Case study
A SHRINKING rental market and inflated prices means accommodation is nothing but a dream for many young people.
I know this because I’ve spent the best part of the past two months trawling through advertisements online in an attempt to rent a room in our capital, with no success. I’m just one of the thousands out there, all in the same boat.
We know this isn’t specific to Dublin, as rents have climbed to record highs across the country. Landlords I speak to say they receive hundreds, some even say close to a thousand, enquiries from prospective tenants within hours of listing their ads online.
Many of them say they have to take them down almost immediately because of the volume of interest. In fact, the whole process has become very close to applying for a job.
They ask for a ‘short bio’ indicating why you would be a good candidate, an opportunity to impress upon the landlord that you are the right fit for their often damp and overcrowded home.
If you fit their ‘criteria’ you are invited for a viewing which feels more like an interview. Bear in mind another 40 other ideal candidates have also been invited.
That’s where you sell yourself to them, all the while knowing there is someone else outside to come in after you to do the same.
And this is against the backdrop of paying huge rents if you are the successful candidate. A double bedroom in a four-bed house is going for up to a €1,000 a month in suburban Dublin.
The alternative is to share a room with another person you’ve never met before, for around €500 a month.
When people ask me why I don’t look for a job outside of Dublin, I have to remind them that this is happening everywhere in the country.
Apart from that, the reality is that working in the media means more than 90pc of jobs are in the Greater Dublin Area. I’m not alone in that either.
The technology sector is another area in which Dublin has locked down a massive proportion of those jobs.
The good news is that I have a fourhour round trip every day to refine my sales pitch for future viewings.