House prices across the Republic climbed by an average of 9 per cent last year, according to the latest Daft.ie research while fewer second-hand homes were on the market at the end of the year than at any point since the platform began publishing housing data in 2007.
The online property platform put the typical listed price nationwide in the final quarter of 2024 at just over €332,000 – which is 1.4 per cent higher than in the third quarter of the year and 30 per cent higher than at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.
Prices rose for the fourth consecutive quarter in Dublin, where the increase of 9 per cent during 2024 matched the national average and marked the highest rate of inflation seen in the city since late 2017.
Galway city saw a similar increase during the year, while in Limerick city, prices rose by 8.2 per cent. In Cork and Waterford cities, average prices climbed by 6.3 per cent in the 12 months to the end of December.
Outside the five main cities, inflation ranged from 11.1 per cent in Leinster to 5.3 per cent in Connacht-Ulster.
According to the research, the average list price for Dublin at the end of the year was just under €443,000 while the average price in Cork city was just over €347,000. The typical asking price of a home in Limerick was about €284,000 with prices in Galway recorded at about €390,000. Prices in Waterford city were put at just over €247,000 while the average across the rest of the State was marginally above €284,000.
The number of second-hand homes available to buy nationwide on December 1st stood at fewer than 10,500, down 15 per cent year-on-year and the lowest total recorded in a series extending back to January 2007.
“2024 saw the largest increase in listed prices since 2017. And, unlike earlier in the 2020s, Dublin is now driving price growth, with its rate of inflation ahead of the other cities,” said Ronan Lyons, Trinity College economist and author of the report.
“This is, once again, a story of weak supply and strong demand. With incomes and employment growing, demand for owner-occupied housing is likely growing at close to 5 per cent per year.”
He said that “while the number of newly-built homes being transacted is increasing, it is growing much more slowly than demand. Further, the increase in new builds has, in recent quarters, been more than offset by a decline in the volume of second-hand homes coming on to the market.
In 2022 there were 63,000 second-hand homes listed for sale compared with just 51,000 over the course of 2024.
Mr Lyons suggested that the incoming government “may look to intervene in the mortgage market, to improve mobility of those with fixed interest rates. But ultimately, the solution remains boosting the volume of homes being built.”
He said that if the goal of policymakers was to ensure stable housing prices, then 2024 was “the least successful year since 2017 when prices rose by roughly the same proportion”.
Over a 15-year time span, the only year with higher inflation than 2024 was 2014, he noted, when the Dublin market rebounded so sharply that the Central Bank introduced its mortgage market rules. That year was the beginning of a four-year period – until new supply started to come on stream – of very high inflation in prices.
“In retrospect, for all the various shocks over the previous few years, including Covid-19 and the economic disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we might now consider that at a national level, price growth was quite moderate between 2017 and 2023,” said Mr Lyons.
“But that narrative is over and, in 2024, the market has seen something close to double-digit inflation despite (or on top of) all the increases seen in the previous decade.”
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