Up to 29 per cent of private homes in Galway are privately rented - making it the biggest rental market in the country.
That’s according to new figures released last week by Threshold Ireland.
According to Threshold’s Annual Report, 17,349 households were living in private rented accommodation in Galway in 2007.
And as on average there are two people living in each household, the organisation estimates there were almost 35,000 people living in private rented accommodation in Galway last year.
The figures mean Galway has the largest rental sector in the country with 29 per cent of homes rented, compared to 22 per cent in Dublin, 19 per cent in Cork, and 18 per cent in Limerick.
In Galway Threshold dealt with 3,873 housing queries, including 1,718 information queries; 1,446 advice queries, and 709 advocacy queries.
Deirdre Murphy, services co-ordinator at Threshold said that the new figures point to people making semi-permanent homes in the rental sector.
“Traditionally people saw the rental market as a stop gap,” she said, “But with house prices the way they are, people are now making permanent homes.”
She added that despite statistics suggesting a fall in rent across the board, Threshold is often not seeing the same in Galway.
She added, “Rents are not going down. We’re being told rents are going down, but we’ve observed for people on lower incomes, they’re remaining static or even going up.”
