Barrett says Airbnb are pricing young people out of rental market

Local election candidate Harry Barrett has said that Airbnb prices are pricing young people out of the rental market.

According to the Independent candidate, there are 27 properties on Airbnb to every long-term let in County Mayo. Mr Barrett said this is having a ‘shocking impact’ on young families in the county. 

These comments come after a recent report by Dr Lorcan Sirr, Professor of Housing at the University of Galway, on the effects of the Airbnb platform on local rental prices. The report found that the lack of long-term lets countrywide was severely impacted by the number of short-term lets available on the Airbnb platform.

Barrett said: “I am meeting families who are really struggling with high rents, made poorer as a result, people who are stuck at home unable to leave and indeed people who are in difficult situations at home who cannot afford to move out.”

He called the lack of long-term rentals a ‘critical’ low, and said it is having a ‘severe impact on young people in terms of the high rents they have to pay, if they are lucky to even find one in the first place’.

He continued: “Now we learn from this report that for every 27 short-term lets on Airbnb there is only one long-term let on Daft.ie in Mayo and because of this, rent prices are at an all-time high. The report shows that typically two out of three of the short-term lets in any county are full properties, and this cannot go on unchallenged. 

“Mayo landlords have to be incentivised via the tax system to bring their properties back into long-term letting. They need less regulation and more protection in terms of dealing with difficult tenants. Airbnb properties, however, should be registered and, if they are big operations, should be made to pay rates like local hotels.”

Mr Barrett called on local government representatives here to take ‘immediate action’ to regulate the Airbnb platform in Mayo in order to get long-term lets into the system. 

“We must alleviate the chronic shortage in rental properties in this county, the suffering around high rents and the lack of availability. It’s at critical levels now,” he concluded,