Housing Trends in Ireland – What CSO data tells us

There were more than 36,000 new homes built in Ireland in 2025. This was up 20% on what was built in 2024 and the highest number of new homes constructed since 2011. While more than 13,000 of the new homes built last year were in Dublin, there was growth in other counties.

With demand for housing remaining high, looking at the CSO’s quarterly Planning Permissions statistics can give an indication of the level of new home building in the pipeline. The most recent figures for 2025 show the number of units given planning permissions was 34,974. This was an increase of around 8% on the previous year. Growth in permissions for new apartments was up by 9%.

The new housing market has been increasingly focused on higher density housing over the last number of years, reflecting population growth in urban areas and relatively fewer one-off housing. In 2025, around half of the new homes built were part of larger residential developments, while a further third were apartments. Looking back 10 years to 2015, 9% of new homes built in that year were apartments, while nearly half of new builds were one-off houses.

New homes are also becoming increasingly energy efficient. Nearly every home that was built between 2020 and 2025, and for which a Building Energy Rating (BER) cert was received, was rated A. In contrast, only 38% of homes built in the period 2010-2014 which received BER certs got an A rating.

The average age of people who bought homes in Ireland in 2024 was 40, but this varied by county.  In South Dublin, the average age was 37, whereas in Kerry it was 45.  

Nearly six in ten homes purchased in 2024 were bought by couples, with most of the rest split equally among single male and single female buyers.

The amount of money required to buy a home has also been increasing. The average income per transaction among home buyers in 2022 was €75,600.  Just two years later in 2024, this had risen to €84,400. This average is calculated by transaction, so a couple buying a home together is recorded as one transaction with the buyers having a combined income of €84,400.

Later this year, the CSO will publish analysis on First Time Buyers, which will look at their age profile, their income, what type of homes they are buying, and where.

The median price of a home bought in Ireland in the 12 months to the end of 2025 was €387,000. Our monthly release on residential property prices shows the price of buying a home rose by 7.0% in this time, with the rate of growth higher at 8.1% among homes bought outside of Dublin, compared with 5.6% in Dublin.  To get a sense of how prices have changed over a longer time period, the average price of buying a home in the year to the end of December 2021 was €280,000, so the average price rose by 38% in the four years to the end of 2025.

As with other housing statistics, there are significant differences in property prices across the country. The highest average price in December 2025 was in Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown at €679,999, significantly more expensive than the county with the lowest average property price, which was Donegal at €195,000.

Vacant homes are a potential source of unused housing and the CSO recently began looking at new ways to capture the level of vacancy in Ireland. In 2024, there were around 70,000 homes which the CSO classified as vacant based on very little or no long-term electricity usage. This meant that around 3% of all homes in the country were vacant. Vacancy was generally much lower in urban areas, with rates below 1% in places like Palmerstown-Fonthill and Dun Laoghaire in Dublin. In contrast, vacancy rates of around 10% were found in Adare-Rathkeale in Limerick and Manorhamilton in Leitrim.

Not only have the prices people pay for homes been rising, so too have the costs of materials used in building and constructing these homes. The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) for building and construction materials tracks the prices of a range of materials used in building projects. Over the five years between February 2021 and February 2026, it rose by 37.1%.

Another major part of the costs of building homes are wages among people working in construction. Here, there have also been increases. The average hourly earnings of people working in the construction sector rose by 19.5% when comparing the third quarters of 2021 and 2025.