A HOUSE PRICE report from Daft.ie has revealed that asking prices for houses and flats across Ireland has risen on average by 3.7% during the first quarter of 2025.
Figures propose that a typical listing taken within the first three months of the year amounted to €346,048, 11.6% higher than the same period last year and 35% higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2020.
The rate of inflation was found to be at its second-highest level in ten years since the introduction of mortgage market rules, with the highest being seen in 2017. The report states that a nationwide surge in inflation has been driven by the market in Dublin.
Inflation in the capital is the highest in eight years at 12.2%, while annual price increases in the rest of Leinster is at 13.7%. Galway and Limerick are also at their highest levels since 2017, at 13.2% and 13.8% respectively, while Waterford at 11.2% and Cork at 9.2% are markedly lower.
Taking into account homes in both housing and apartment accommodation, the average listing in Dublin now stands at €460,726, according to the study. Galway city’s average is €409,482 whilst Cork’s is at €358,676.
The market is likely being driven by perceptions of tight supply. Daft.ie also revealed that the number of second-hand homes for sale across the country was fewer than 9,300. This is down 17% and marks the lowest total ever recorded since records began in January 2007.
Ronan Lyons, an economist at Trinity College Dublin and the report author, said that increases were ‘clearly linked to the lack of second-hand supply’.
“Even as transactions of newly-built homes increase, the second-hand market is at its tightest in a series going back almost two decades,” he said.
“The latest surge in inflation is due, at least in part, to the well-flagged increase in interest rates, which saw existing homeowners fix their rates, often for many years, with consequences for liquidity in the second-hand market. But while the increase in interest rates has played a role, the underlying issue remains the housing deficit.
“The mortgage market rules were introduced a decade ago to prevent a repeat of the loose lending that drove Ireland's Celtic Tiger bubble and crash. Nonetheless, prices are up 75% since then, not because of too much credit but because of too few homes.”
