Buyers find escape in Dublin 8 from city’s ‘dysfunctional rental market’

While there’s little doubt that the combination of rising interest rates and the more general increase in the cost of living is having a cooling effect on the residential property market, the micro market that is Dublin 8 would appear to be carrying on regardless, judging by the findings of the latest report into the area’s sales activity from the estate agent Owen Reilly.

In a look back at his agency’s deals for 2022, Reilly notes that the average selling prices in what Time Out magazine dubbed the 15th-coolest city in the world came in at 9.4 per cent higher than the average asking price, compared with the average premium of 4.6 per cent he secured in other Dublin postal-code areas. All told, 81 per cent of the Dublin 8 properties sold by his agency were agreed at levels above their asking prices, he says.

Unsurprisingly, the greatest demand was for homes priced below €500,000, with a large proportion of buyers “motivated to get out of the dysfunctional Dublin rental market”. They weren’t alone in that. On the flip side of that equation, just more than half of the sellers Reilly handled in Dublin 8 were small landlords exiting the market. And both buyers and sellers were keen to get their business done, with turnaround times for sales averaging just 4.8 weeks, compared with 7.7 weeks in the rest of the city.