comparators for market rent are the leases for similar sized apartments in the same complex entered into in or around July 2015."

The issue we need to highlight is that they discounted them anyway. The two grounds are:
  1. First, an unquantified wear-and-tear deduction — the apartment had to be valued "as-is" rather than as a fresh re-let, with no methodology for how much that's worth. Worth pointing out that large landlords now (under the new rules) have no right to get vacant possession of apartments to renovate.
  2. Second, an evidential trap on detail: "the Respondent Landlord identified certain comparator properties as being 'similar' to the rented dwelling however the detail of these properties was not specified such as, the floor they were on; whether they were re-lettings or new-lettings; the number of bathrooms; the fixtures and fittings provided; and the availability of a car-parking space..."

This published register - at any level of LEA granularity, number of bedrooms, size or location - won't carry inventories, fit-out detail, floor numbers, or parking allocations. So the same gap is going to exist.

The landlord's wider-area DAFT comparators (within the same LEA, ranging €975–€1,300) were also effectively set aside — dismissed as too late in time (September vs the July review date) and given little/no weight. So both tiers of evidence — same-complex achieved rents and same-LEA market listings — were discounted in turn. By the same logic, a register published in arrears will face the same "too late" objection.

Basically, the Tribunal took the RTB/ESRI index, calculated a 9.5% lift between Q2 2012 and Q2 2015 for two-beds in Blackrock, applied it to the original €850, and arrived at €930 and called this market rent (despite the comprehensive evidence package of market rate being much higher).

Real achieved rents in the same building at the same time were replaced by an index-based uplift. They were not market rent!

The new register (with the detail it has) is just going feed the same thought process that led to the outcome above.

This just goes to show how the resets are going to work on the 6 year reset - they will not be market rents - they will be just index based.
 
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I think this is called bait and switch.

First we were told that the RPZs were going - the opposite was the case, they are countrywide and permanent.

Then we were told that we could reset to market on tenant turnover or year 6 in return for an eviction ban/permanent tenancies

It now turns out that the reset it not to market, but what the RTB thinks is appropriate based on the Register.

A very nicely sprung trap; same rent levels in return for permanent tenancies. And as the tenant is in for 6 years or forever, you'll just have to accept whatever rent the RTB sets.

stormy said:
This just goes to show how the resets are going to work on the 6 year reset - they will not be market rents - they will be just index based.
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That is exactly what will happen in year 6.
 
stormy said:
unquantified wear-and-tear discount.
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Reducing the incentive for the landlord to do any more than the bare legal minimum does not act in the long-term interest of tenants. As with many of these measures introduced by the government, ultimately counter-productive.
 
Reading the last few RTB examples above is just crazy.

Last weekend I was trying to help someone go through the process of getting to market rent on an apartment that he has had Vacant since December. We tried our best using the tool (and this very thread) and trying to figure out what rules applied and what they meant and what the potential for making a costly mistake was.
We gave up and he made an appointment with his solicitor for yesterday to ask him what EXACTLY he had to do to set the rent.

He has just now given me an update on the meeting he had yesterday with the solicitor.

The solicitor told him that there was actually no way to be sure that you are complying with the new rules, even if you could figure them out. He even said that he has a rental property himself where he has decided he is going to use the cash from the sale of the property to build a modular home in his garden and just rent that instead, just because the rules are much simpler to navigate and he will have the home for one of his children should they need it. He advised my friend to do the same if he wanted to continue to receive rental income, but that renting out the apartment was full of future pitfalls.

And now having caught up on the thread, especially a few posts ago about cases where the RTB just ignored clear evidence of market rent I believe he is just going to follow what the solicitor is doing and sell up and then investigate the possibility of a modular home in his garden, which is 20m x 40m garden on a corner site in Dublin. He would never actually see any tenant if he put the modular home in the right place in the garden.

He has a 10 and a 12 year old and is also thinking its easier to do the modular home in the garden, rent it to a licensee and just give it to one or both of his children to give them some independence when they are old enough.

He just has to weigh up whether about €350k cash after tax from the sale and about €50 to €60k for the modular home is worth it. He was looking to get €2500 rent which would be about €12k after costs and taxes but losing your property to a tenant. Or €14k rent per year plus nearly €300k cash in the bank. He wants me to run through his plan with him next week, which I am very interested to do.
 
JamieB_ said:
The solicitor told him that there was actually no way to be sure that you are complying with the new rules, even if you could figure them out.
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This is the nub of it - even professionals aren't confident they can do it properly.

In the Mardan example I posted earlier, the landlord was Grant Thornton (one of the largest professional services firms globally), acting as receiver. They had access to professional valuers, in-house legal, and nine signed leases for two-bed apartments in the same complex within months of the review date - including one let on the very same day at €1,000. Their evidence looked pretty bulletproof. And they still couldn't get to market rent.

If Grant Thornton can't navigate it with full professional support, what chance does an individual landlord with one or two units have.
 
stormy said:
If Grant Thornton can't navigate it with full professional support, what chance does an individual landlord with one or two units have.
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Not something I know too much about so there could be wider problems like the Iran war, but IRES Reit's share price is going nowhere. It is currently €1.03. In January 2022 it was €1.76. It's lost about 1/3rd of its value and that hasn't come back due to the new rules.

Are the big investors seeing the same issues we are. IRES Reit like Grant Thornton will struggle to establish market rent. There is also the RTB case against it about whether tenants can choose their own replacement tenants when they leave.

And IRES Reit is much better equipped to fight these cases than the small landlord who the RTB will make mincemeat of.
 
Gerard0 said:
Q3 of 2025 seems like an awfully long time ago ...
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Indeed. And this just shows how impossible the situation is for the accommodation providers. In this Mardan case, at the time of the rent review, Grant Thornton would not have even had access to this rental index as it would not have been published (Q2 2015 index was published 24Sept25, so 3 months after the review took place). I'm at a complete loss as to what Grant Thornton have done wrong here.

In addition, it looks like the Tribunal didn't even take the correct index numbers. If you look at the Rent numbers on Table RIQ02 on https://data.cso.ie/, you will see the specific index they reference increased by 10.39%, not the 9.51% the Tribunal calculated and applied. I wonder why the Tribunal applied an index growth below that actually published?

1778403765165.webp

(Screenshots with source data at the end)

This is important as the Tribunal result can only be appealed on a point of the law, and even at that it is to the High Court (slow and prohibitively expensive). So it looks like the RTB got the percentage increase wrong here and nothing practical can be done about it.

If it's the case the data has been restated since the Tribunal took place, it only adds to the inequity for the accommodation provider.

This discrepancy is worrying, but not as important as the fact the index is used at all.




1778402998056.webp

Source: Table RIQ02, https://data.cso.ie/



1778403065947.webp

Source:
https://rtb.ie/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/TR1015-001406-Report.pdf
 
Greenbook said:
It's lost about 1/3rd of its value and that hasn't come back due to the new rules.
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Indeed, down 40% ((173-103)/173) from peak.

The new rules have almost certainly been bad for them. Prior to the new rules, the legislation capping rents at lower of inflation or 2% was temporary (so there was hope, and probably expectation this would change).

The new rules had the major change of making this cap permanent for existing tenants (i.e. almost all IRES REIT customer base). I don't know of another single business that is mandated by Government to cap their revenue growth below inflation. It's almost like Government want to engineer a housing crisis.
 
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What is needed is a totally impartial appeals process. The RTB are clearly representing tenants and not landlords. Yet the landlord pays for it. Its like a turkey paying for the Christmas dinner. Landlords should be allowed to take the RTB to court and sue for damages. The RTB are cleary not what they were set up to be and are 100% not impartial. I just dont get how they are even allowed to exist at this point.
 
JamieB_ said:
The RTB are clearly representing tenants and not landlords.
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The RTB told the head of the IPOA that their job is to regulate landlords - enough said.

We can see it, landlords in trouble over form filling mistakes, tenants helped and indulged if they are squatting or have damaged the property.
 
This was an RTB case used upthread, I've a different take on it, but it's nice to see different viewpoints and tease things out:

Market Rent


This is an institutional landlord with deep pockets. Important points first,

Property is in Blackrock Cork, rent was 850, letter of increase is 2 July.

Errors by landlord

- did not appear in person and only informed the tribunal on the day itself
- Date of Tribunal 27th November, landlord served documents to tenant the day before !
- Despite having One Hundred and Twenty Seven units in the development they lost !
- their paperwork stated rental valuations, by professional valuers, BUT they supplied no valuations !
- did not supply address of one property in the development on the higher rent
- supplied 4 DAFT adds for properties in Douglas and Roachstown, which are not in Blackrock/Mahon
- the dates were from September, but the rent increase letter was 2 July
- one lease for a one bed at 850 not supplied, just stated

Good points by landlord

- they did supply comparable properties of 2 bed 2 bath

Good points by tenant

- provided 3 rentals in the area, all well below the 1K rent, 825/900/900
- also provided the RTB index 897
- provided media reports that rents of 2 beds were 867
- provided media reports rents in the area had decreased (I thought that was very clever)
- stated a 3 bed penthouse in the same development was less than 1000
- was able to talk about personal circumstances (which should not be relevant at all but it's Ireland and tenant's are the RTB's raison d'etre )


Mistake by tenant

- stated current rents would be 1000 (somehow he was able to back track on this and says that would be from the date of the case which is November, remember rent increase was from 30th July of the same year !


RTB at fault
- for not allowing the submission of 9 leases in the exact same development of exactly the same type of 2 beds
- not accepting two leases for 1000 each for 2 beds in the same complex on the correct dates
- stating that despite the actual leases being the best comparators than rowing back from that and stating it's not 'determinative'
- that because the tenant's property had not been redecorated/refreshed this was an important point. You're hardly expected to do this during the first 3 years of a tenancy ! Are the RTB seriously suggesting landlords repaint every 3 years?
- despite 9 leases that landlord supplied the Tribunal dismissed them as the floor level was not mentioned, the fixtures not listed, re let or new let not submitted, no of bathrooms not supplied and car parking spaces
- something about the inventories of the apartments not being supplied seemed important, the level of detail the RTB wanted here was unreal
- too much weight to the RTB's rental index, becasue this is not equal to the actual rents the landlord was achieving on the date in the development and also it's not the same as the DAFT ads which are going to be closer to the real rental rate, in addition the RTB index will never be good at the given date as the index is months later and it applies to the past
- using a percentage increase from the past to justify creating a percentage increase in the present, looks like Mad Hatter accountancy to me
 
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Bronte said:
RTB at fault
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Good points on RTB 'at fault', those were clear winners for the landlord, but the landlord still lost. These were dismissed by the RTB, not the type of evidence they were looking for.

This case is a clear warning to landlords of where the 'resetting to market rent' is going.
 
Conclusions:

- Daft ads will be considered
- So will other leases
- make sure you compare like with like
- make sure it's the same general area
- Valuations will be accepted
- Make sure you supply proper paperwork, you need to back up what you're claiming
- appear in person so you can refute on the date, extremely bad manners not to show up. Though on this, maybe Grant Thornton takes the view, that the RTB is the Wild West and just go along with it without wasting any more manpower on it. You'll lost one case, you move on, you learn and meanwhile you're increasing your rents anyway

This is a good case to learn how the RTB operates.
 
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