Buy-to-let loans accounted for around 10pc of total mortgage balances in Q3 2020 but had fallen to about 2.5pc by the start of this year, according to a report from Morningstar DBRS, a ratings agency.
The decline may reflect shifts towards non-mortgage ownership of buy-to-let properties, including cash buyers, the rise of corporate landlords and some investor deleveraging or debt repayments, as well as a decline in investors, the report said.
The data does show the scale of change in a market where historically many higher and middle-income professionals, self-employed business owners and workers with children in third level invested in a second or third property, usually with a buy-to-let mortgage.
That investment practice never recovered from the impact of the property crash a decade-and-a-half ago and the latest figures bear out the scale of the shift.
In the 2000s, lose lending standards, generous tax breaks and a plentiful supply of new housing stock encouraged large numbers of amateur investors into the buy-to-let market.
Many focused on capital gains from rising house prices at least as much as on buying income-generating assets.
The crash plunged huge numbers of those landlords into negative equity and many into mortgage arrears.
The exodus of small landlords has gathered pace this year
In the last decade, a recovery in prices provided an exit for some landlords, while tightening rental rules, rent pressure zone (RPZ) caps and tighter mortgage lending standards have made the sector less attractive.
An estimated 42pc of landlords left the market between 2021 and 2023, according to the Housing Commission Report of 2024.
The exodus of small landlords has gathered pace this year in the lead-up to the introduction of controversial new rental rules that include a shift to longer-term tenure rights for renters.
Official figures yesterday showed a surge in notices-to-quit issued to renters before the new rules kicked in, in March.
Landlords issued 7,000 of what are called notices of termination just before the new rules came in on March 1, according to the Residential Tenancies Board, the regulator for the sector. That was up more than 50pc on the same period last year.
In its report, Morningstar DBRS said the total outstanding balance of mortgage loans to Irish-resident private households reached €93.2bn as of December 2025. That was up from €85.3bn a year earlier.
Owner-occupiers accounted for 97.4pc of that total at the end of 2025, compared with 89.4pc in Q3 2020.
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