New Homes Statistics Ireland 2026: What Is Being Built, Who Is Buying and What They Pay

Last Updated 24 August 2026 | Approximately 12-minute read | Human written and fact checked against each named source.

Ireland’s new-home market is not one single number. Completions measure homes that have been finished. Revenue transactions measure purchases filed for stamp duty, and mortgage drawdowns measure finance advanced by lenders. Keeping those populations separate gives a clearer view of what is being built, who is buying and what buyers are paying.

This page is a 2026 statistical roundup, but not every figure measures 2026. The newest supply, price and mortgage figures cover Q2 or June 2026, non-household purchasing figures cover 2025, and the latest detailed purchaser-characteristics release covers transactions from 2022 to 2024. Each statistic below states its own period and links to its primary source.

For the resident, location, tenure and space context behind the apartment segment, see our Irish apartment living statistics.

New homes statistics Ireland 2026: key figures at a glance

• Ireland recorded 8,823 new dwelling completions in Q2 2026, 3.6% fewer than in Q2 2025, according to the CSO completion series.
• Scheme dwellings accounted for 54% of Q2 2026 completions, compared with 30% for apartments and 16% for single dwellings in the CSO dwelling-type breakdown.
• Household buyers filed 1,085 purchases of new dwellings in June 2026, equal to 26.7% of household market purchases filed that month, in the CSO property transaction data.
• The price index for new dwellings was 6.0% higher in Q2 2026 than a year earlier, while the existing-dwelling index increased by 5.9%, according to the CSO Residential Property Price Index.
• The national median dwelling price was €396,000 in the 12 months to June 2026, based on household market purchases filed with Revenue.
• First-time buyers made 20,716 purchases, or 40.4% of household market purchases, in the 12 months to June 2026, according to the CSO buyer-type data.
• Non-household entities bought 7,656 new dwellings in 2025, representing 59.5% of their market purchases, in the CSO non-household transaction release.
• Borrowers drew down 11,795 mortgages worth €3.747 billion in Q2 2026, according to the BPFI Mortgage Drawdowns Report.
• First-time buyers accounted for 58.8% of mortgage drawdown volume and 60.3% of value in Q2 2026 in the BPFI lender data.
• New properties, including self-builds, represented 38.6% of home-purchase mortgage drawdowns in Q2 2026, up from 37.0% a year earlier, according to BPFI.

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How many new homes were completed in Ireland?

The Central Statistics Office recorded 8,823 new dwelling completions in Q2 2026. That was 329 fewer than the 9,152 completions recorded in Q2 2025, a year-on-year decrease of 3.6%. The series identifies newly constructed, self-contained dwellings mainly through new ESB domestic electricity connections.

Completion figures are not the same as housing commencements, planning permissions or property sales. They describe dwellings that reached the CSO’s completion threshold during the quarter. They also should not be read as a count of homes available to an individual private buyer, because some completed homes are acquired or delivered through non-household and public-sector channels.

The mix changed across dwelling types. Scheme dwelling completions reached 4,738 in Q2 2026, up 2.0% from 4,643 a year earlier. The CSO defines a scheme dwelling as a house forming part of a multi-unit development of two or more houses.

Apartment completions moved in the other direction. Ireland completed 2,658 apartments in Q2 2026, 12.2% fewer than the 3,027 recorded in Q2 2025. Single dwellings, which the CSO uses for one-off homes rather than every detached house, fell by 3.7% to 1,427.

Taken together, scheme dwellings represented 54% of completions in the quarter. Apartments accounted for 30%, and single dwellings made up the remaining 16%. These are shares of newly completed dwellings during Q2 2026, not shares of Ireland’s total housing stock.

Where are houses and apartments being built?

The dwelling-type mix varies sharply by location. Cities accounted for 68% of apartment completions in Q2 2026, with 1,801 of the quarter’s 2,658 apartments completed in locations classified as cities by the CSO.

Scheme development was also concentrated in urban locations. Nearly 95% of scheme dwelling completions were in cities, satellite urban towns or independent urban towns. By contrast, more than 85% of single dwelling completions were in the three CSO rural categories. The contrast shows why a national headline can conceal very different building patterns for apartments, housing estates and one-off homes.

Regional totals did not all move together. Completions fell by 16.4% in Dublin and 13.9% in the Mid-West between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026. These are annual comparisons for one quarter, so they should not be treated as full-year regional trends.

At local level, Cabra-Glasnevin recorded 465 completions in Q2 2026, the highest total of any Local Electoral Area in that quarter. The figure is useful evidence of concentrated delivery, but it does not establish that the same area will lead for the full year.

What are buyers paying for homes in Ireland?

The National Residential Property Price Index was 5.6% higher in June 2026 than in June 2025. House prices increased by 5.2% over the year, while apartment prices rose by 8.0%. The index adjusts for differences in the mix and characteristics of properties sold, making it the appropriate measure of price change.

The national quarterly indices showed little difference between new and existing homes. New-dwelling prices increased by 6.0% in the year to Q2 2026, compared with a 5.9% increase for existing dwellings. The latest quarter is provisional, and an index percentage should not be converted into a specific euro increase for an individual home.

Median prices answer a different question. The median dwelling price was €396,000 in the 12 months to June 2026, meaning half of observed household market purchases were above that figure and half were below it. The median reflects the types and locations of homes sold, so changes in the sales mix can move it even when like-for-like prices behave differently.

The geographic range was wide. Over the same 12-month period, median prices ranged from €198,000 in Longford to €682,334 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. The median for the Dublin region was €500,000. Those figures should not be presented as like-for-like valuations, because the properties sold in each area differ.

Household buyers filed 4,058 market dwelling purchases in June 2026, 0.7% more than a year earlier. Their combined transaction value was €1.82 billion. New dwellings accounted for €516.1 million, or 28.3% of the value, while existing dwellings accounted for about €1.31 billion.

How many buyers are choosing new homes?

Of the 4,058 household market purchases filed in June 2026, 1,085 were new dwellings. New homes therefore represented 26.7% of household purchases filed that month, and their volume was 15.8% higher than in June 2025.

Existing dwellings remained the larger part of the household market. Buyers filed 2,973 existing-dwelling purchases in June 2026, equal to 73.3% of the total and 3.8% fewer than a year earlier. Revenue returns have a filing deadline, so the CSO describes these as purchases filed in June rather than assuming every transaction completed within the calendar month.

First-time buyers were responsible for 20,716 purchases in the 12 months to June 2026, or 40.4% of the 51,253 household market purchases in the period. Former owner-occupiers made 25,689 purchases, equal to 50.1%, while non-occupiers accounted for 4,848 purchases, or 9.5%.

In June 2026 alone, 1,705 first-time buyer purchases were filed. That total included 699 new dwellings and 1,006 existing dwellings. The monthly count was 11.4% higher than in June 2025, but it remains a transaction measure rather than a mortgage count.

What do we know about the people buying homes?

The newest detailed purchaser profile is the CSO’s Characteristics of Residential Property Purchasers 2022 to 2024. It is a Frontier Series based on linked administrative data, meaning the methods may continue to develop. Its 2024 figures provide useful context, but the RPPI remains the official high-level source for transaction volumes and prices.

Within that analysis, residential property transactions fell to 48,780 in 2024 from 50,230 in 2023. Joint purchasers accounted for 61% of purchases in 2024, representing 29,910 transactions. This is a share of properties purchased jointly, not a share of individual people.

Purchases were split between sole buyers without children at 35%, joint buyers without children at 31%, joint buyers with children at 30%, and sole buyers with children at 4%. These categories describe purchaser transactions in the linked dataset, not the composition of all households in Ireland.

The median age of purchasers was 40 in 2024. Sole purchasers had a median age of 42, while joint purchasers had a median age of 38. Joint purchasers without children had the youngest median age at 36, and sole purchasers with children had the oldest at 43. The differences are descriptive and do not establish why people bought at a particular age.

Median gross purchaser income was €84,400 in 2024. The median was €55,100 for sole purchasers and €101,200 for joint purchasers. These are incomes among property purchasers, not population-wide income statistics.

The national purchaser price-to-income ratio was 4.2 in 2024. It reached 5.0 for purchasers under 35 and 11.7 for sole purchasers with children. The CSO calculates these as ratios of group median purchase prices to group median incomes, so they are not individual mortgage loan-to-income multiples.

Census-linked data also showed that approximately 8% of matched 2022 purchasers were living with their parents. That represented 11,260 of 137,040 purchaser people successfully matched to Census 2022. The matched-population denominator is essential because not every purchaser could be linked.

Who else is buying new houses and apartments?

Household purchases are only part of the residential market. The CSO recorded 12,857 purchases by non-household entities in 2025, equal to 20.3% of 63,440 market purchases and €5.1 billion in transaction value. Non-households include private companies, charities and state institutions, so the category should not be reduced to investment funds.

New homes were prominent in this part of the market. Non-household entities bought 7,656 new dwellings in 2025, 6.9% more than in 2024. Those homes represented 59.5% of non-household purchases and had a combined value of €3.1 billion.

The mix also differed by dwelling type. Non-households bought 6,070 houses and 6,787 apartments in 2025. Apartment purchases increased by 15.2%, while house purchases fell by 10.8%. New dwellings represented 49.2% of the houses and 68.8% of the apartments bought by non-households. The percentages use separate house and apartment denominators and should not be added together.

Entities in the combined Public Administration, Education and Human Health or Social Work group bought 6,865 dwellings worth €2.6 billion in 2025. That broad group includes local authorities and approved housing bodies, but also other public institutions and private education or health organisations. It is therefore inaccurate to label the entire figure as council or government buying.

The direction of market flows matters too. In 2025, non-households sold a net 11,017 more dwellings to households than they bought from households. The net monetary flow ran in the opposite direction, with €5.2 billion moving to non-households, because the average values of transactions in each direction differed.

How are first-time buyers and other purchasers financing homes?

The Banking & Payments Federation Ireland recorded 11,795 mortgage drawdowns in Q2 2026, worth €3.747 billion. Drawdown volume was 7.4% higher than in Q2 2025, while value increased by 11.1%. The figures cover reporting BPFI member lenders and include several mortgage purposes, so they are not a national count of dwelling purchases.

First-time buyers accounted for 58.8% of drawdown volume and 60.3% of value in the quarter. That is their share of mortgages reported by BPFI, not their share of every property bought in Ireland, and it should not be substituted for the CSO’s stamp-duty buyer-type statistics.

New properties, including self-builds, represented 38.6% of home-purchase mortgage drawdowns in Q2 2026, up from 37.0% a year earlier. BPFI’s new-property category explicitly includes self-builds, while CSO new-dwelling transaction data follows Revenue’s previously-inhabited definition.

First-time buyers drew down 2,979 mortgages on new properties, including self-builds, worth €1.04 billion in Q2 2026. The volume increased by 13.4% and the value by 19.5% year on year. For comparison, there were 5,499 home-purchase mortgage drawdowns on second-hand properties, worth more than €1.8 billion.

Method, definitions and sources

This roundup was compiled from five primary releases reviewed on 24 August 2026: CSO New Dwelling Completions Q2 2026, CSO Residential Property Price Index June 2026, CSO Characteristics of Residential Property Purchasers 2022 to 2024, CSO Residential Property Transactions by Non-Households 2025, and the BPFI Mortgage Drawdowns Report for Q2 2026.

A new dwelling completion is a finished dwelling identified in the CSO completion series, primarily through a new ESB domestic electricity connection. A new dwelling purchase is a Revenue market transaction for a home not previously inhabited. A mortgage drawdown is finance advanced by a reporting lender. Those events can occur at different times and cover different populations, so their totals have not been added together.

Price changes use the CSO Residential Property Price Index rather than changes in median prices. Median prices describe the midpoint of observed transactions and can move when the mix of properties sold changes. Purchaser-characteristics figures are labelled with their 2024 or 2022 data periods and retain the Frontier Series limitation.

The 2026 in the title identifies the publication and refresh year of this statistical roundup. It does not mean every underlying statistic measures 2026. Figures should be quoted with their stated geography, period, denominator and source link.

How M&I Interiors Can Help

The evidence points to a varied new-home market rather than one standard buyer or dwelling. Apartments are concentrated in cities, scheme homes dominate total completions, one-off homes remain largely rural, and buyers face large differences in prices by location. For wider context on household furniture spending, retail sales, prices, reuse and affordability, see our Furniture Statistics Ireland 2026 roundup. A household moving into a compact apartment will make different layout and storage choices from a family furnishing a scheme house or self-build.

For figures on the changing average size of completed dwellings, floor-area differences by home type and household space, see our Home Size Statistics Ireland 2026 roundup.

For owners planning several rooms at once, it helps to begin with measurements, circulation space and the order in which rooms will be used. M&I Interiors’ interior design service can help translate a floor plan and practical requirements into a coordinated furniture, lighting and window-treatment plan. The service does not change housing costs or market outcomes, but it can make the furnishing process more structured.