With online property portal, PropertyPal, reporting a 10 per cent increase in the cost of renting a house in Northern Ireland in the last year, Fermanagh is not immune to this rise.

Two local estate agents, Niall Smyth from Smyth & Leslie and William McFarland of Eadie McFarland & Co., have both seen demand outstripping supply in the county and there is no sign of it slowing down.

"The key issue and all the other agents will be experiencing the same issue is that there is a serious shortage of properties available for rent so that is what is causing the problem," Mr. Smyth explained.

"The level of interest in rental properties has increased as a result of people moving here because of worked purposes and secondly what you have got is people who can't afford to purchase their obvious thing is to rent."

Mr. Smyth that with first time buyers now in their late 20s to late 30s people are leaving it longer to buy a house because of affordability and have to rent.

"There are more numbers renting nowadays than ever before but there isn’t the availability of stock to meet that demand."

According to Mr. McFarland residential letting has seen "substantial growth" and rent prices continue to increase.

"Residential letting has been a growing trend in the county and it has been an area of substantial growth within our agency, last month we opened our 700th letting file," Mr. McFarland explained.

"Residential letting has become more challenging for landlords to DIY due to larger volumes of Tenancy Applicants requiring due diligence, accurately valuing the property, and significantly increased regulation and legislation in the form of Landlord Registration, Tenancy Deposit Scheme, The Private Tenancies Act (NI) 2022 and The Smoke, Heat and Carbon Monoxide Alarms for Private Tenancies Regulations (NI) 2024.

"There has been substantial rental growth in the past four years with many of our landlord clients asking us to review rent for existing counties which were created between one and four years plus ago.

"Some of our landlords have advised they do not like increasing the rent but they recognise that the increases are in some cases only keeping them in line with general price inflation and their own rising costs."

To tackle the rise, Mr. Smyth wants to see more housing stock, with a lack of social housing a big issue: "The housing stock needs to increase and I suppose where there is an issue there is a lack of social housing so people are turning to the private sector to rent but unfortunately there is a lack of availability there too.

"The housing stock in terms of public and private needs to increase but there is no sign of that happening in the short to medium term."

An example of the increase in rent that Mr. McFarland has seen includes a three-bedroom semi-detached house in an Enniskillen development. Last summer the rent was £770 per month.

This summer, Eadie McFarland let three of the same house type in the same development for £850 per month, a 10 per cent increase.

Mr. McFarland revealed that some properties are being let for over £1,000 per month and a few are over £1,500 per month.

And he does not see a slowdown or drop in rental price coming: "We have expected rental growth to slow or possibly plateau but so far it seems that with demand continuing to outweigh supply rents are still increasing."