Average Dublin asking price reaches €611,000 as homes for sale remain at less than half pre-Covid levels
6 January 2026
The cost of buying a home in Ireland continued to rise in 2025, leaving first-time buyers facing high prices, intense competition and a chronic shortage of homes for sale.
According to the latest Daft.ie House Price Report, national list prices increased by an average of 5.5% in 2025. While this was slower than the 6.8% growth recorded in 2024, it marked the twelfth consecutive year of house price inflation. Listed prices are now 41% above pre-Covid levels and just 10% below their Celtic Tiger peak.
The average list price of a home in Dublin has reached €611,000. Nationally, the average price of a three-bedroom semi-detached house in the final quarter of 2025 was just over €423,000, a price level that places ownership beyond the reach of many single-income and first-time buyers.
Data from the Property Price Register, matched with Daft.ie listings, show that transaction prices rose by an estimated 7.4% during 2025. Homes are typically selling for 6.6% more than their initial asking price, close to the highest gap on record and a clear signal of excess demand.
The underlying driver remains a lack of supply. On 1 December 2025, there were 11,551 second-hand homes available for sale nationwide. While this represented a 7% increase on the same date in 2024, it remains less than half the 2015–2019 average of around 26,000 homes.
Supply shortages are uneven across the country. Second-hand availability in Dublin is now close to 2019 levels, but outside the capital supply remains severely constrained, with availability 63% below late-2010s levels. In Munster, outside the cities, the number of homes for sale is still around one-third lower than before the pandemic.
Price inflation reflects these regional differences. In Dublin, prices rose by 3.1% over the year. In contrast, prices in Connacht and Ulster increased by 11.6% during 2025. Across Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford, the average price of a three-bedroom semi-detached house rose to €390,000, up 4.5% year-on-year.
Ronan Lyons, professor of economics at Trinity College Dublin and author of the Daft.ie report, said the market remains highly constrained.
“Across both list and transaction prices, demand continues to significantly outpace supply in the sales market,” he said. “While the pace of inflation has slowed slightly, this is the twelfth year in a row of rising prices.”
Lyons said the availability of homes to buy has remained “stuck at a much lower level” since the pandemic, placing sustained pressure on buyers. He estimates that Ireland needs to deliver more than 60,000 homes a year across owner-occupied, social and rental sectors to restore balance to the market.
Housing output in 2025 is expected to be in the mid-30,000s, based on Central Bank estimates, well below both assessed need and previous government targets. As a result, the second-hand market continues to carry most of the demand from first-time buyers, despite historically low availability.
With limited supply, prices close to peak levels and homes regularly selling above asking price, the data indicate that affordability conditions for first-time buyers are unlikely to improve in 2026 without a substantial and sustained increase in housing delivery.
