Dublin has third lowest level of low-cost housing in world

Dublin has one of the lowest concentrations of low-cost or affordable homes in the world, according to price comparison website MoverDB.com.

The company analysed price trends in capital city real estate markets to gauge the balance of low-cost and high-cost homes. It found that just 1.23 per cent of properties in Dublin are on the market for less than half the median or middle price of homes in the capital.

This was the third lowest proportion of any capital city behind Nicosia in Cyprus (0.35 per cent) and Budapest in Hungary (0.67 per cent) and reflects the affordability gap currently faced by prospective buyers in Dublin.

According to the Central Statistics Office’s latest Property Price Register, Dublin had the highest median price for a home in the State at €435,000 in the year to March. Within Dublin, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown had the highest median price (€635,000), while Fingal had the lowest (€405,000).

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The MoverDB report also ranked capital cities in Europe with the highest percentage of high-cost housing, defined as properties which cost over twice the median price of homes in the city.

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In this category Dublin had the 12th highest concentration of high-cost housing in Europe with 16.9 per cent. Budapest had the highest with 63.7 per cent, ahead of Nicosia (42.6 per cent), Lisbon (34.2 per cent), Madrid (30.2 per cent) and London (27.9 per cent).

The report indicated that Athens and Luxembourg had the highest concentrations of low-cost housing in Europe with 31.8 per cent and 18.5 per cent. It noted that this was an unusual finding as Greece had one of the lowest GDPs (gross domestic product) in Europe while Luxembourg had the continent’s highest, on a per capita basis.

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“Housing wealth has displaced other forms of capital in a number of developed economies since 1948 and has contributed to growing wealth inequality,” MoverDB said, citing a report from property think tank Centre for Cities. “The effects of this growing divide are often most pronounced in capital cities but also between capitals and regional cities since housing wealth tends to be less mobile than other forms of wealth,” it said.

“While the housing crisis may have its most profound effects in developing countries, the world’s wealthier capitals are among those presenting unprecedented obstacles in the wake of the pandemic,” it said.

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“Half the middle classes are richer than they ever thought they would be while half are poorer,” it said. “It’s a problem all over, with 90 per cent of cities sampled for a recent survey considered unaffordable according to common standards,” it said.

“Land quotas, the repurposing of vacant properties and sustainable low-rent energy solutions, such as green roofs and solar panels in new builds, are among proposed counter-measures for an issue that has no prospects of going away any time soon as long as the basic right of safe, affordable housing is shackled to the blight of wealth inequality,” MoverDB said.

The latest Residential Property Price Index for Ireland shows prices nationally increased by 3.9 per cent in the 12 months to March this year, down from an annual rate of 5.1 per cent in February and over 15 per cent a year earlier.