The phone rings on a Friday evening and it’s the agent. “Just to let you know, there’s another bidder — they’ve come in at five grand above you.” Your stomach drops. You’ve never seen this other bidder. You never will. And now you’re sitting at the kitchen table deciding whether to throw another €5,000 at a house on the word of the one person in the room who gets paid more the higher you go. That moment is the whole story of the Irish market as most buyers experience it — and it’s doing your head in before you’ve even viewed a place.
So here’s what the data actually shows, because this one gets people worked up. We pulled 20,801 real sales off the Property Price Register and matched each one back to the price the agent actually asked for it. Not a survey. Not a vibe. The listing price versus the price it sold for, on twenty thousand homes over the last two years. The picture that comes out is the one you’d actually want in your head before you bid — and it’s a lot calmer than the story you’ve been told.
Four in ten homes sell at or below asking
Here’s the number that stops most people: 40.7% of these sales closed at or below the asking price. Not in a scrap. Not over the odds. The buyer paid what was on the listing, or less. That’s four out of every ten homes.
Now think about what the culture tells you — that every property is a bidding war. If that were true, the “at or below asking” group would be tiny. It’s the biggest single chunk of the whole market. The story and the data are pulling in opposite directions, and I know which one I’d bet my deposit on.
One in nine sell for the exact asking price
Here’s a quieter one that I love. The single biggest spike in the whole dataset is homes that sold for exactly what the agent asked — 11% of them.Not €500 more. Not €5,000 more. The exact number off the listing, to the euro.
That matters, and here’s why. In a genuine bidding war you don’t land on the asking price by accident — bids come in at round numbers, someone goes a bit over, and off it climbs. Hitting the exact figure to the euro is statistically unusual. And yet 2,259 sales did exactly that, versus only 614 that closed a whisker over (nought to one per cent). That’s the “exactly at asking” band running 3.7 times higher than the “just over” band right beside it.
The simplest read? The agent got one good offer at the asking price, the seller said grand, and no real second bidder ever showed up. Clean deal. And that’s brilliant news if you’re the one buying: in roughly one in nine sales, offering the asking price is the winning move — no drama, no escalation. The story tells you to bid high the second you walk in. The data says don’t.
The dearer the house, the calmer the sale
Now split it by price and it gets sharper. This is the bit worth screenshotting:
| Asking price band | Sales | Median premium over asking | % closing at or below asking | % closing 20%+ over |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under €200k | 4,805 | +5.6% | 35.2% | 21.4% |
| €200k–€400k | 10,552 | +3.1% | 37.1% | 8.0% |
| €400k–€600k | 3,831 | 0.0% | 51.5% | 3.6% |
| €600k–€800k | 1,099 | 0.0% | 51.6% | 2.7% |
| €800k+ | 1,005 | 0.0% | 52.7% | 5.0% |
Look at that. From €400k up — which is most of the family-home market — the typical house sells for exactly the asking price, and more than half go for asking or less. The bidding-war story fits the under-€400k end reasonably well. Above €400k, it’s just wrong. If you’re buying a €500k family home and you’ve been bracing yourself for a war, take a breath. The odds are on your side.
Real bidding wars: small, and very local
I’m not going to pretend bidding wars don’t exist — of course they do. 9.8% of sales close more than 20% over asking, and another 6.2% land 15–20% over. Call it 16% of the market where the final price is miles above the listing. That’s real, and if it’s happened to you, it was real for you.
But here’s the thing — that heat isn’t spread evenly. It’s piled up in a handful of places. In Maynooth, Celbridge and Leixlip, 87% of sales close above asking. In Dublin 4, only 53% do, and the typical home there goes for just +0.6% over. Same country, completely different game. Bidding-war intensity is a local thing — the commuter belt, growing regional cities, and cheaper homes where investors and first-time buyers are fighting over the same door. Everywhere else, the temperature drops.
So — ghost bidding. Is it actually happening?
This is where I have to be careful, so bear with me. Ghost bidding — an agent inventing or misrepresenting a competing bid to shove the price up — is illegalin Ireland under the Property Services Regulatory Authority’s code. It’s also desperately hard to prove, because that “other bidder” is usually just a voice on the phone or a line in a text.
Our data can’t prove ghost bidding one way or the other. We see the asking price and the final price — not the messy bit in between. But we can tell you what the pattern is consistent with:
- That big “exactly at asking” spike looks like honest deals — plenty of sales complete with no competing bid at all, or the agent simply takes the first solid offer.
- The fat tail above 15% over asking could be genuine competition — a few well-funded buyers chasing scarce homes in a hot spot. It could also hide some inflated bids. Honestly, the numbers alone can’t tell the two apart.
- The pattern you’d expect from systematic ghost bidding — a fat cluster at 2–5% over asking, where an agent nudges you just enough to profit without scaring you off — isn’t there. The 2–3% and 3–5% bands are 4.2% and 7.0% of the market — nothing unusual next to the bands either side of them.
If ghost bidding were baked into the whole market, you’d see a pronounced pile-up at small over-asking premiums. You don’t. That’s not me saying it never happens — only that the overall market isn’t badly warped by it. Where the suspicion is most fair is exactly where it’s hardest to catch: the hot areas and that 20%+ tail, where one invented bidder could genuinely move the number. Consistent with our data — but not something our data alone can prove.
Right — what do you actually do with this?
- Don’t bid over asking on reflex. Four in ten sales close at or below asking, and above €400k the typical buyer gets the house for the asking price. The default fear that “you have to go high to be in the running” is wrong for most of the market.
- Know your area before you bid. In Maynooth you probably are in a war. In Dublin 4 you probably aren’t. Use our area-level premium-over-asking data to set your expectations before you get emotional.
- If the agent says there’s another bidder — ask for it in writing.A real competing bid can be confirmed in an email. An invented one usually can’t. The PSRA has jurisdiction if you can actually evidence a misrepresentation.
- Offering the asking price is a real strategy. It wins about 11% of sales outright, before you’ve negotiated a cent. In the €400k+ market, it wins more than half.
That’s the whole point of doing this properly: to get the fear out of the room and put a number in its place. So before you bid on your place, go check what homes near it have actually sold for — asking versus final, the real premium in that exact area, a sensible range to offer. Bid on the facts, not the story.