Housebuilder Cairn Homes is looking to sell almost 300 apartments to an investment fund.

Potential buyers are being told the apartments, which are still being built and are located at Citywest just outside Dublin, have a guide price of around €320,000 each.

Selling homes to big funds who then rent them out en masse has become increasingly common here. Critics of the practice say it deprives aspiring home-buyers of a chance to buy a home.

The UN has recently criticised the practice.

Its special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing Leilani Farha wrote to the Government in Ireland and five other countries, accusing them of accused them of facilitating the "financialisation of housing" in their own countries through preferential tax laws and weak tenant protections among other measures.

"Almost overnight multinational private equity and asset management firms like Blackstone have become the biggest landlords in the world, purchasing thousands and thousands of units in North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America," the UN said.

"They have changed the global housing landscape. Pouring unprecedented amounts of capital into housing, they have converted homes into financial instruments and investments."

The UN said properties often deemed "undervalued" - which generally means affordable to those living there - are being purchased en masse, renovated and then offered at a higher rental rate, pricing tenants out of their own homes and communities.

"Landlords have become faceless corporations wreaking havoc with tenants' right to security and contributing to the global housing crisis," the UN said in a statement.

Online Editors