Figures from two reports on Monday confirmed a significant cooling of the property market.
Daft.ie’s quarterly report said asking prices in the three months to September rose by 3 per cent, barely half the rate they were rising by 12 months previously.
Figures from the property price register show that sale prices actually agreed are cooling even more dramatically – up just 0.8 per cent on this time last year, which is the lowest rate of growth in six years and just one-tenth of the pace reported in September 2025.
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A separate report from estate agent REA, which reviews specifically the market for three-bed semis confirms the broad trend.
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The gap between the price a property is listed at and the eventual price achieved has also narrowed significantly to 2.6 per cent, down from 6.8 per cent a year ago.
But what’s behind the slowdown?
It is not a dramatic increase in supply, according to Ronan Lyons, the economist behind the Daft report – at least not in second-hand homes where the number listed for sale is broadly the same as it has been over the past two years. And those homes are taking longer to sell, suggesting softer demand.
In part, Lyons says that could be down to more buyers turning their attention to new homes where supply has, at least for now, improved, even if it remains well short of forecast need. But, he says, that has not been reflected in the capital where demand is down across new and second-hand properties.
So if supply accounts for, at best, a smallish portion of the change, demand must be softening.
In Dublin, one factor could well be that first-time buyers are now being priced out of the market – at least those looking to rely on the Help to Buy and First Homes scheme, where the maximum property value is €500,000.
According to Daft, the average price for anything above a two-bed home is above that €500,000 threshold in Dublin.
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Another factor is that interest rates have once again begun to rise, with two quarter-percentage-point increases announced by the European Central Bank since June and the possibility of another one before the year is out.
Those factors, against a background of global economic and market uncertainty, could be enough to make first-time buyers – the dominant players in the market – think twice.
A slowdown will be some relief to homebuyers, especially those first-time buyers. However, slowdown or not, prices are still rising – now 44 per cent above pre-pandemic levels nationally – and supply remains an issue.
Cantillon, named after Irishman Richard Cantillon who was known as the “Father of Political Economy”, is a column in which Irish Times business journalists offer analysis and comment on business and economic issues of the day.
