Dublin may be sneezing, but there is no sign of Galway catching a cold.
The latest market reports suggest that the heat is coming out of the Irish property market. Nationally, asking prices rose 3.8 per cent in the year to June, roughly half the 6.8 per cent of a year earlier. Sale prices grew 3.2 per cent, the slowest rate since 2023. In Dublin, sale prices fell 2.3 per cent, the capital’s first annual drop since 2023. But this is not the story of the Galway market.
Here, a three-bed semi in the city is now asking €434,000, up 9.1 per cent in a year. A four-bed semi is up 10.6 per cent to €519,000. In the county, a three-bed semi asks €338,000, 10.2 per cent more than last summer. Across the rest of Connacht-Ulster, prices are rising at 8.8 per cent, the fastest of any region in the country and unchanged from a year ago. Dublin is cooling, but the West is running red hot.
The reason is supply, but not the supply people assume. Dublin has not out-built us; its new-home sales rose less than four per cent last year. Nor have Galway owners stopped selling. Across Connacht-Ulster outside Galway city, almost 7,900 homes were put up for sale in the past year, only 17 per cent below the pre-Covid norm. Yet on June 1, just 2,400 were available to buy, against more than 6,600 before Covid. Homes are coming to market at nearly the old rate but being snapped up in less than half the time. Before Covid, a home in the West could sit for six months. Remote work and returning emigrants cleared that shelf in eighteen months, and nothing has restocked it. Dublin, meanwhile, had almost 4,000 homes for sale in June, back at its pre-pandemic level, with listings 14 per cent above it. Dublin’s shelf refills as fast as it empties. Ours does not. The Galway second-hand homes market is considerably more illiquid. Why is this?
Start with the ladder. A Dublin housing ladder has several more rungs: an apartment, then a semi, then a bigger house, then back down to an apartment near the grandchildren. Every step releases a home to somebody else. Dublin has apartments in every suburb; county Galway has so few that market reports cannot quote a price for them. Our ladder has two rungs, and the first home is very often the last.
Now look at county prices. It is striking to note that two-bed detached houses are up 39.8 per cent in a year and three-bed semis 10.2 per cent, while four-bed detached homes are down 3.4 per cent and five-beds are flat. Demand is piling into small homes, the ones first-time buyers and downsizers both want, while the big family houses sit. Dublin has these homes but in Galway there is chronic shortage. The older couple living in a four-bed on an acre cannot find a suitable home to downsize to, so they stay put, and the homes that would feed the market never reach it.
On top sits the Mover’s Dilemma I have written about before. The buyer hierarchy runs cash first, mortgage-approved first-time buyer second, mover third. A mover’s equity is real but locked in bricks, there is no affordable bridging finance, and sellers take the chain-free bid every time. The dilemma bites hardest where stock is thinnest. In Dublin, with 4,000 homes to choose from, a mover can find something and takes the plunge. Here they look, see nothing, and stay put. Every household that stays put is one fewer home for sale, which persuades the next household to stay put. The freeze feeds itself.
What does this mean in practice?
If you are selling in Galway, the market is with you, but a high price is not an automatic price. The homes that hit their optimum result stand out: they are priced strategically, presented properly, marketed strongly and negotiated expertly.
If you are buying in Galway, national headlines will offer no real comfort. Galway has diverged from the national market, and anyone who waited for the cooling to reach the West last year is paying 10 per cent more this year. If you are buying your first home be mortgage approved and be ready to act.
If you are moving, commit fully to the process: get sale agreed fast, move to contracts swiftly, then hunt with the certainty that puts you level with the first-time buyer. Don’t pay too much heed to the national headlines.
Dublin may indeed be pausing to catch its breath, but the Galway market is still running red hot.
