Why we might see more mass evictions over the coming months

MASS EVICTIONS MAY become more common over the coming months as larger landlords adapt to the government’s sweeping changes to the rental sector, according to one housing expert.

In the first month alone of the new rules for the private rental sector, there have been recurring instances of single landlords handing out eviction notices to residents of entire apartment blocks or, in one instance, almost 40 homes in one housing estate in Co Wexford.

A number of these happened in the dying days of February, right before the new laws came into effect.

The are concerns some large-scale evictions are being driven by new incentives created by the market reset rules, as well as the increased value a property may see if left vacant.

The changes in the rules let landlords reset rents to ‘market rates’ in between tenancies rather than being capped as under previous legislation. They also mean that rents for existing tenants can increase by 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower.

Under the system, any renters who enter new tenancies from this month get greater security of tenure with six-year tenancies.

But recent mass attempted evictions in Wexford, Limerick and Galway have caused disquiet some housing sector sources.

Lorcan Sirr, planning and housing lecturer at Technological University Dublin, said one of the impacts of the changes is that it will raise rental prices across much of the sector, driving up the value of the properties.

Sirr told The Journal that some landlords may see it as a “strategic move” to capitalise on the higher market rents available to them and seek to evict their tenants.

There have been some attempts to guard against this by the government, including a safeguard aiming to prohibit landlords from resetting rent for a new tenancy if the previous one ended via a ‘no-fault eviction’ within the last two years.

However, landlords don’t necessarily need to fill their properties immediately, Sirr argued, as these properties will likely increase in value as rents continue to rise.

“It may sound counterintuitive but the value of the properties could be more if they’re vacant. Their value is based on rents and if rents rose then their value does too if they’re empty,” Sirr said.

Where properties keep their tenants, the value of the property is based on rents the tenants are paying and that’s capped annually at 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower, for the next six years under the new rules.

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“So a lot of these properties could be worth more with no tenants,” Sirr added.

Sirr questioned if this was an “unintended consequence or not” of the new rules, as their aim is to increase the profitability of the sector.

Housing Minister James Browne is hoping they boost private investment into the rental sector and thereby lead to greater supply of apartments. According to Browne’s department, this will see rents stabilise and decrease over time.

Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin said his party is contending that the market reset function will mean more eviction attempts, as it provides “clear incentives” for some landlords to evict sitting tenants.

He believes we will see some landlords charge new tenants market rent, in breach of the rules, as a way of getting more from their properties.

And according to one report published this week, this was a very real concern ahead of the changes getting introduced.

The Housing Agency advised the government ahead of the rental changes that there was a “significant” risk of “economic evictions” under the changes.

These evictions were defined as being “motivated by landlords who wish to increase to market rents” under the new rules.

The Housing Agency told the government that these “need to be carefully managed to avoid very high increases” in rents for tenants, and to prevent the changes becoming a “mechanism for landlords who are below market rents to bring their rents back to market over time”.

The Department of Housing has also pointed to rental legislation, called the ‘Tyrrelstown amendment’, which forbids a landlord from selling ten or more units within a single development at the same time, unless the existing tenants remain in situ. One of the only circumstances where eviction is allowed in such a case is where a landlord pleads financial distress.

However, Sirr warned that this was reliant on regulators in the Residential Tenancies Board being able to properly respond to such cases in a timely manner, as fears remain about the watchdog facing a glut of cases.

Similarly, Ó Broin said the “complexity and unenforceability” of the new rules will “undermine security of tenure” over the coming months.

In new figures published this week, applications for dispute resolution at the RTB rose by 26% year-on-year in the final quarter of 2025.

Those figures showed eviction notices rose 41% ahead of Government’s rental changes.

This week’s data confirmed that 20,033 people received Notices of Termination in 2025 -a 21% increase over the total figure for 2024.

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