‘It’s absolutely buzzing’: Dublin house prices rebound

“Two years ago, Dublin was deserted. Now it’s finding its feet again after the pandemic and it’s absolutely buzzing,” says 41-year-old Lisa Finnegan, who, as vice-president of human resources at LinkedIn in Dublin, is part of the tech sector that helps to fuel the city’s vitality.

From her home in Clontarf, a coastal suburb in north Dublin, it’s 11 minutes by Dart train and a 10-minute walk to LinkedIn’s city-centre campus. From there, it’s a short walk to Dublin Docklands, where modern high-rises house Google, Facebook and TikTok, along with JPMorgan, State Street and law firms. The area’s old industrial buildings are getting an overhaul too; Boland Mills, a 19th-century flour mill, is due to reopen in 2024 as a culture hub.

“People were worried there would be a mass exodus after the pandemic,” says Finnegan. Those fears were unfounded. Ireland has recorded its biggest increase in immigration since 2008, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Nearly half of the 120,700 new arrivals in the year to April 2022 were aged 25-44. There were 28,900 returning Irish nationals, 24,300 other EU nationals, 4,500 were British and the remainder include 28,000 Ukrainians.

“Immigration is a recent phenomenon in Ireland and there’s little societal backlash as far as I can see. You hear far more accents on the tram now,” says Joe Lynam, 52, the business editor of Newstalk radio who, having moved back to Dublin from London this month, is acclimatising to a very different-looking city to the one he left in 2001. The cost of living has also struck him: “Now Dublin is like Denmark,” he says of the high price of groceries and eating out.

The house price crash in 2012, when prices fell to nearly half of their “Celtic Tiger” peak in 2007, is still fresh in people’s minds. But prices have returned to their 2007 highs for the first time, with an 11.8 per cent increase in Dublin in the year to March, according to the CSO. Suburban Blackrock has the highest median house price of €715,000, followed by more central Dublin 4 (€710,000), which includes part of Docklands.

Graduates working for big tech companies can command starting salaries of €80,000, according to Finnegan. But that is soon eaten up by rents for new waterfront apartments in Docklands, with two-beds costing €2,000-€10,000 a month. “There’s very little stock too. Something costing €2,000 a month will immediately see 50 inquiries,” says Barbara Carty, head of private client relations at Inhous, a property consultancy.

For families, the holy grail is a coastal village near the airport, within easy commute of the centre by Dart or Luas (the tram system). Finnegan and her husband Patrick Kilgallon, a cyber security sales director who works from home, bought before the pandemic-era race for space. After a two-year search, they paid €800,000 in 2018 for a Victorian house. Similar houses on her street now sell for at about €1.5mn.

Along with their six-month-old daughter, they have the suburban Dublin lifestyle that many families seek. “At weekends, families in Clontarf go sea swimming and cycle along the promenade. We’re in the process of buying a kayak,” says Finnegan.

However, north Dublin comes with a stigma. Despite the regeneration of areas such as Smithfield and Phibsborough, “north of the river isn’t a place to go at night,” says Carty, who talks of a crack cocaine culture in some of central Dublin’s poorer areas.

Rebecca Fleming, a 35-year-old fund administrator, lives in Ballyfermot, a suburb 7km west of the centre that was first developed in the 1940s to move residents from dilapidated tenements into council housing. It is now seen as an affordable and commutable option for young professionals and Fleming paid €285,000 in June 2021 for an ex-council house.

“It’s a mix of old school families who have lived here for years — inner city salt of the earth Dublin people — and the younger blow-ins, like myself, who meet in the park walking their dogs or in coffee shops.”

The wealthiest buyers, however, tend to head for Dublin’s southern suburbs, including Blackrock, Monkstown, Dalkey and Sandymount. Carty says she is seeing buyers in their forties who work in the tech sector with up to €10mn to spend.

Guy Craigie, director of residential at Knight Frank Ireland, deals with a similar high-budget demographic. He estimates that two-thirds are domestic Irish, 20-25 per cent are returning emigrants and the remainder are international — including Britons who can work and live in Ireland as part of the Common Travel Area.

Most buyers at this level are cash buyers, as Irish bank lending is limited to 3.5 times gross income. But a lack of stock is contributing to bidding wars. In Monkstown, Carty tried to secure a €5mn house for a client, “but there were six parties going for it. All were fund managers and cash buyers, and all were prepared to go over the asking price.”

Lynam is living with his mother while he and his wife seek, ideally, a three or four-bedroom house in Killiney, on the coast near Dalkey, for about €900,000. They want to be near a good junior school for their sons. “The ‘pay or pray’ tactic [where parents either pay private fees or look for a free faith school] isn’t as dominant as it is in London,” he says, adding that private schools are cheaper. “A good one here is €8,000 a year.”

For non-fee-paying schools, Carty says, “You can no longer rely on the parent being a past pupil or putting the child’s name down at birth.” Instead, parents need to get their children into a junior school that feeds the senior school they’re aiming for. The problem then becomes junior schools’ small catchment zones. “They’re pushing up demand for houses, and prices, in certain areas.”

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