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Comment by falcor84 | Hacker News Reader

This is about Ireland, but I'm curious whether there is any country in the world that does require this sort of transparency.

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Not that I’m aware of, though it would be nice.

I get why though. I moved to Dublin from the US (from an expensive part of California) and I was shocked by the rent. It was more expensive than apartments I was paying for in the US, but Irish software wages are a fraction of what you’d get in the US.

I am a little surprised by this. Are you sure you were comparing similiar styles and areas. Looking around online Dublin looks to be 26% cheaper than San Francisco. Rent for a single person is quite a bit lower and even rent for a family shows it to be lower but not by as much? I just glanced at https://livingcost.org/cost/dublin/san-francisco so not sure how accurate those style calculators are and is the cause of my questioning your statement.

The conditions of some properties in Dublin are abominable. My friend paid $1000 a month for a 70sq foot room with no windows or ventilation, in a 3 bed house with a single bathroom. Most new grad's going in to SWE from a top university in the country would be making on average 38k annual after tax.

If you're irish, there's no point putting yourself through the misery of living in Dublin. You can just go live in London, or work remote and live anywhere in the EU.

It's 26% cheaper on rent than SF but half the gross salaries for software devs and higher taxes on that gross. Also, SF is possibly one the worst places on earth for affordability, alongside Manhattan, so it's rather alarming how close Dublin is to those prices these days.

Honestly, as a software dev you are better off in the US because you're going to be on the winning side of that income inequality.

Not a country, but the City of Santa Monica, California, keeps a registry of rents for all rent-controlled units. Landlords are required to report an initial tenancy, which sets the starting rent. Each year after that, the City tells the landlord what the "Maximum Allowed Rent" is. All the documents relating to each property are publicly available and the city publishes an annual report.

Not all cities with rent control keep such a registry. (e.g., Los Angeles doesn't keep a registry, but does tell landlords the maximum they can raise the rent each year.)

In NZ you can check market rents by area on the Tenancy Services website. These are broken down by property type and lower, medium, and upper values based on recent bond lodgements.

https://www.tenancy.govt.nz/rent-bond-and-bills/market-rent/

You can get a rough idea of what similar rents are for an area by going to redfin or Zillow and setting your filter parameters accordingly.

Doesn't Ireland have a similar saas service?

https://daft.ie/

Berkeley, CA has one. The rest of California doesn't yet, but there are some attempts to do it. Keyword is "rental registry".

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