There’s no doubt that buying a home in Dublin isn’t easy. Latest figures from the Central Statistics Office show that the median price of a Dublin property is now €495,000 – and it’s as high as €675,000 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.
However, the situation overseas is not always better. Many of the likely destinations for Ireland’s departing emigrants have some of the hottest housing markets in the world.
This is not to suggest that housing is affordable in Dublin but, rather, to put it in the context of global issues.
Consider the Demographia survey, an annual report that rates middle-income housing affordability in 95 big housing markets in eight countries. It offers a good snapshot not of how high or low house prices are but how affordable they are.
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The survey covers metropolitan areas across Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and the US – many of which are key destinations for Irish emigrants – and the 2025 survey is based on figures from the third quarter of 2024.
It finds that Australia has four cities which are “impossibly unaffordable”, while in North America, Vancouver and Silicon Valley are out of the reach of many.
While markets change and prices can fall – see what’s happening in Canada, for example – and it is possible to find affordable pockets within the locations Irish people typically head to, these are unlikely to be the port of call for most emigrants.
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Dublin
It is undoubtedly an expensive place to buy a house in, and it’s getting worse. As the survey notes, the city deteriorated from “seriously unaffordable” to “severely unaffordable” in 2024, with a median multiple of 5.1. This is a price-to-income ratio that divides the median house price by the median household income.
That’s a far cry from around 1990, when, as the survey points out, price-to-income ratios were “affordable” in Ireland, at three or less times income.
This was also the case in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US back then. But, the survey points out, this “healthy pattern” was broken as land prices became a dominant driver of house prices in areas where supply has been constrained as part of planning policies.
Dublin is the only Irish city that features but it is not as bad as other cities covered in the report. The Demographia survey gives it an overall affordability ranking of 46, with 1 being the most affordable, and 95 the least affordable.
And while, from a national perspective, Ireland is considered “severely unaffordable”, this is better than Australia, where four cities are considered to be “impossibly unaffordable”.
Australia
Australia is a popular port of call for many, but its property market remains hot. This year’s survey shows it has one “severely unaffordable” market – Perth – and four “impossibly unaffordable” cities – Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney.
Sydney is seen as the second least affordable city in the entire survey (behind Hong Kong), “with an impossibly unaffordable median multiple of 13.8”. This means that you’d need about 14 times your annual household income to buy a typical home there.
Latest figures show that median house prices in Sydney have reached just over 1.7 million Australian dollars (€970,600) – far beyond the means of most and suggesting a median household income of about A$123,188 (€70,333).
It’s nothing new: Sydney has had the first, second or third least affordable housing of any big market in 16 of the last 17 years. And it’s not just Sydney. Other cities popular with departing Irish are also deemed very expensive – even Adelaide, the smallest Australian market featured.
“It is remarkable that these markets are less affordable than widely recognised world cities like New York, London, or Chicago,” the survey notes.
New Zealand fares somewhat better as its overheating housing market has cooled off. Where once income multiples were around nine, prices have dropped over the past few years by as much as 30 per cent in some areas, easing the affordability crunch.
Auckland now has a “severely unaffordable” median multiple of 7.7, still some way north of Dublin’s level.
According to the survey, factors helping affordability include strong income trends, as well as liberal land use reforms and a push on greenfield development of new homes.
Britain
It’s no surprise, perhaps, to learn that London is more unaffordable than Dublin. According to the survey, Greater London is “impossibly unaffordable”, with a multiple of 9.1 times income.
What is surprising, however, is that it is not the only UK city that is deemed more unaffordable than Dublin, with Bristol-Bath, Greater Manchester and Edinburgh all seen as being more unaffordable for housing.
North America
Canada remains another popular location with departing Irish. But here, as elsewhere, house prices might startle. While the median multiple is 5.4 times income across the country, three of the six locations are rated “severely unaffordable” or “impossibly unaffordable”.
Vancouver is the least affordable, with a multiple of 11.8 times income, followed by Toronto, at 8.4 times.
“Much of this has to do with the operation of urban containment policies,” the survey finds, adding that, worryingly, high prices in these areas have spread outwards, to surrounding locations like Chilliwack, the Fraser Valley and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo and Brantford.
There have been efforts to boost affordability, the report notes. In some smaller markets, there have been improvements, as remote working accelerate the number of people moving to more affordable places.
Edmonton for example, is one of the most affordable across the survey, with a multiple of 3.7 times income being required for home purchase.
Across the US, unaffordability has eased, with a median multiple of 4.8. However, as with Canada, there is significant divergence in affordability.
Silicon Valley is the most expensive location, and you’ll need 12.1 times the average income to buy here.
On the east coast, both Boston and New York are that bit more affordable, with multiples of 6.7 and 7.4, respectively. Pittsburgh on the other hand, remains particularly affordable, as does Cleveland, Ohio and St Louis, Missouri.
Bargain destinations
If buying a house is a priority for you, it may make sense to consider a location that is a little less well travelled.
Such as Pittsburgh, home to the Steelers and about a six-hour drive from New York city. You will need just 3.2 times the median income here to buy a typical home, well below the Central Bank’s four times income rule. For about $150,000, you could expect to buy a typical three-bed family home in a convenient location.
Or what about Edmonton in Canada? The capital of Alberta has an income multiple of just 3.7 times.
Closer to home, Sheffield, in the UK, is the ninth most affordable city in the survey, with just 3.8 times income needed to buy a home.
An Irish woman selling condos in Toronto
Originally from Fermanagh, close to the Monaghan border, Deirdre Slowey of Sotheby’s Realty Canada has been selling property in Toronto for more than 20 years.
When Irish people arrive in the city, she says they tend to rent for the first few years, “to get a sense of where they’re going to land and stay for the long term”.
Until recently, prices have been stellar – the Demographia survey cites the city as being “severely unaffordable” – and it’s been a sellers’ market “for many, many years”, Slowey says.
“We would happily put a house on the market on a Tuesday and have it sold the following Tuesday,” she says. Unlike in Ireland, bids are submitted on a blind basis although the seller can tell other bidders the value of the bids if they so wish.
“Buyers hate it, sellers love it,” she says, noting that after the first round of bids, there may be a second round of blind bids, and so on.
The market started to shift around 2022, she says, going from “super hot” on the back of a growing population to one where houses that come to market are now being priced lower than the previous similar house sold for.
Prices in the city have fallen by as much as 25 per cent since 2022, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. Economic uncertainty, as well as tighter immigration laws, have been cited as contributing to this change.
“Over the last two years, it has become a buyers’ market,” says Slowey, although she hopes that the market is “coming back gently now”.
For would-be buyers, better value can now be found but years of strong price growth means the city is still expensive.
She suggests an average price of about $1.3 million Canadian dollars (€805,000) for a three-bedroom semi-d in an area akin to Churchtown or Templeogue in south Dublin, increasing to about C$1.7 million (€1.05 million) for a detached four-bed.
While prices may be similar to Dublin, you can expect a larger square footage in Canada – and you’ll get a basement too.
