56% of new homes in Dublin were bought by companies, funds and institutions, a new report has revealed, with just 44% of new homes ending up on the open market last year.
The report from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows that the cost of an Irish home rose at an annualised rate of 7 per cent in January, with the average price of a home in Dublin rising to close to €600,000.
The latest Residential Property Price index shows that 56% of new homes in the capital went to companies, funds and institutions – rather than ordinary buyers or young couples.
Overall, a breakdown of stamp duty data shows that 3,219 new homes were bought by ordinary people and families (household buyers), whilst 4,079 were snapped up by companies, funds and institutions (hon-household buyers).
7,298 sales of new homes took place in Dublin in 2025, the data shows, but just 25% of these sales were first-time buyers (1,852). 17.6% were people moving home (1,286), whilst a much higher €55.89% were bought by companies, funds, or institutions (4,079). Small investors bought the remaining 1.1% of new property – 81 homes.
The average price of a house purchased in the 12 months to January was €389,986 nationwide. The highest average price for a home was in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown (€680,000) while Donegal was at the other end of the spectrum, with the lowest average price tag nationwide for a home, at €195,000.
3,781 homes worth €1.66 billion were bought, with details filed with the Revenue Commission in the year to January 2026 – of these purchases, 2,686 were existing homes and 1,095 newly built. 1,566 were first-time buyer purchases.
The figures also show that the average cost of a typical home has shot up by more than €100,000 in the last four years –up from €280,000 in 2021.
Prices are increasing fastest for houses in the Midlands region, climbing by 15.9 per cent of the 12 months, and lowest in Fingal where houses were costing 3.8 per cent more than in 2024.
The cost of apartments is resign faster than for houses – with apartments outside Dublin seeing increased demand, with prices up 12.9 per cent on January 2025.
It comes as the CEO of the country’s biggest private homes development company, Michael Stanley of Cairn Homes, said that the average age of first-time buyers has risen to 38.
“We have to recognise that the average first-time buyers of a Cairn Home has grown from about 31 [or] 32 years of age up to 38 [or] 39 in the last number of years, so many people are older, unfortunately, buying their first home,” he told shareholders earlier this month.
The high proportion of non-household sales is not a new trend; research from 2024 claimed that less than 40 per cent of Dublin homes were sold to individual buyers.
Four out of every ten new homes sold across the country in 2023 changed hands as part of a transaction where multiple units were sold together, the analysis by estate agents DNG found.
In total for that year, there were 7,306 new units sold as part of such “block sales,” according to the research.
Block sale buyers are normally non-household organisations, such as Approved Housing Bodies, investment funds and other financial institutions, local authorities and charities.
In 2023, just 58% of all new homes, representing 9,201 units, were sold to individual private buyers, while in Dublin, the percentage of new homes sold as part of block sales to the non-household sector reached 61%.