What a house actually gained between two sales
1,099 properties in our town-level comparison sample have sold more than once. Matching the two sales gives a real gain on a real house, which is a different thing to a national index.
Every figure you read about Irish house prices is an index. An index compares this year's mix of houses against last year's mix, and adjusts for the fact that the mix keeps changing. It is the right tool for a national question and the wrong one for the only question most people actually have, which is what happened to a house like mine.
The register can answer that directly, because the same property turns up in it twice. Match the two entries and you have a gain on one house, held by one owner, over a known number of years. No mix to adjust for, because it is the same building both times.
Eight real ones
| Property | First sale | Second sale | Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| FANNINGSTOWN, CRECORA | €269,500, Oct 2019 | €350,000, May 2025 | +29.9% |
| BALLINAGARDE, BALLYNEETY | €190,000, Apr 2015 | €250,000, Oct 2024 | +31.6% |
| KNOCKTOPHER, KILKENNY | €98,000, Apr 2018 | €130,000, Mar 2024 | +32.7% |
| BALLINAMONA, HOSPITAL | €225,000, Oct 2015 | €300,000, Jul 2025 | +33.3% |
| 109 WILLOUISE, SHERLOCKSTOWN ROAD | €470,000, May 2021 | €627,000, Jun 2026 | +33.4% |
| CARHEENY, KILDIMO | €140,000, Dec 2016 | €187,000, Apr 2025 | +33.6% |
| APT 84 WILLIAM BLIGH, THE GASWORKS | €369,000, Apr 2021 | €470,125, Aug 2026 | +27.4% |
| 27 LYONS ST, NEWCASTLE | €315,000, Jul 2021 | €400,000, Jul 2026 | +27.0% |
Picked as the ones nearest the median gain rather than the largest, so the table shows the ordinary case the figure above describes. Choosing the biggest gains would have produced a page of outliers that teaches the opposite.
It is not the same everywhere
The national median hides a spread wide enough to matter. Longford sits at the top with a median gain of 71.4 per cent and Monaghan at the bottom on 14.9 per cent, and the holding periods behind those two numbers are not the same either, which is most of the explanation.
| County | Matched pairs | Median gain | Median years held |
|---|---|---|---|
| Longford | 25 | +71.4% | 3.8 |
| Cavan | 36 | +50.2% | 3.2 |
| Carlow | 20 | +45.0% | 3.2 |
| Kerry | 56 | +45.0% | 3.1 |
| Kildare | 36 | +43.3% | 3.5 |
| Roscommon | 34 | +43.2% | 3.1 |
| Laois | 18 | +43.1% | 3.8 |
| Tipperary | 49 | +43.0% | 3.5 |
| Offaly | 10 | +41.8% | 2.0 |
| Clare | 51 | +36.4% | 3.9 |
| Sligo | 29 | +36.4% | 4.2 |
| Mayo | 47 | +34.5% | 2.9 |
| Leitrim | 16 | +32.7% | 3.2 |
| Cork | 125 | +32.5% | 3.4 |
| Westmeath | 16 | +32.1% | 3.7 |
| Meath | 29 | +31.5% | 3.6 |
| Waterford | 33 | +31.4% | 3.2 |
| Wexford | 63 | +31.0% | 3.4 |
| Limerick | 91 | +30.1% | 3.5 |
| Galway | 68 | +29.4% | 3.6 |
| Donegal | 54 | +22.9% | 3.4 |
| Kilkenny | 41 | +22.8% | 3.2 |
| Wicklow | 40 | +22.2% | 3.0 |
| Dublin | 164 | +21.8% | 3.4 |
| Louth | 17 | +15.6% | 2.2 |
| Monaghan | 16 | +14.9% | 2.9 |
Counties with fewer than ten matched pairs are left out rather than published thin. A median over four sales is not a median. Sorted by gain, which is why the order has nothing to do with price.
Why the number is lower than you expect
Headlines quote growth from the bottom of the crash, because that produces the largest figure available. A real owner did not buy at the bottom, they bought when they bought. The pairs here are spread across every year the register covers, which is why the middle of them looks ordinary compared to the numbers in the news.
What is deliberately excluded
- Pairs where the first sale was a new build filed without VAT, because the two ends are not measuring the same thing and every such pair would overstate the gain by about 13.5 per cent.
- Sales flagged as not at full market price, at either end.
- Anything where the two entries cannot be tied to the same property with confidence.
What it cannot tell you
A gain between two sales is not a return. It takes no account of what was spent on the house in between, of Stamp Duty and fees at both ends, or of what the money would have done elsewhere. An extension built in year four turns up as price growth here and was paid for in cash by somebody. Read it as what the house changed hands for, which is all the register knows.
Questions people ask
- How much have Irish house prices gone up?
- It depends entirely on which two dates you pick, which is why the headline figure is usually quoted from the bottom of the crash. Matching real properties that sold twice gives a different and more honest answer, and the middle of those is far lower than the number in the news.
- What is a matched pair?
- The same property appearing twice on the register, once when it sold and once when it sold again. Because it is the same building both times, the difference between the two prices is a real gain rather than a comparison between this year's houses and last year's.
- Is a resale gain the same as a return?
- No. It takes no account of Stamp Duty and fees at both ends, of anything spent on the house in between, or of what the money would have done elsewhere. An extension built in year four shows up here as price growth and was paid for in cash by somebody.
- Why are new builds left out of the gain figures?
- Because a new build is normally filed without its VAT. Measuring from a price with tax stripped out to a later resale that includes everything would overstate every gain by around twelve per cent, so those pairs are dropped rather than adjusted.
Figures checked 8 August 2026.