The Department of Housing’s Total Development Cost Study has assessed the cost of delivering four different building types: a three-bed semidetached house; a two-bed suburban apartment; a two-bed urban apartment and purpose-built student accommodation – in the Greater Dublin Area.
The study, by Dublin property consultants Mitchell McDermott, uses specific “anonymised case study projects” dating from the first quarter of 2024. It includes not only land and hard construction costs, but also so-called “soft” construction costs: land, development levies, professional fees, VAT, developers’ margins.
The report calculates the cost of delivering a three-bed five-person semidetached house in Dublin at €450,652 with hard construction costs put at €175,636. The land cost involved, which includes stamp duty and acquisition fees, is put at €83,943.
It found the cost of delivering a two-bed apartment in Dublin ranged from €549,790 in the suburbs to €591,783 in urban areas. Apartments tend to be more expensive to build than houses because of the increased structural requirements, such as lifts, car-parking spaces and fire-safety regulations.
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An urban apartment costs more. Here, the study put the cost of a basement car-parking space at €34,229 per unit. The land cost (including stamp duty and acquisition fees) came to €70,703 (12 per cent of the total) while the developer’s margin was put at €48,605 (8.4 per cent).
The cost of delivering a typical student accommodation unit was put at €207,033.
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