Ireland’s homebuyers: Who exactly are they, and how have they changed?

Homebuyers are getting older, earning more and most of them don’t have children. These are some of the findings of a study by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on the characteristics of homebuyers in Ireland over the past decade.

The oldest homebuyers in the Republic are single people purchasing in Wexford where the median (midpoint) age is 49 years old. Kerry couples are the oldest among joint buyers at 47.

Single buyers in Dublin city are youngest at 38, while, among couples, the honour is shared across Kildare, Meath and South Dublin council areas.

Overall, people buying by themselves were older when they got the keys to their home – at 43 for single people with children and 41 for those without children. Among couples, the median age was 39 if they had children and 36 if not.

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Those figures have been broadly consistent over the past five years, with the exception of couples without children who are now buying five years earlier than they were back in 2016.

Going back further, however, it is clear that homebuyers are getting older. Back in 2010, the median age for people buying by themselves was 34, seven years younger than it was in 2021 even if that was down two years on the age of 43 that applied in 2016 and 2017.

Among couples, or joint purchasers, the median age has risen more gently – from 35 to 38, having hit 39 back in 2016. Overall, buyers are now 39 years old when they purchase a home, up from 35 back in 2010.

In terms of financial resources, the earnings of homebuyers have jumped sharply over the past decade. Back in 2012, the median income among buyers was €48,600. By 2021, that had jumped by 46 per cent to €71,300.

The number of home purchases more than doubled between 2010 when 19,300 homes were bought and 2021 when the number was 46,420. Over that period, there has also been a shift towards joint purchase. Back in 2010, just under half (47 per cent) of all houses and apartments were bought jointly by two or more people. That jumped as high as 62.2 per cent in 2019 ahead of Covid, before dropping back slightly to 60.3 per cent last year.

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Almost two-thirds of homes were acquired by people with no children, split roughly evenly between sole purchasers and couples. Unsurprisingly maybe, given their need for more space, couples with children paid the highest median price for a home in 2021 – at €322,000.

That compares with an overall median among all buyers of €280,000, and is almost €100,000 higher than the median of €224,000 for single buyers with no children.

People in Cork and Dublin were most likely to buy in their home county, followed by buyers in Monaghan. At the other extreme, people from Roscommon, Leitrim and Meath were most likely to move to another county when buying, although even then, just over half did purchase in their home county.

Just under one in four people buying in Donegal between 2010 and 2021 came from outside the State, predominantly from Northern Ireland.