‘I’d nearly take them into my house if I had space for them’ - Mayo estate agent

120 emails and another sixty phone calls came into estate agent Teresa Walsh when her most recent advertisement for a property in Westport went online. 180 attempts by people to rent one single property.

Teresa is at the coalface of the desperate reality of the rental market in the Westport area, with rentals making up 50 percent of her business. 

READ MORE: Mayo councillor pleads with housing minister to declare housing emergency

She tells The Mayo News that she regularly has people crying down the phone and says, “The amount of desperate cases that are out there looking for houses - people that will be homeless. I’d nearly take them into my house if I had space for them.”

In business for over twenty years, recessions have come and gone, but the current rental market now “is definitely the worst.”

Why is it so impossible to find somewhere to rent?

There is no one single answer as to why it is now all but impossible to find a place to rent in Mayo towns like Westport. 

However, Teresa identifies the pressure that came on the system at the start of Covid-19 when people could work from home as one factor.

“A lot of people came from the city to country areas and rented where they were from. Working from home changed the whole mindset of their futures.”

The government decision to pay €800 tax free to house Ukrainian refugees also put pressure on the system. 

Landlords leaving the market 

Another factor is landlords leaving the rental sector. 

“There's nothing easy about being a landlord. Everybody thinks that anyone who is a landlord is rich. The majority of landlords are anything but, they pay high taxes.”

Rental income being treated as income has the effect that most landlords pay over fifty percent tax on it. 

The buoyant property market is also a cause for the exodus, especially for landlords who bought during the boom and were caught in negative equity. They are choosing to sell now and leave the rental market.

READ MORE: One-in-three rental properties in Westport listed on Airbnb

Airbnbs may not be 'the solution'

For those hoping new rules around Airbnbs may lead to more properties coming onto the rental market, Teresa proffers a note of caution. 

"On a practical level, a lot of Airbnb properties would not be suitable for rentals. They would not meet the rental guidelines to have a freezer, a washing machine and proper cooking facilities. 

The other side of it is that some people work away for a number of months, “so it doesn't necessarily mean that the property is available 24/7 365 days a year all the time.”