Home prices are being driven up by the “sustained shortage of available housing” in Ireland, Marian Finnegan, the chief executive of the Sherry Fitzgerald Group said.
Research by the agency found that the average value of second-hand homes in the country has risen by 7.3 per cent over the past 12 months, with a 1.8 per cent rise in the past three months.
Rural counties are seeing a pronounced effect from housing shortages with available housing halving since 2019 in six counties. Dublin has seen less price inflation, however, with a 1.1 per cent increase in the past quarter bringing the annual rise to 6.5 per cent.
A biannual analysis by the agency identified an ongoing shortage in available housing stock.
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As of July 2025, just 14,715 second-hand properties were listed for sale across the country, which the agency said represents just 0.7 per cent of Ireland’s private housing stock.
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This represents a slight improvement over the same measurement in 2024, when 12,784 homes were available, but the figure this year is less than two-thirds of the number of homes available for purchase in 2019.
In July 2019, 23,165 homes were for sale.
The counties with the largest drop in housing stock availability are Carlow, down 56.8 per cent; Offaly, down 53.5 per cent; and Cavan, which has 53 per cent fewer homes on the market in 2025 than before the pandemic.
Kerry, Leitrim, Longford and Tipperary have also seen their advertised stock more than halve in the six-year period.
The agency identified that five of these counties have had a low level of new homes being completed and called for a more even distribution of housing development across counties.
“It is clear that the residential market remains undersupplied,” Ms Finnegan said. “Though the policy changes and other interventions made by the Government in recent months are welcomed, it will take some time for the effects of these to be felt.”
The number of homes being sold rose slightly in the first half of the year, up 2.2 per cent with Sherry Fitzgerald noting a “strong performance” in the sale of new properties, up 19 per cent or by 751 homes. This outweighed the stagnant supply of second-hand homes for sale.
Ms Finnegan said the upcoming budget, to be announced on October 7th, “provides an opportunity for further incentives to increase the delivery of new homes in areas where they are needed most.”
The sale of second hand homes dropped 1.7 per cent since the start of the year, which the agency said was “largely unsurprising” due to the supply constraints that have been impacting the market over the past number of years.
