Is the date on the register the date the house sold?

No. It is the date the Stamp Duty return was filed, which is normally shortly after closing and is occasionally months later. For looking up one house it rarely matters. For timing a market it does.

Why does a sale have no Eircode?

The register only began recording them in 2021, so an older sale will not carry one no matter how well known the property is. A missing Eircode says nothing at all about the house.

Does the register show the number of bedrooms or the size?

No. It carries the address, the date, the price and a small number of flags. Size, condition, bedrooms, whether it sold with land, and anything about the buyer or seller are all outside it.

Are all property sales on the register?

Only those with a Stamp Duty filing. Most inheritances and certain transfers never appear, so an absence is not evidence that a property has not changed hands.

How to read an entry on the Property Price Register

The date is not the sale date, the address is whatever the solicitor typed, and about 15.2% of entries in our town-level comparison sample carry no Eircode. What each field means.

The register is a Stamp Duty filing record that happens to be published. It was not designed to be browsed, and almost every complaint about it comes from reading it as though it were a property listing. Four fields do most of the confusing.

The date is the filing date

What is recorded is when the Stamp Duty return was filed, not the day contracts were signed or the day the keys changed hands. The gap is usually short and is occasionally months. A sale that appears in January was often agreed the previous autumn, which matters if you are using the register to time a market rather than to look up a house.

The address is what was typed

There is no standard form. The same street appears as Road, Rd and Rd., with and without the estate name, with the town spelled two ways. This site normalises them so a street has one page rather than five, and shows the filed address underneath so you can see what it started as. Where an address is only a townland, that is all the filing carried.

The flags are the important part

New build. The property was sold new rather than second hand.
VAT exclusive. The price leaves out the tax the buyer paid on top, which on a new build is normally 13.5 per cent.
Not full market price. The sale was not at arm's length, so the figure is not evidence of what the house is worth.

A median that includes the third category is not a market figure, which is why every median on this site leaves them out. A comparison that mixes the second category with ordinary resales is comparing a price with the tax removed against one without, which is the single most common way the register gets misread.

What is not in it at all

The size of the property, the number of bedrooms, or its condition.
Whether it sold with land, a site, or a right of way.
Anything about the buyer or the seller.
Properties that changed hands without a Stamp Duty filing, including most inheritances.

Questions people ask

Is the date on the register the date the house sold?: No. It is the date the Stamp Duty return was filed, which is normally shortly after closing and is occasionally months later. For looking up one house it rarely matters. For timing a market it does.
Why does a sale have no Eircode?: The register only began recording them in 2021, so an older sale will not carry one no matter how well known the property is. A missing Eircode says nothing at all about the house.
Does the register show the number of bedrooms or the size?: No. It carries the address, the date, the price and a small number of flags. Size, condition, bedrooms, whether it sold with land, and anything about the buyer or seller are all outside it.
Are all property sales on the register?: Only those with a Stamp Duty filing. Most inheritances and certain transfers never appear, so an absence is not evidence that a property has not changed hands.

Figures checked 8 August 2026.