Offaly house prices up 13% in 2024

OFFALY house prices surged by nearly 13% in the last year, according to property website Daft.ie

The average price of a house in the county is now €266,000, 48% above the level seen at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The median price of a newly-built home in Offaly for the first nine months of 2024 was much higher - €355,001.

Daft.ie say prices in Offaly in the last three months of 2024 were 12.6% higher than a year previously, and that compares to a rise of just 2% during 2023.

Prices are soaring faster in Offaly than the national average. Across the country, the jump during 2024 was 9%.

The average asking price for a one-bed apartment in Offaly in 2024 was €102,000, for a two-bed terraced house it was €145,000, it was €190,000 for a three-bed semi-detached home and €366,000 for a four-bed bungalow. For a five-bed detached it was €384,000.

The home type showing the biggest increase in the year was the two-bed terraced, which jumped by 15.4%.

The typical listed price nationwide in the final quarter of 2024 was €332,109, 1.4% higher than in the third quarter of the year and 30% higher than at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prices rose for the fourth consecutive quarter in Dublin, where the increase of 9% during 2024 matched the national average and marked the highest rate of inflation seen in the city since late 2017.

Galway city saw a similar increase during the year, while in Limerick city, prices rose by 8.2%. In Cork and Waterford cities, average prices rose by 6.3% during 2024.

Outside the five main cities, inflation ranged from 11.1% in Leinster to 5.3% in Connacht-Ulster.

The number of second-hand homes available to buy nationwide on December 1st stood at less than 10,500, down 15% year-on-year and the lowest total ever recorded in a series extending back to January 2007.

Ronan Lyons, associate professor in economics at Trinity College Dublin says demand is very strong, supply is still too weak and a scarcity of second-hand homes is also weighing on the market.

He said a significant chunk of the growth in construction over the past five years has been a combination of private rental building initially and more recently public/subsidised housing.

“In the year to December 2024, just over 51,000 homes were listed for sale – the lowest since mid 2021.”