Rural drift and other trends in Ireland's new housing market

Now that normality is re-establishing itself, one big question is whether or not rural drift will be a permanent trend?

Rural drift: All over the country, auctioneers were reporting extraordinary levels of demand for dwellings in rural locations of all types.

The phenomenon of people moving into rural locations was a marked trend of the Pandemic years, as remote working went from being a tentative experiment to a proven success. All over the country, auctioneers were reporting extraordinary levels of demand for dwellings in rural locations of all types.

In the latest report on house prices from IPAV published last month, some of the biggest price increases were for properties in the rural locations of Wexford, Clare, Mayo and Donegal. The category with the biggest price increase was the four-bedroom house. This is the one that one would most associate with a move out of town and/or a move towards working from home so the phenomenon of ‘rural drift’ may be a factor in those statistics.