Two schemes, one idea
Both schemes came out of the same moment. The winter eviction ban ended on 31 March 2023 and thousands of notices of termination that had been frozen became live. The Government’s answer was to let the State buy homes with the tenant still in them, so a sale by the landlord did not have to mean a move for the tenant.
Which scheme applies depends on one thing: whether you get social housing support.
- Local Authority Tenant in Situ scheme. For tenants on the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) or the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS). The council buys the home and becomes your landlord. You move onto a council tenancy with a differential rent based on income.
- Cost Rental Tenant in Situ scheme (CRTiS). For tenants who are not on HAP or RAS and are not eligible for social housing, with net household income under €66,000 in Dublin or €59,000 elsewhere. The Housing Agency buys the home and becomes your landlord. It has run since 1 April 2023 on what the Department calls a temporary administrative basis.
The rest of this guide is mostly about the second one, because it is the one that reaches the same people cost rental does and the one almost nobody has heard of.
Who qualifies for the Cost Rental Tenant in Situ scheme
All of these have to be true:
- You have received a valid notice of termination and the reason given is that the landlord intends to sell.
- Your council assesses you as at risk of homelessness if the tenancy ends.
- You are not able, or do not want, to buy the property from the landlord yourself.
- You do not own any other residential property.
- Everyone in the household has a long-term right to live in Ireland.
- You are not getting HAP or RAS and are not eligible for social housing support.
- Net household income is under €66,000 (Dublin) or €59,000 (everywhere else). Net means after income tax, USC, PRSI and pension contributions, for every adult in the home. These are the standard cost rental limits, so the eligibility calculator gives you the same answer for both.
When the scheme started the limit was €53,000 nationally. It moved to the current €66,000 and €59,000 when the cost rental limits themselves were raised in August 2023, and it has not changed since.
How the process runs
- Council first, not the Housing Agency. Ring your local authority housing department and ask for an appointment with a housing officer. Bring the notice of termination, proof of income for every adult (payslips, Revenue Statement of Liability) and proof of your right to reside. The council does the eligibility assessment.
- Referral. If you fit, the council passes your details and the property details to the Housing Agency. The Agency, not the council, deals with the landlord from here. Its contact for the scheme is [email protected] and 1800 000 024.
- Price check. Before any offer, the Agency checks two things: whether the likely price sits inside the Department’s Acquisition Cost Guidelines for your council area (the same ceilings councils use when buying second-hand social homes), and whether any repairs the house needs can be done safely with you living in it. Fail either and the case stops.
- Valuation and offer. The Agency commissions an independent market valuation and offers the landlord that figure. The landlord is free to say no, or to sell privately for more.
- Sale and new landlord. If the landlord accepts, the sale goes through as a normal conveyance, which takes months. On completion the Housing Agency owns the home and a management company it has appointed collects the rent and handles maintenance.
Timing is the weak point. A notice of termination gives you between 90 days (tenancy under six months) and 224 days (eight years or more) and a property sale rarely completes inside that. In practice the landlord agreeing to sell to the Agency is what stops the clock, because they no longer need vacant possession. Get the referral moving in the first week.
What happens to the rent
This is the part that surprises people. You keep paying the same rent you paid the private landlord. The scheme was designed so that these homes would later be moved onto the standard cost rental model, where rent is set from the cost of the home and has to be at least 25% under market. That transition had not happened for a single home as of April 2025: the Housing Agency told the Dáil it had bought 156 properties for more than €42 million, was collecting €153,453 a month in rent from them, an average of €983 per home, and none had been passed to a cost rental landlord.
So the honest description is: you get security, not a discount. Your landlord becomes a State agency that is not going to sell, and your rent stays where it was. For most people facing a notice of termination that is still the best outcome on the table.
The numbers
| Year | Homes bought under CRTiS |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 96 |
| 2024 | 118 |
| 2025 | 52 |
| Total to end 2025 | 266 |
Source: Department of Housing figures reproduced in the LDA Cost Rental Survey 2026. For scale, all providers together delivered 6,141 cost rental homes in the same period, so tenant in situ is about 4% of cost rental.
Referrals run well ahead of purchases. By April 2025 councils had sent 452 cases and 156 had completed, roughly one in three. Of the homes bought, 80 were three-beds, 37 four-beds, 36 two-beds and one one-bed. The scheme is buying family houses, mostly.
The 2025 drop, from 118 to 52, matches what happened to the council scheme in the same year. The Department set no capital ceilings or targets for 2025 until March, so councils paused purchases with hundreds of applications pending, then a new circular narrowed the council scheme: the property had to have been in HAP or RAS for two continuous years, families with children, older people and people with a disability were prioritised over single people and couples without children, and homes needing refurbishment were excluded. Dublin City Council bought 77 homes under the council scheme in 2025 against 261 in 2024. Nationally, the share of homelessness prevention that came through tenant in situ fell from 46.3% in December 2024 to 11% in December 2025.
The council scheme, briefly
If you are on HAP or RAS the route is the same start, a housing officer appointment, but the council itself is the buyer and the conditions are stricter since 2025. The tenancy must be registered with the RTB, the property must have had a HAP or RAS tenant continuously for at least two years, and the council will first try to keep you in the home under HAP with the landlord or the new owner, then look for another HAP property, then a council or AHB home, and only buy as the last option. Councils are told to prioritise families with children, older people and people with a disability. Since March 2023 councils have bought more than 3,100 second-hand homes, about 2,000 of them with a tenant in place, with €325 million provided for 2025 and an extra €50 million to eight councils in September 2025 aimed at families longest in emergency accommodation.
What to do in the first week
- Check the notice is valid. It must be in writing, signed, give the right notice period for your tenancy length, state the reason (sale) and a copy must go to the RTB when it is served. Threshold’s Tenancy Protection Service (1800 454 454) checks notices for free. An invalid notice buys time.
- Book the housing officer. Same week. Say the words “tenant in situ” and, if you are not on HAP, “cost rental tenant in situ”. Bring the documents above.
- Talk to the landlord. Many landlords have never heard of the scheme. A sale to the Housing Agency at market value, with no need to get the tenant out first and no chain, is attractive to some of them. Give them the Housing Agency contact.
- Apply for cost rental in parallel. The scheme is discretionary and one in three referrals completes. Every cost rental scheme in your county is a second chance under the same income rules. Set an alert so you hear the day one opens, and keep the document set ready.
- Do not leave early. You are entitled to the full notice period. Leaving before it ends can weaken a homelessness assessment.
Sources: Housing Agency CRTiS booklet for tenants and landlords; citizensinformation.ie, Tenant in Situ Schemes (edited 8 September 2025); gov.ie, Cost Rental homes; Dáil written answers 6 July 2023, 21 May 2024, 19 September 2024 and Private Members’ motion 19 March 2025; Irish Examiner, 22 April 2025 (Housing Agency data to Eoin Ó Broin TD); LDA Cost Rental Survey 2026 (Department of Housing delivery table); Irish Independent, Dublin City Council 2025 acquisitions; Labour Party statement 23 February 2026. Notice periods from the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 as amended.