Average rents for new tenancies rose sharply earlier this year to €1,839 per month as an overhaul of rent rules took effect, a report has found.

Analysis of Residential Tenancies Board data found a 9.1 per cent year-on-year rise for new residential lettings between January and March of this year.

For existing tenancies, the year-on-year rate of inflation was 4.2 per cent in the first quarter, bringing the average monthly rent up to €1,513.

Rachel Slaymaker, of the Economic and Social Research Institute, said there was a “slight tip up” in inflation in January and February before a “spike” in March. Annual rent inflation for new tenancies in the last quarter of 2025 was 5.4 per cent, she said.

She said the “initial jump” following rent system changes on March 1st is “not a surprise”. However, she said it was a “little early” to predict whether this represented an early adjustment or signals a long-term trend.

Under the reforms, landlords were permitted to reset rents to market rates between tenancies. The reforms also introduced six-year-minimum duration tenancies, during which a 2 per cent cap on annual rent rises would be in force. This replaced a similar cap imposed under the rent pressure zone system but for which there was no opportunity to reset to market rates.

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Taoiseach Micheál Martin acknowledged the changes to the rental market had affected tenants.

“Clearly, for the long-term sustainability of the market, change had to occur, and that was recommended by the Housing Commission that we would change the existing system, which was uncertain and didn’t give certainty for investment into the future,” he told reporters in Dublin.

Supply was the fundamental challenge to the cost of housing, said Martin, for renting and purchasing. He said the Government was “making progress on the supply side”.

“We want to make more progress this year, and I think we will in terms of housing and department units constructed,” he added.

Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin called for an “immediate” ban on rent increases and evictions, claiming Government policy is “making the housing crisis worse”.

Rory Hearne, housing spokesman for the Social Democrats, said the rental changes are “causing armageddon in the rental market” and must be reversed to “avoid even further fallout”.

Slaymaker, whose research was part of an RTB presentation of new rental data, said it was “perhaps not a surprise” to see larger inflation in cities, which have been subject to rent price controls under the pressure zone system for some time.

Rents for new tenancies in Limerick city rose by 20.9 per cent year-on-year, while new tenants in Cork city saw a 16.3 per cent increase. New tenancy rent inflation stood at 13.3 per cent in Galway city, 10.7 per cent in Waterford city and 8.3 per cent in Dublin.

Slaymaker said the rent price inflation follows seven quarters of relative stability. She said this latest data reveals a widening gap in the rents charged in existing and new tenancies.

RTB director Rosemary Steen said it is a “concern” that nine counties saw average rents for new tenancies increase by more than 10 per cent year-on-year.

However, in a sign that the rental market “continues to stablise and adjust”, she noted eviction notices fell significantly in the second quarter of this year after a record number of people were asked to leave their rental homes ahead of the reforms.

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The RTB received just over 4,031 termination notices from April to June, a sharp drop on the 7,062 filed between January and March.

Steen said the drop suggests the “unusually high” volumes seen earlier this year were “temporary rather than indicative of a sustained trend”.

The number of eviction notices had been increasing from late last year ahead of the March 1st rent system changes.

The 4,000 notices received in the second quarter of this year is back in line with averages received in most quarters up until mid-2025. There were more than 5,000 issued in each of the two quarters of the second half of last year.