Property investors and financial institutions bought fewer Irish homes last year than in previous years, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said on Wednesday, while the State ramped up purchases of new and existing properties.
Information filed with the Revenue Commissioners indicate that non-household entities – including private companies and investors as well as State bodies – purchased 12,201 dwellings last year. This represented a 9.8 per cent reduction on the volume of purchases made in 2022, which had been the strongest year for transactions in at least six years, according to the CSO.
The total value of the properties sold to entities other than private buyers was €4.2 billion in 2023. Of this, €1.9 billion related to 5,778 homes purchased by Government agencies and State bodies, making them the largest non-household entities in the housing market. The volume of homes purchased by the State rose by almost a quarter from 2022, according to the CSO.
The financial and insurance sector, meanwhile, was the second-biggest non-household buyer of homes, accounting for transactions totalling €853 million in 2023, down sharply from more than €1.5 billion in 2022.
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Just €302.5 million in property was acquired by entities registered outside the State – about 8 per cent of all purchases by non-household entities. Of this, European investors accounted for more than 82 per cent. The other 92 per cent of all purchases by non-household entities related to companies and other bodies registered in Ireland, the CSO said.
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“Of the 12,201 purchases of residential dwellings by non-households in 2023, 6,438 were purchases of houses, and 2,797 [43.4 per cent] of these were purchases of new houses,” said CSO statistician Niall Corkery. “The remaining house purchases were of existing houses, of which there were 3,641 [56.6 per cent] in 2023.”
Private investors took a breath as soaring interest rates cut the amount of debt available to fund deals. Transaction values in the residential investment market plunged to just €433 million in 2023, according to a BNP Paribas Real Estate report from earlier this year, compared with an average of nearly €2 billion from 2019 to 2022.
Rent controls coupled with increased State-led activity in the private rented sector through housing bodies contributed to the slowdown, according to the report, with Government agencies becoming an increasingly “attractive exit option for developers”.
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