Munster's new homes market in 2025 proves resilient 

Aspiring buyers more cautious, looking for value and affordability, says Sherry FitzGerald’s Paul Hannon

The future? Apartment blocks under construction at  Glenveagh Homes former 'Live at the Marquee' site, with builders Conack. Picture: Larry Cummins

The New Homes market in 2025 has proven to be resilient against a cautious and uncertain geopolitical and economic backdrop.

We in Sherry FitzGerald have sold more new homes, including more apartments across the country this year than last year despite the broader global challenges. Aspirant buyers are certainly more cautious and looking far and wide for value and affordability. We are perhaps seeing a shift in the volume demand to the outer commuter belts of our cities where homes are more viable and affordable and falling within the Help-to-Buy and First Homes scheme price ceilings. However, we are also experiencing a higher volume of ‘change of mind’ or fall throughs — buyers are considering all pathways to ownerships and relatively open to location depending on the buyer cohort.

Years of experience: Paul Hannon analyses market moves

We monitor buyer sentiment closely and whilst half of the withdrawn/change of mind cases tell us they have bought elsewhere about 17% tell us their change of mind relates to financial circumstances or perceptions of their financial circumstances — this has doubled since last year.

Since the Help to Buy, was launched in 2017 there have been some 137,773 applications but just 60,516 claims with the cap of €500,000 remaining as is for the past eight years. The First Home scheme is newer and as of Q3 2025 there have 8,399 approvals; 5,285 contracts issued and 4,118 homes purchased with 72% of the approvals in Dublin, Cork, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow with the balance across an additional 21 counties. There is a much greater awareness of both schemes and whilst the First Home has different county ceilings there are regular reviews and there maybe changes in January.

For context and from our perspective as a business, we have sale agreed over 2,200 homes year to date with an approximate aggregate value exceeding €1.1 billion, primarily concentrated in the Greater Dublin Area (GDA), Cork, Limerick and Galway but with about 20% in the regional towns. Cork had a particularly strong year with 500 homes sold for our clients.

It is a year where we have seen proper ‘proof of concept’ of new tenures and ‘new’ typographies. The LDA and Local Authorities have been much more active with their own Affordable Purchase schemes (similar to shared equity) and we are seeing a maturing of the Cost Rental sector as a new tenure thru both the LDA and Affordable Homes Body sector. Apartments and duplexes are proving popular with Cork seeing big volume sales across two Croi Conaithe supported apartment projects being Blackrock Villas and The View at Bayly.

The development site is located beside the newly developed Marina Park at Monahan Road/ Centre Park Road, Ballintemple, Cork

Picture: Larry Cummins

 This is the first delivery of apartments for sale in Cork in nearly 20 years. We expect to see more volumes coming in 2026 across all tenures and with recent announcements such as the Vat change for apartments aiding viability.

There are some flickers of progress within the planning system with the LRD (large-scale residential development) process working. The rebranded and better resourced An Coimisun Pleanala is also managing cases more efficiently and getting through it’s backlog.

There are new developments being granted and within the planning system under the still new Sustainable Residential Development & Compact Settlement Guidelines which allows for more own-door home typographies which should be more viable and more affordable.

Car-parking ratios within developments particularly close to transport nodes is something buyers should be aware of and residents are increasingly opting out of car ownership. This is a changing pattern part through choice part informed by planning regulation.

Inevitably, with the government’s housing plan Delivering Homes Building Communities delayed till November, there was something of a ‘wait and see’ approach from industry. A lot has been announced in the calendar year and what’s needed now is urgency to certainty.

The first two key priorities of the plan are ensuring a strong pipeline of zoned and serviced land and creating the conditions to attract the required investment. As yet only a handful of local authorities (Cork County & City being exemplars) have fully engaged with the request to appropriately rezone so it’s critical we see greater alignment of local and central government.

There is also still lots of ambiguity under the planned changes to rental legislation to create the right conditions for investment and judicial reviews are a topic for another day.

The implementation of the National Planning Framework, the Housing Activation Office and recommendations of the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce need a rapid and focussed start to 2026, thereafter hopefully we can see incremental increase in supply over the coming years.

Paul Hannon is a Director of Sherry FitzGerald New Homes