House price inflation 'cooling' in cities but rural prices still pushing upwards

Report shows a 'two-speed' market with rural price inflation continuing upwards

House price inflation in Ireland’s cities has slowed considerably with transaction prices “flat” but rural house price inflation is continuing upwards, new data released on Tuesday shows.

House price inflation in Ireland’s cities has slowed considerably with transaction prices “flat” but rural house price inflation is continuing upwards, new data released on Tuesday shows.

The Daft.ie Sales Report for the second quarter of the year house shows prices nationally were 1.6% higher in June than three months earlier, and 3.8% higher than a year ago. This marks a considerable slowdown in inflation compared to a year ago, when list prices were rising at 6.8% year-on-year, the report said.

There were 13,100 second-hand homes for sale nationally, up 6% year-on-year but only half the pre-pandemic norm of over 26,000.

In the second quarter of 2026, the average list price nationwide for a three-bedroom semi detached house was €445,000. Across the country, list prices are on average now 44% above their pre-covid levels and just 8% below their Celtic Tiger peak.

“The defining theme of the second quarter is a broad-based slowdown in price inflation – but it is far from uniform,” said the report’s author, Trinity economics professor Ronan Lyons. “We are seeing a genuinely two-speed market: cooling in and around the cities, where supply is at last recovering and competition between buyers is easing, but still running hot across much of rural Ireland, where availability remains acutely tight.” 

According to the Daft.ie List Price Index, listing prices in the four major cities outside Dublin – Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Galway - were 1.7% higher in June than in March. In the year to June, prices were on average 0.2% lower – down from 8.6% higher a year previously.

Meanwhile, transaction prices in the four cities – what was actually paid for the properties listed - were 2.0% higher in June than in March. Transaction prices were up 4.4% when compared to the same month a year ago.

In Dublin, list-price inflation has roughly halved over the year, to 3.0%, while early indications suggest that transaction prices are slightly lower than this time a year ago.

Rural-urban divide

Inflation remains strong outside the cities, at 6.3% in Munster, 4.8% in Leinster, and 8.8% in Connacht-Ulster. “In these markets, supply remains acutely tight, and new-build activity, though growing, is not yet enough to relieve the pressure,” said Mr Lyons.

In Cork city, listed prices for all properties were up 5.1% year-on-year. The average list price of a three-bedroom semi-detached house was €439,000 over the quarter. 

In Dublin, listed prices were up 3% year-on-year, with the average price of a three-bedroom semi-detached house at €580,000. In Limerick city, listed prices were up 1.9% year-on-year, with  average three-bedroom semi-detached houses at €379,000; in Galway city: listed prices were up 4.4% year-on-year, with average prices for a three-bedroom semi-detached at €434,000, while in Waterford city: listed prices rose 6.1% year-on-year with the average three-bedroom semi-detached houses priced at  €308,000.

On June 1st, there were just 2,472 second-hand homes actively for sale in Munster (outside the cities), down 1% on a year ago. The report said availability is now around one third of its 2015-2019 average (down 66%), when typically almost 7,500 homes were available to buy.

Nationally, in the year to March, the number of homes changing hands rose by just over 3%. That 3% growth was driven by newly built homes, sales of which were up 17%. Mr Lyons said the second-hand market is "effectively stuck. New construction is hugely important, and the country needs to be building well above 60,000 homes a year, not under 40,000. But new-builds alone cannot rebalance the market. That has to come from greater churn among the 1.4m owner-occupied homes in the country – most likely as more owners roll off the fixed-rate mortgages taken out during the rate shock of the early 2020s. 

"Until second-hand supply responds, overall activity will remain well below what a healthy market requires.”