Westport Rent Pressure Zone driving out landlords, councillor says

An elected representative has said capping rent increases in Westport has led to landlords leaving the rental market.

Cllr Peter Flynn said the Rent Pressure Zone (RPZ) currently in place in the area has been a ‘disaster’ which has done nothing to reduce the number of local properties on Airbnb.

Landlords in an RPZ may not increase rents for existing tenants by more than 2 per cent annually.

In July 2023, Westport became the first area in Mayo to be designated as an RPZ after the annual rate of rent inflation was greater than 7 percent in at least four of the last six quarters.

There are 547 Airbnb properties currently in the Westport Local Electoral area. Many of these are located in Westport town, where there are a handful of properties available for long-term rent.

Speaking while chairing the recent meeting of Mayo County Council’s Housing SPC, Cllr Flynn called for the RPZ to be removed.

“Because of the cap on rents, it has actually encouraged people to come out of long-term letting and move into short-term letting. It has been an absolute disaster. To be honest with you, the designation should be removed until we come up with an action plan around it,” said Cllr Flynn.

Tom Gilligan, Mayo County Council’s Director of Services for Housing, said the council needed to promote the RPZ regulations more to ensure compliance.

Westport-based auctioneer Brendan O’Malley said that RPZs were ‘punishing the people who were fair with their rent’.

RPZ regulations carry over to new tenancies unless a property undergoes extensive refurbishment before a lease is taken out. While landlords may decide what rent to charge, they will still be subject to caps on raising rents.

Mr O’Malley told The Mayo News that landlords were selling their properties because they are unable to charge the market rent.

“I had a house in Galway, we let it to a family member, all of a sudden the Rent Pressure Zone came in and we were stuck with this low rent on our house then when our family member moved out. It punishes the people that are being fair with rent and not overcharging.”

Pat Aylward, owner of Atlantic Property Management told The Mayo News that the RPZ had stopped rents going up but that greater supply was needed to lower house prices in the Westport area.

“I don’t know anyone that we’ve been dealing with that has actually sold up and left, but we’ve a lot of people very annoyed really at the whole thing and are questioning whether they’ll stay in or not,” Mr Aylward said.