House prices surged by just over 7% in Ireland last year, new data from Daft.ie has revealed.
While listed prices on the website were on average 5.5% higher in 2025 than they were in 2024, transactional prices were 7.4% higher.
It means that house prices are now 41% higher than they were at before the pandemic struck six years ago.
On Newstalk Breakfast, economist and author of the report Ronan Lyons said last year’s increases were “roughly in line with the average seen over the last two years”.
“[It’s a] little bit down on 2024,” he said.
“But nothing like the stability that you'd see in a healthier market with a better balance between supply and demand.”
In 2024, there were 30,330 new homes built in Ireland - a slightly lower number than the 32,525 built the previous year.
Full figures for 2025 have yet to be published but the number of new dwelling completions in the first nine months of the year was 13% higher than in 2024.
However, there are still significantly fewer second hand homes on the market than there were before the pandemic.
“Currently, there are about 11,500,” Professor Lyons said.
“So, it's well below half that pre-COVID level.
“And that tells you just a couple of things going on there.
“But COVID changed the dynamic in the market and the increase in interest rates in the last two years has locked in, I think, a number of would be buyers and sellers in the second hand market.
“And we're stuck now in this very tight sales market with not enough homes getting built and not enough existing homes getting transacted.”
Members of the public viewing house prices in Dublin. Picture by: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie.Professor Lyons continued that this was not the case in all parts of the country, with the housing market far more fluid in the capital.
“In Dublin, the second hand market is largely back to where it was pre-COVID,” he said.
“You could argue that pre-COVID is not some sort of target, so that it was still a tight market.
“But the Dublin market has largely recovered in terms of the amount of homes available to buy, the amount of homes being put up for sale.
“But elsewhere in the country, it's still very much recovering from the COVID shock and the post-COVID shock in terms of demand for housing getting reallocated across the country.”
New homes under construction in Kildare. Picture by: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie.In the Programme for Government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael promised they would build more than 300,000 new homes by the end of 2030.
However, Professor Lyons argued far more radical policies are needed to increase the number of homes being built every year.
“We are still at probably about half the level of completions that we need to be as a country,” he said.
“That's across all that's across all segments, owner occupied rental and social housing.
“We may be inching up in terms of the number of completions year on year.
“But we really need a step change rather than just incremental growth in the number of homes getting built.”
Main image: A man walking past 'For Sale' signs in Dublin. Picture by: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie
