House prices outstripped wage increases over past 10 years, reports show

The reports show that the average house prices doubled from €153,000 to €305,000 between 2013 and 2022. Picture: Denis Scannell

Increases in Ireland’s house prices have vastly outstripped any rise in wages seen over the past 10 years, according to Government statistics.

Two new reports by the Parliamentary Budget Office, the Oireachtas’ independent economic analysis arm, show that average house prices doubled from €153,000 to €305,000 between 2013 and 2022.

However, at the same time, the median salary of a single person increased by 26% from €33,000 to €41,800, while the income of couples increased from €66,100 to €83,600.

The median is the middle figure in a row of numbers sorted from top to bottom, as opposed to the average.

The jump in median house prices of €25,000 in 2022 was the largest since 2017.

The worst ratio of cost to income seen anywhere in Ireland at the end of 2022 for couples was in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown local authority area, which has consistently seen the highest prices versus income level, with a ratio of 6.8:1. 

The lowest were in Leitrim, Roscommon, and Longford at 2.1:1.

Separately, the Parliamentary Budget Office noted that counties with the lowest number of new home completions per 1,000 population had the highest percentage increase in house prices.

Tipperary and Longford both saw annual property price increases of 8%, compared with new dwelling completions of just 3 and 2.6 completed dwellings per 1,000 people, respectively.

Cork City and Cork County were on the lower end of the inflationary scale, with the city showing property price hikes of 3% versus dwelling completions per 1,000 people of 4.6, while Cork County showed 1% and 5.6 for the same metrics, respectively.

Wicklow, meanwhile, was the county scoring best on the  Parliamentary Budget Office's evaluation scale, the only county to show a reduction in property prices of 2% for 2023 along with one of the higher dwelling completion rates of 9.1 units finished per 1,000 people.