See what went wrong for property buyers in Dublin

Is Dublin becoming a buyer’s market?

Is Dublin actually becoming a buyer’s market now?

Dublin is becoming easier for buyers, but calling it a buyer’s market today is still too strong.

The confusion comes from three things happening at once. Dublin price growth has slowed sharply, some private-market measures have even shown outright falls, and sellers who overprice weaker homes are having to adjust. At the same time, official transaction prices are still rising, mortgage demand is strong and good homes are regularly selling above asking.

The latest CSO Residential Property Price Index puts Dublin prices 4.6% higher than a year earlier. Houses were up 3.9% and apartments 7.0%. That is much cooler than the recent boom, but it is hardly the kind of broad decline we would expect once buyers genuinely control the market.

Meanwhile, MyHome found transactions nationally closing around 7–8% above asking in May and June, with Dublin among the most competitive areas. Earlier DNG research also found that 84% of the Dublin properties it tracked went sale-agreed at or above asking.

So Dublin has moved away from an extreme seller’s market. Buyers can be pickier these days, particularly when a property is expensive, badly presented or obviously overpriced. The typical buyer still cannot assume the seller needs them more than they need the house.

What would a real Dublin buyer’s market actually look like?

A real Dublin buyer’s market would mean buyers regularly getting a choice between comparable homes and sellers increasingly having to negotiate.

We would expect properties to stay listed for longer, repeated price cuts to become normal, below-asking sales to spread and bidding wars to become the exception. Inventory would also need to build faster than buyers absorb it.

Dublin currently passes only part of that test. There are more reductions on weak listings and buyers have become less forgiving about bad value. But the stronger homes still move quickly, supply remains thin and above-asking sales are common.

Slower price growth tells us the market has cooled. Seller concessions, excess stock and consistently weaker bids would tell us buyers have taken control. Dublin has reached the first stage, not the second.

Are Dublin property prices falling now?

Dublin property prices are cooling fast, but the strongest official data still says prices are rising rather than falling.

The latest CSO index shows Dublin residential prices up 4.6% year-on-year, down from 5.0% in the previous month. Dublin house prices rose 3.9%, while apartments increased 7.0%.

Daft has shown a weaker picture in its own selling-price analysis, including a year-on-year fall during the summer. That was important because it was one of the first clear signs that Dublin sellers could no longer rely on automatic price growth.

Sherry FitzGerald’s second-hand index sits between the two extremes. Its first-half research found Dublin price growth well below the pace seen outside the capital.

So we have a real slowdown, not yet a clean citywide fall. The datasets disagree on the exact number, but the direction is pretty clear: Dublin has lost a lot of momentum.

Dublin price measure	Latest reading	Annual change	What we learn
CSO Dublin RPPI	Completed transactions	+4.6%	Official prices still rising
CSO Dublin houses	Completed transactions	+3.9%	House growth has cooled
CSO Dublin apartments	Completed transactions	+7.0%	Apartments remain strong
Sherry FitzGerald	Second-hand values	Slower than rest of Ireland	Dublin is losing momentum
Daft	Selling-price measure	Recently turned negative	Private-market cooling is visible

Are Dublin sellers still getting more than the asking price?

Yes. Dublin buyers are still paying meaningful premiums above asking, and that is one of the clearest reasons the market has not flipped.

MyHome found transactions nationally settling around 7–8% above asking in May and June. Dublin has repeatedly sat toward the stronger end of that pattern.

DNG’s earlier Dublin research found 84% of tracked properties going sale-agreed at or above asking. Even allowing for different samples and methodologies, both datasets point in the same direction.

Take a home listed at €500,000. An 8% premium means €540,000. Buyers competing at that level may be more cautious than they were a year or two ago, but the seller is still benefiting from competition.

In a buyer’s market, people start below asking because they believe another acceptable property will appear if the seller refuses. That confidence is still missing from much of Dublin.

Is there finally enough property for sale in Dublin?

Dublin buyers have more choice in some areas, but there is still nowhere near enough stock to create broad buyer power.

Sherry FitzGerald counted just 14,388 second-hand homes for sale across Ireland in July. That was 2.2% fewer than a year earlier and 20.6% below July 2020. Only around 0.7% of the country’s private housing stock was being advertised for sale.

The shortage becomes even worse at lower prices. Sherry FitzGerald found the biggest falls in availability below €350,000, exactly where first-time buyers and more price-sensitive households compete hardest.

Dublin does have a much healthier new-build pipeline than most of Ireland, especially for apartments. But buyers shopping for a mature three-bedroom semi, a terrace near a good school or a house within walking distance of the DART are not choosing from that apartment pipeline.

The extra supply is helping. It has not created the kind of excess stock buyers would need to dictate terms.

Are Dublin bidding wars disappearing?

Dublin bidding wars are becoming more selective, but they are definitely not disappearing.

Good homes at believable prices still attract multiple bidders. What has changed lately is that buyers are less willing to rescue a seller who starts too high.

That explains why we can see more asking-price reductions at the same time as many successful properties sell above asking. The homes needing reductions are often the ones that failed the first market test. Attractive properties priced to pull buyers in can still end up well above the guide.

Dublin increasingly has two markets running beside each other: competitive bidding for scarce, well-priced homes and much tougher negotiations around properties buyers can easily reject.

That is real progress for buyers.

Are Dublin apartments becoming easier to buy than houses?

No. Dublin apartments are currently rising faster in price than houses despite the huge amount of apartment construction.

The latest CSO figures put Dublin apartment prices 7.0% above a year earlier, compared with 3.9% for houses.

That is striking because Dublin dominates Ireland’s apartment construction. The CSO counted 2,006 apartment completions in Dublin during the second quarter, equal to 75.5% of all apartments completed nationally. Dublin City itself delivered 1,170 apartments, making apartments more than 91% of its new housing output.

If apartment supply had already overwhelmed demand, we would expect apartment prices to be among the weakest parts of Dublin. Instead, they are currently among the strongest.

The apartment market could soften later as more schemes finish. The evidence today says demand is still absorbing what gets delivered.

Measure	Dublin houses	Dublin apartments
Annual CSO price change	+3.9%	+7.0%
Q2 Dublin completions	1,174 houses and single dwellings	2,006 apartments
Share of Dublin completions	36.9%	63.1%
Share of all Irish apartment completions	—	75.5%

Are expensive Dublin homes finally becoming a buyer’s market?

Yes, parts of Dublin’s expensive market are already much more buyer-friendly.

Once prices move well above mainstream mortgage budgets, the pool of credible bidders shrinks quickly. MyHome has specifically pointed to softer conditions at higher price points, even while the wider market remains firm.

A €450,000 or €500,000 home can attract first-time buyers, couples with two incomes and movers carrying equity from another property. A €1.5 million house depends on a far smaller audience. If the asking price is ambitious, buyers have much less reason to chase it.

We can see the result in recurring reductions on expensive listings across affluent Dublin districts. Some sellers still achieve excellent prices, particularly for rare homes in excellent condition, but buyers at the top end can increasingly negotiate rather than simply bid.

This is probably the strongest case for saying that part of Dublin has already crossed into buyer-friendly territory.

Has Dublin affordability finally stopped buyers from bidding higher?

Dublin affordability is putting a real ceiling on prices, even though it has not killed demand.

The median Dublin dwelling price in the latest CSO twelve-month data was €500,000. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown was far higher at about €682,000, while Blackrock’s A94 Eircode had a median above €850,000.

Mortgage rates make those prices much harder to carry than they were during the ultra-low-rate years. A €400,000 mortgage over 30 years at roughly 3.5% costs around €1,800 a month before insurance and other ownership costs. At 2%, the payment would be closer to €1,480.

That difference removes hundreds of euros of monthly bidding capacity.

We are already seeing the effect in Dublin’s slower house-price growth. Buyers are still showing up, but many simply cannot keep pushing offers higher at the old pace.

Dublin can cool without crashing: demand remains strong enough to support prices while affordability keeps a lid on how quickly they can rise.

Are mortgage buyers pulling back from Dublin?

No. Mortgage demand is unusually strong right now, which makes a broad Dublin buyer’s market harder to imagine.

BPFI recorded 6,253 mortgage approvals in July, 14.4% more than a year earlier and the highest monthly total since the series began in 2011. First-time buyers accounted for 3,575 of those approvals, or 57.2%.

The value of approved mortgages topped €2 billion for the month. Over the twelve months to July, lenders approved 55,307 mortgages worth €17.9 billion.

Those figures cover Ireland rather than Dublin alone, so we should not pretend every approval becomes a Dublin bid. But Dublin is the country’s biggest and most expensive housing market, and a strong national mortgage pipeline feeds directly into its buyer pool.

Supply may be improving, but the number of financed buyers is not shrinking. That keeps pressure under the market.

Mortgage measure	Latest BPFI reading	Annual change
Mortgage approvals	6,253	+14.4%
First-time-buyer approvals	3,575	New monthly high
Value approved	€2.04bn	+15.0%
12-month approvals	55,307	Rising
12-month approved value	€17.9bn	Rising

Are first-time buyers getting a better deal in Dublin now?

First-time buyers have more access to mortgage finance, but they still face some of the hardest competition in Dublin.

The problem is price concentration. The latest CSO data puts Dublin’s median transaction price at €500,000, while even the cheapest Dublin Eircode in its latest twelve-month table, Dublin 17, had a median of €337,000.

At the same time, Sherry FitzGerald found second-hand availability falling fastest in Ireland’s cheaper price bands. Stock below €350,000 dropped sharply, and supply below €200,000 fell even faster.

That leaves first-time buyers chasing a relatively small pool of Dublin homes they can realistically finance. Meanwhile, BPFI says first-time-buyer approvals have just reached a record monthly level.

More buyers plus scarce affordable stock is a poor recipe for bargaining power.

First-time buyers may be entering the market with stronger mortgage approvals these days, but they are still competing hardest exactly where Dublin has the least slack.

Will landlords selling Dublin rentals give buyers much more choice?

Landlord exits are adding homes to Dublin’s for-sale market, but they are unlikely to create a buyer’s market on their own.

The Residential Tenancies Board has recorded a sharp increase in notices of termination, with more landlords citing plans to sell. Dublin should receive a large share of those properties because of its sizeable private rental sector and apartment stock.

That helps buyers, particularly people looking for older apartments in established neighbourhoods where there is little room to build.

But the effect cuts both ways. Each former rental sold to an owner-occupier also removes a rental property. With Dublin rents already extremely high, some households leaving the rental market will try to buy instead.

So we get extra homes for sale alongside extra pressure to escape renting. The net boost to buyer power is smaller than the raw number of landlord sales might suggest.

Is Dublin building enough homes to change the market?

Dublin is building a lot by Irish standards, but current construction is still too uneven to overwhelm demand.

The latest CSO figures show 3,180 new homes completed across Dublin in the second quarter. That represented 36% of all Irish completions.

The surprise is that Dublin completions actually fell 16.4% from a year earlier. Apartment deliveries were still huge in national terms, with Dublin producing 2,006 of Ireland’s 2,658 completed apartments, but overall Dublin housing output did not accelerate.

The mix also matters. Dublin City completed 1,280 homes during the quarter and 1,170 of them were apartments. Fingal delivered 1,020 homes, including 551 scheme houses and 454 apartments.

So Dublin is adding meaningful supply, especially in apartment-heavy locations. It is still producing far fewer conventional houses in central, established neighbourhoods than buyers want.

Q2 completions	Homes	Annual/market context
Dublin total	3,180	-16.4% YoY
Dublin apartments	2,006	75.5% of Ireland’s total
Dublin City total	1,280	1,170 were apartments
Fingal total	1,020	Largest Dublin local-authority output after city
Ireland total	8,823	-3.6% YoY

Should Dublin buyers wait because more homes are coming?

Waiting solely for a Dublin-wide buyer’s market is a risky strategy because the extra supply will not hit every property type equally.

The case for patience is strongest for buyers considering apartments in areas with several large schemes under construction. More competing units can produce incentives, better choice and eventually pressure on pricing.

The argument is much weaker for scarce houses in settled neighbourhoods. Thousands of new apartments do very little for someone trying to buy a three-bedroom semi near a particular school, a period terrace in Dublin 6 or a family house close to the coast.

Mortgage demand also remains strong, so future supply will not arrive into an empty market.

A buyer who finds a good home at a sensible price today should be careful about waiting for a citywide bargain that may never appear. Waiting makes more sense when the exact segment they want has a visible wave of competing supply coming.

Where in Dublin do buyers have the most leverage now?

Dublin buyers have the most leverage on expensive, flawed or oversupplied properties, while desirable mid-market homes remain much tougher.

The latest CSO data shows the scale of the price gap inside Dublin. The twelve-month median was about €682,000 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, €500,000 across Dublin overall and €337,000 in Dublin 17. Blackrock’s A94 area exceeded €850,000.

Those different price bands attract completely different buyer pools.

At the expensive end, sellers can run out of credible bidders quickly. Buyers can also become ruthless about poor energy ratings, renovation costs, awkward layouts, traffic noise or an inflated asking price.

At the mainstream end, a clean family home priced within normal mortgage limits can still generate a queue.

So the biggest opportunity today is not a particular Dublin postcode. It is the badly priced property. Buyers now have much more freedom to punish sellers who get the price wrong.

Do all these Dublin price cuts prove buyers have taken over?

No. Dublin price cuts show that overpricing is becoming harder to get away with, but they do not prove buyers control the wider market.

A property that sits unsold and then drops €50,000 is a real sign of weaker seller power. Several Dublin listing trackers have been picking up more of those reductions, including some double-digit cuts.

The problem is selection. Homes that sell quickly after competitive bidding disappear from listings, while unsuccessful properties remain visible long enough to have their asking prices reduced.

That is why price-cut counts cannot outweigh transaction evidence by themselves.

As we saw above, buyers are still paying above asking on many successful sales. Price reductions tell us something narrower: Dublin buyers have become much more willing to walk away from obviously bad value.

A few years ago, sellers could often test an ambitious price and still find someone willing to chase it. These days, that tactic carries more risk.

Is Dublin cooling faster than the rest of Ireland?

Yes. Dublin is clearly cooling faster than most of the country, which is probably the strongest evidence that it could reach a buyer’s market first.

The latest CSO data shows Dublin prices rising 4.6% annually while prices outside Dublin rose 6.4%. Dublin houses were up only 3.9%, compared with 6.0% for houses outside the capital.

Other market measures have shown an even wider gap. Sherry FitzGerald has reported much slower second-hand inflation in Dublin, while Daft has already produced periods where its Dublin measure turned negative even as several regional markets continued rising.

Dublin is also where Ireland is concentrating apartment construction. More than three-quarters of all apartments completed nationally in the latest quarter were in Dublin.

That combination is powerful: higher prices, stretched affordability and a larger supply response.

Dublin may therefore be heading toward balance faster than the rest of Ireland. It simply has not reached a broad buyer’s market yet.

What would convince us that Dublin has finally become a buyer’s market?

Dublin will look like a real buyer’s market once rising inventory, weaker bids and falling transaction prices start happening together for several months.

The first thing we would watch is the official CSO price index. One weak month would not be enough, but sustained declines would be difficult to dismiss.

The second is the gap between asking and selling prices. If homes that currently close several percent above asking start selling around asking or below it, seller power has clearly weakened.

Third, inventory needs to build. Buyers need enough comparable alternatives to credibly walk away from a negotiation.

Finally, mortgage demand matters. The latest BPFI numbers are still extremely strong. If housing supply keeps rising while approvals start falling, Dublin’s balance could change much faster.

Today we have pieces of that story, particularly slower prices and more selective buyers. We do not yet have the full combination.

So, is Dublin becoming a buyer’s market?

Partly, yes. Dublin is moving toward buyers, but the city as a whole is still closer to a cooler seller’s market than a genuine buyer’s market.

The change is real enough that buyers should behave differently today. They can challenge obviously inflated asking prices, walk away from compromised homes and negotiate much harder at the expensive end. More apartment construction is also widening choice in certain parts of the city.

The harder evidence still favours sellers across the broader market. Dublin prices remain 4.6% higher year-on-year in the latest official figures. Apartments are up 7.0%. Successful properties are often selling above asking. Mortgage approvals are running at record monthly levels, while second-hand stock across Ireland remains more than 20% below its 2020 level.

Those facts make “buyer’s market” too generous a label for Dublin today.

The clearest dividing line is price and property quality. A buyer chasing a strong €450,000–€600,000 home in a desirable neighbourhood can still expect serious competition. A buyer looking at a €1 million-plus home, a poor BER property, a difficult renovation or an apartment facing lots of new supply has far more room to negotiate.

Dublin has crossed from frenzy into selectivity. The market is punishing weak properties and unrealistic sellers much more quickly, while scarce good homes continue to command competition.

For buyers, that is already a meaningful improvement. A true Dublin buyer’s market would require one more step: enough stock that walking away becomes easy rather than risky. We are not there yet.

Fact-checked and reviewed by our local expert

✓✓✓

Anthony McCann 🇮🇪

Co-Founder, FindQo.ie

Anthony McCann co-founded FindQo.ie to make property searching easier and smarter in Dublin. He recognised the growing demand for a modern solution in the city’s busy housing market. FindQo.ie helps Dubliners find places to buy, rent, or share—whether it’s a home or commercial space. The platform offers a smooth and helpful experience for anyone looking to move in Dublin.

Who is the author of this content?

INVESTROPA

A team researching how property purchases actually go wrong across Europe

We are a team of real estate researchers and local specialists focused on helping people avoid expensive mistakes when buying property abroad, particularly in Dublin. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.