Summary: <br> <a href="https://twitter.com/JoelKeysNI" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">Joel Keys</a> is a Belfast Loyalist activist and prolific tweeter.<br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="https://blog.hereshow.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Joel-Keys_v2-scaled.jpg" data-wpel-link="internal"></a><br> <br> <br> *****<br> <br> <br> <br> I discovered a big discrepancy. Well, I didn’t so much discover it as notice it. And it isn’t really isn’t a big discrepancy, it is an enormous discrepancy. A gigantic discrepancy. A sort of a so-big-you-could-see-it-from-space. discrepancy<br> <br> <br> <br> This is the discrepancy. Have a look at Daft.ie any given day, on the front page you can choose to browse by section, and go to Rental properties. No filters, look at the whole country, any type of residence. Much has been made of this. These days, you will normally get less than 800 properties.<br> <br> <br> <br> Of course, some properties that go up for rent don’t go on Daft, they are rented by word of mouth, via social media contacts or a postcard in the window of a local shop, but Daft on their website say that 90 per cent of property sales in Ireland are on their site, so it’s a good guess that daft have the bulk of rentals, and movements up and down in their number of listings match the market pretty closely.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Now go to the census results. There were <a href="https://www.thejournal.ie/vacant-properties-cso-5797970-Jun2022/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">166,000 vacant properties on census night</a> this year. 166.000.<br> <br> <br> <br> There have been various attempts to pooh-pooh this figure, but I’ve spoken to the CSO about this and they are very confident in their figure. One reason is because their enumerators visit the property several times before and after census night, talk to neighbours and ask them if anyone lives there, and when someone lived there last.<br> <br> <br> <br> Also, the enumerators lose pay if a house on their does not return a census form, so they are highly motivated to get it right.<br> <br> <br> <br> And we have a breakdown of what sort of houses are vacant. 23,000 are vacant because they are undergoing renovation. 27,000 are vacant because the last occupant died. And 35,000 are vacant because they are available to rent.<br> <br> <br> <br> 35,000<br> <br> <br> <br> Let the figure sink in for a minute. 35,000 homes were vacant, awaiting a tenant. Compare that to less than 800 being listed on Daft.<br> <br> <br> <br> Those figures don’t overlap, by the way, they were marked down as one category – renovation, occupant deceased or for let, some may fit into two categories, but they are put in one or the other, not both.<br> <br> <br> <br> So which figure is right? Are there 800 properties to rent in the country or 35,000? You don’t have to spend long in a pub on a Friday night, or on social media to hear stories of the incredible difficulties that home-seekers are experiencing, to know that the 800 figure is the one that is far closer to the truth.<br> <br> <br> <br> And the market doesn’t lie. <a href="https://www.thejournal.ie/rent-prices-ireland-daft-report-5836946-Aug2022/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Rents have been shooting up</a>, by more than 12 per cent per year. The basic law of supply and demand tells you that there isn’t a huge idle supply out there; if there was, why would desperate would-be tenants be willing to pay ever-increasing rents?<br> <br> <br> <br> So where in the hell is the CSO getting 35,000 properties to rent from? I called them up and asked, and they were nice enough to talk to me, even give me the odd hint of some of the statistics that aren’t finalised for publication yet.<br> <br> <br> <br> The first thing is that of all those vacant properties, about 30 per cent of them were recorded as vacant in the 2016 census too; so barring the occasional coincidence,
