87 enquiries in 10 seconds – for one property to rent

AN estate agent has revealed he had almost 90 applications within ten seconds of advertising a property to rent, as tenants continue to be pushed out of the housing market by a chronic lack of supply.

In the latest report from property website Daft.ie, only 462 homes were available to rent in Dublin, among only 851 in the whole country.

Ryan O’Shaughnessy, associate director of Get Property Estates, said he received 87 email applications within seconds of launching one property.

Speaking on Newstalk, he said: ‘On Daft there’s a facility where we can launch an advert and straight away mark it Rent Agreed so that it doesn’t go out to the market for too long.

‘The way it sets up, you have to refresh it, so I refreshed, refreshed, refreshed. It went live and then straight away I marked it Rent Agreed. Probably about ten or 15 seconds it was on the market. I got 87 email applications in those ten seconds.’

Mr O’Shaughnessy revealed that a colleague advertised a property in Blanchardstown on a Friday evening and ‘by Monday morning there were 1,000 applications in his inbox’.

He said: ‘It’s really, really difficult, and there’s a human cost to that as well. We get about 15 people a day knocking on our door saying, “I can’t find anywhere to live”.’

Both Mr O’Shaughnessy and another letting agent, Igor Fleming, managing director of Dublinlettings.com, believe the Dublin rental market is the worst they have ever seen.

Mr Fleming, who has been in the business since 1998, told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘We’ve had tightness of supply before but right now it’s as bad as it’s ever been.’

Mr O’Shaughnessy added: ‘It’s the most difficult market I think we’ve ever been in.’

He said: ‘There’s just an absolute lack of supply, and because of that, demand is going through the roof. Typically at this time of year we’d have about 20 rental properties on the go. We currently have three.’

Mr Fleming also revealed that other problems, such as fraud and scamming, are arising due to people’s desperation.

‘One company is scalping our properties and offering them without permission. There’s a huge amount of fraud out there. People are being scammed,’ he said.

The agency has reported this to gardaí.