The Irish property market, by the numbers.

€400,000 is roughly the ceiling for a median Irish couple with a decent deposit. So we asked: what does that exact budget put you in across the four biggest cities — and is the extra space worth it? In Dublin it's a 72 m² two-bed. In Limerick it's a 118 m² house. Same money, 64% more home — but Limerick scores lowest of the four on quality of life, and Dublin's tiny flat sits in the second-highest-scoring city.

“Family-friendly” gets used loosely. We use it precisely: five measurable criteria — safety, school proximity, affordability, household income and green space — each from a public dataset, each with a benchmark. Here's what each one means, why it matters for families, how we measure it, and where the number stops being trustworthy.

Affordability is the wall most Irish family buyers hit first. We filtered to areas with a median sale price under €400k, then ranked them on what a household can actually carry (price vs local income) alongside safety, school distance and parks. The result is national — and includes one genuinely affordable corner of Dublin.

Radon is colourless, odourless and the second-leading cause of lung cancer in Ireland — and it's invisible at a viewing. The EPA says about a third of the country is a high-radon area, a test costs around €50, and a high reading is usually cheap to fix. So why is awareness actually falling, and almost no one testing before they buy? Here's what every buyer should know.

Every Irish buyer wants to know: how much over asking will I have to pay? We matched 19,933 PPR sales (last 24 months) to their original listing asking prices and ranked every Eircode routing key by average premium. Top result: Kildare town R51 at +12.1%. Bottom: Castlebar F23, where buyers actually paid 0.4% below asking.

Where in the Dublin commute ring can you genuinely buy a safer home? We pulled Garda PULSE data, normalised by population, and intersected it with commute time to Dublin centre (inner-city excluded; ~60-minute cap). The 10 commuter towns that come out cleanest, a per-capita station chart that flips intuitions, and one notable absentee buyers keep asking about: Portlaoise.

Family buyers want three things at once: close schools, a safe area, and a price their income can actually carry. We scored every Irish Eircode area with complete data and enough recent sales on those signals plus parks and household income. The result is national — and it is not the premium Dublin postcodes that win.

The hard number: two median Irish earners on €38k each have a €304k mortgage ceiling. With €50k deposit that's a €354k home; €100k deposit gets you to €404k. We show every area in the top tier that fits — and the household income you'd need to break into the premium Dublin postcodes.

Two homes the same size. Same county. The G-rated one costs €7,728/year to heat. The A2-rated one costs €480. Over a 30-year mortgage, that's €217,000 nobody talks about.

Every 'best places to live' list in Ireland is vibes. This one uses 40+ metrics across 6 equally-weighted quality-of-life dimensions — each area's score fully broken down. Blackrock / Stillorgan leads at 82, with 9 of the top 12 in Dublin. Affordability is treated separately — see the companion buyer-affordability article.

Cork West: 17.3 recorded offences per 1,000 residents. DMR North Central (Dublin inner city): 250. The only honest crime ranking available in Ireland is at Garda division level — not town, not postcode. Why that is, and what each of the 28 divisions looks like for buyers.

Dublin 2 has 95% of recent property sales inside an OPW flood zone. Ashbourne has 97%. For everywhere else, flood exposure is under 3%. The full environmental ranking of 126 Irish areas — flood, water quality, and Blue Flag beaches — with what it means when you're bidding.

41% of Irish property sales close at or below asking. 11% close at exactly the asking price. Bidding wars exist — but they're a minority of the market, and they cluster in very specific places. A rigorous look at what 20,801 matched sales show.

National prices up 6.8% year-on-year. Dublin apartments up 9.1%. Cork houses up 5.3%. The CSO RPPI is the most-cited Irish property statistic — but what does it actually measure, and what should buyers take from it?

Portlaoise scores 96/100 on BuyerIQ's Family Friendliness index at a median of €270k. The full top-10, with rush-hour rail and car times to Dublin.

Buyers in Dublin 4 pay 0.6% over asking. Buyers in Maynooth pay 7.9%. We ranked every Eircode area in Ireland by sale-vs-asking premium — and the result isn't what you'd expect.