Housing demand increases by 17% year-on-year

Demand for housing across Ireland is up 17% over the last 12 months, according to research by property website Daft.ie.

The website said demand for new homes in May 2023 is up a “staggering” 114% compared to May 2022.

Overall demand in Dublin is double the national rate at 34%.

Eighteen of the 26 Republic of Ireland counties have seen an increase in demand.

The demand for new housing in Meath is up 29%, Limerick and Offaly both saw a demand increase of 26%, while housing demand in Louth is 25% higher than a year ago.

Homes with a listed price of between 400,000-600,000 euro saw the largest increase in demand of 38%.

Daft.ie said the help-to-buy scheme is a likely contributor to an almost 18-fold increase in demand for new homes within the price bracket of 400,000-500,000 euro.

The help-to-buy scheme helps first-time buyers purchase a newly-built house or apartment and one-off self-build homes.

It only applies to properties that cost 500,000 euro or less.

Demand in three of the four cities outside Dublin also saw a heightened level of demand compared to last year – by 26% in Limerick, 13% in Cork and 9% in Galway.

Daft.ie said its analysis shows demand has strengthened year-on-year.

However, it warned that supply in the sales market over the last 12 months was not adequate to meet demand.

“The Irish housing market is in desperate need of increased supply over years and indeed decades to come,” it said.

Demand was assessed through the growth and change in enquiries sent on property listings across their property sales section of the website.