Infographic: The Dublin Rental market

With the rental market in Dublin approaching its busiest time of the year we take a look at the market and what is available.

Once again, a few quick notes on what we can take from this.

There is a huge supply of rental property in Dublin at the moment meaning the market is highly competitive for the agencies while tenants benefit from such a large supply with less demand. Interestingly enough I just checked Daft.ie to compare our figure as we created this early last week and they are identical, so not much movement for now.

Secondly, as expected Apartments are the dominant property type throughout the city, this is was obviously going to be the case in such a highly congested city with most house’s outside for the city having homeowners. Thankfully there is only 227 flats as I have a hatred towards them after my year long stay in Rathmines during college 🙂

Out of the 4756 properties currently on the market the majority (A total of 77.3%) are two and three beds, interestingly the number of 3 bed apartments available is just over three hundred less than two beds.

Lastly we breakdown the amounts of properties available at the various and most comment rental prices, starting with the bargain hunter @ 0-€500 they have a limited selection of 146 rental properties. From there the number of properties gradually rises through the next two rent brackets and peaking during the €800-€1,100 bracket with over two thousand properties on the market in that price range.

As always we would love to hear your feedback on this topic.

Other property infographics –

The NPSRA & Licensed property services providers

Landlords and tenants infographic

by Andreas Riha

March 13, 2012

Rental property – Fake landlord scam

Following on from the cheque cashing scam its important to remember that not only the agent / landlord who is the potential target in property rental scams. Through out my career within the lettings industry I have spoken to numerous tenants who have experienced such a scam. The fake landlord scam is where tenants hand over a deposit and possible rent upfront to a fake landlord. This scam normally happens as follows.

A home hunter responds to an ad normally on a free advertising website but could also be on a property portal, local paper etc. The home hunter arrives to view the property which is priced below the norm in a well sought after area. The tenant very much interested and in assuming they are getting a bargain is convinced to hand over a deposit. So what is wrong here you ask? Well this landlord is doing this to every set of tenant who has called to view the place. The landlord could do this for the whole day in 30 minute intervals or even a couple of days. The first time anyone is made suspicious is when the phone number the tenant contacted the landlord on is no longer reachable. Here is the story of a particular case in Dublin of such incidence.

In some cases the brazen fake landlord will also arrange to meet, sign a lease, hand over keys and collect the rent in advance perhaps in a hotel lobby or coffee shop. When the home hunter arrives with lease and key in hand at the dream property the key does not work. There might even be a queue of new tenants looking to see if their key works. Here is such a case where once again the con man was caught.

So as you can see just because someone has possession of a property it does not mean they are the owner or acting on the owners behalf. It is ever so important to know who you are handing the deposit over to. Bank draft & cheques are always the best way to give a deposit as they are traceable. Under some genuine circumstances a property may require something to hold it for a night. Perhaps until you can get a draft and if you are placing a cash deposit it should be only a token amount to show you are serious. I would say nothing more than €50, this should be ok for one evening. Most if not all professional agents and landlords will be fine with this and if they are not it might be better to walk away.

The above incidents happen to a very, very, very small percentage of rental properties. But it can happen and it is always better to be safe then sorry.

Other blogs which may interest you are The Rental Property Scam & Property Rental scam cheque cashing

by Andreas Riha

December 11, 2011

Siliconrepublic start up of the week write up.

Rentview app aims to disrupt rental marketplace

04.12.2011

Our tech start-up of the week is Rentview, a rent and property management cloud-based platform for estate and letting agencies to manage, build and retain their rental portfolios. It is also aiming to help tenants manage their monthly rental payments more efficiently.

Rentview was set up in Dublin in early 2010 and went into Beta with 10 agencies in July to test features and get feedback.

The duo behind Rentview are Andreas Riha and Colin Napper, both previous owners of a letting agency in Dublin.

“We learnt all the problems associated with having a lettings and management portfolio. We saw an opportunity to streamline the process by automating the estate and letting agent’s job as much as possible,” they told Siliconrepublic.com yesterday.

So how did the business get up and running? Firstly, Napper entered the DIT Hothouse programme in October 2010. He said he gained valuable knowledge about launching a business in the internet space.

“We applied much of that learning to developing our minimum viable product. We entered an agreement with our developers who developed the Rentview app as they loved the concept and we boot-strapped getting it off the ground with money from ourselves and personal loans.”

The Rentview team itself comprises Napper, who is CEO, Riha, director of sales and marketing, Kurt Funai, senior developer, and Cormac Nugent, marketing.

Helping hand

But have there been any entities that have helped Rentview along the way?

“We found the DIT Hothouse programme to be very beneficial and they provided incubation office space for free, which allowed us to develop the Rentview app. We also got an innovation voucher that facilitated DCU to help us with market research. And we are currently engaged with Enterprise Ireland with regard to launching Rentview for the UK market,” explained Riha yesterday.

Dublin Beta

Recently, Rentview showcased its app at Dublin Beta.

“We met some very cool people, most of them tech heads who were tenants and we explained the benefits of tenants using Rentview. All of them saw the value of being on Rentview from a tenant’s perspective,” explained Napper.

“At Dublin Beta, there was a People’s Choice award. Through this, attendees got €3,000 in the value of poker chips as investment chips to give out to the start-up they liked. We came third out of 14 start-ups,” explained Riha.

But where is Rentview at right now in terms of its commercialisation strategy?

“The Rentview current product is ready for the Irish market and we are putting together a marketing campaign for January 2012. We want to ramp up sales to agencies in Ireland. Our plan is to develop the product for the UK market, which is 10 times bigger and the rental industry is more regulated there. So the UK is out next market target,” said Napper.

So what, exactly, is the advantage of people using this cloud-based product, rather than going down the traditional property-letting or renting route?

Riha explained that a Rentview customer is an agency which subscribes to Rentview via a software-as-a-service (SAAS) model. In turn, he said such an agency will get many benefits, including saving time, automating paperwork, streamlining processes and giving better customer service to landlords and tenants.

Lately, we have been hearing a lot in property circles that it is a renter’s marketplace right now, with the balance having shifted from being a landlords’ paradise.

Napper points to how the ESRI encouraged young people to rent this week.

“The supply of property in July 2009 in Dublin was 8,300 and is currently at 3,700. Rents are rising again because of lack of supply in some areas and landlords are getting hit with more taxes and regulations.

“Good tenants are a valuable commodity in the rental market and we plan on developing a renters’ referencing or accredited system for tenants who pay on time and leave properties in good condition. This minimises the risk for the agency and landlord and makes the job of an agency easier,” he said.

Advice for self-starters

And finally, what advice would Napper and Riha give to other people thinking of venturing out on their own?

They recommend reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries before developing a new product.

“When we had the idea for Rentview it was way more detailed than what we currently have and would have cost us three times more to develop but we were advised to build the ‘minimum viable product’. Secondly, if you can get on a platform like the DIT Hothouse programme, or the NDRC LaunchPad/Inventorium, these people have great insight into new ventures. And, lastly, get out and and talk to people. Don’t be afraid. It’s only an idea you have and there are many of them,” added Riha and Napper.

Carmel Doyle |