Approved housing bodies

There are over 260 registered AHB landlords in Ireland, and they have over 50,000 homes. AHBs provide housing to people in different situations:

• Families with low incomes
• Households with special needs, like older people, people with disabilities and homeless people.

AHBs work with local authorities like councils. People on a council’s social housing waiting list can be offered AHB homes.

Registration of AHBs

AHB tenancies must be registered with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB). This is done by the AHB. Licence arrangements do not fall under the RTB’s remit (for example, hostel accommodation).

How to register

Approved Housing Bodies (AHB) registration accounts are set up by the RTB and your tenancy records are linked automatically to your RTB registration account.

How to access your account

Contact AHB@rtb.ie to request your account login details. Once logged in, you can:

• Register tenancies.
• Manage registrations.
• Create operators on your account and assign them tenancies.

Registration fees

Registration fees for Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) are:

• Standard fee: €20 a year. This applies once your application is completed within a month of the start of the tenancy.
• Late fee: €5 a month for each month or part of the month that the registration is late.
• Composite registration fee: €85 if you are registering up to 10 tenancies in the same building at the same time (once they are received by the RTB within one month of the earliest tenancy start date).

Find out more about AHB registration fees for tenancies.

Questions about registration

If you have a query about your AHB online account, linking a tenancy registration to an AHB online account or registering AHB tenancies contact AHB@rtb.ie.

Setting and reviewing rent in AHBs

Rent is set for AHB tenancies in accordance with the contract or lease between the public authority and the AHB or in accordance with the terms of assistance given by the housing authority to the AHB.   

The tenancy agreement should include the date of the rent review. 

If the agreement does not include a review date, rent can only be reviewed once every 12 months.

If the rent amount changes after a review, the AHB must notify the tenant in accordance with the terms of the tenancy agreement.

If the agreement doesn’t cover this, the tenant must be notified as soon as practicable.

AHB rights and responsibilities

AHB’s have most of the same rights and responsibilities as private landlords, with some exceptions. AHB tenants have most of the same rights and responsibilities as private tenants, with some exceptions. For example, tenants of AHBs cannot assign or sublet the tenancy to anyone else.