New figures from Daft.ie show that average monthly rents rose by an average of 1.2% in the year to July, while house prices were largely unchanged compared to a year ago.
The latest monthly Daft.ie Housing Market Report gives key figures on the health of both sale and rental markets.
The report shows that the average listed sale price nationwide in July was €259,733, while the average monthly listed rent was €1,412.
Daft.ie said that rents in Dublin are largely unchanged year-on-year after rising by just 0.2% in the last 12 months to July.
Rents in the rest of Leinster and in Munster rose by 3.3% and 2.7% respectively, but fell by 0.6% in Connacht and Ulster.
In the sales segment, prices have risen in both Dublin (+1.2%) and the rest of Leinster (+2.1%) in the last 12 months. But they were down by 2.8% in Munster and by 2.5% in Connacht and Ulster.
Daft.ie said its figures measuring the availability of property on the market show very different trends across sale and rental segments.
In the sales segment, there were just 19,538 properties for sale nationwide on August 1, down 22% year-on-year and the lowest August total since 2006.
But availabity in the rental market has improved, with 41% more properties for rent on August 1 than on the same date a year ago.
It noted that the increase is driven by Dublin, where stock on the market is almost twice what it was a year ago, while elsewhere in the country availability is largely unchanged.
"Both sale and rental segments show very little fall-off in housing prices since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite the extraordinary economic contraction," commented Ronan Lyons, economist at Trinity College Dublin and author of the Daft.ie report.
Ronan Lyons said that various policy supports, for both owner-occupiers and tenants, appear to have made prices "sticky".
"Nonetheless, given the potential for successive waves of Covid-19 in Ireland, this may be tested in the coming quarters. As it stands, both sale and rental segments appear to have weathered the initial impact of the pandemic and the underlying shortage - especially of rental accommodation - remains," he added.
