On average, Irish buyers pay 4.6% over the asking price — and 61.2% of sales close above asking at all. Not the 20% you hear about at dinner parties, but real money on a real house: about €18,000 on a €400,000 home. What that means for your bid is simple — the asking price is a starting line, not a ceiling, and how far over you should go depends entirely on where you’re buying.
So the question every buyer actually wants answered is a simple one: how much over asking will I have to pay? And everyone gives you a different anecdote. The trouble is, nobody publishes the answer. Daft posts medians but never separates a live asking price from a sold one. The Property Price Register has the sold price — but not the asking price the seller started with. Nobody bridges the two. So we did.
We took 19,933 PPR sales from the last 24 months and matched every one back to the original listing it started life as, using address, Eircode and property-cluster de-duplication. Then we ranked every Eircode routing key — basically your Eircode area — by how far, on average, the sold price landed above (or below) the asking price. Here’s what the country actually looks like.
The national picture first
Before you panic about your particular corner of the country, breathe. Three in five Irish sales — 61.2% — do close above asking. That part of the story is true. But the average premium nationally is just +4.6%. The “bidding wars everywhere, add 20% or go home” narrative you hear at every dinner party? It’s real, but it’s a lot smaller than the panic makes it sound.
And here’s the bit that never makes the headlines: 28.4% of sales close below asking, and another 10.4% land bang on it. That’s nearly four in ten homes where the asking price was an opening position, not a floor. Whole stretches of the country where you have the leverage, not the seller. You just have to know which stretches.
Where it’s genuinely brutal
Now the hot end. If you’re house-hunting in one of these areas, this is the part to take seriously — because your mental budget needs to have this baked in before you fall in love with a place.
Top of the whole country is R51, Kildare town and Athy, where buyers paid an average of +12.1% over asking. Behind it, F91 Sligo at +11.3% and R45 Edenderry at +10.4%. When I look at the full top 20, three clear stories jump out.
First, the Kildare and greater-Leinster commuter belt runs hot. R51 tops it, but Newbridge (W12, +9.2%), Maynooth/Leixlip (W23, +7.9%) and Naas/Sallins (W91, +7.8%) are all up there too. This is the Dublin overflow — buyers priced out of the city arrive with Dublin-sized budgets, meet small-town supply, and the price goes one way.
Second, the north-west is quietly on fire. Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan — F91 Sligo, A82 Ballyjamesduff/Kells, A75 Castleblayney/Carrickmacross, H18 Monaghan town, H12 Cavan town, N41 Carrick-on-Shannon — all sit between +7.5% and +11.3%. Remote work brought people back, and at these lower price points cash buyers compete hardest.
Third, the regional cities never cool off. Limerick City (V94) is the giant here: +8.9% across 974 matched sales, the highest-volume hot area on the list, so that’s not a small-sample fluke. Ennis (V95, +9.3%), Tralee/Killarney (V92, +7.1%) and Nenagh (E45, +7.9%) round it out. Their supply just hasn’t kept pace with their population.
The full top 20
| # | Routing key | County | Matched sales | Avg premium | Median premium | % over asking |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | R51 Kildare town / Athy | Kildare | 91 | +12.10% | +11.90% | 79.1% |
| 2 | F91 Sligo | Sligo | 694 | +11.30% | +10.54% | 76.8% |
| 3 | R45 Edenderry | Offaly | 139 | +10.37% | +10.00% | 84.2% |
| 4 | A82 Ballyjamesduff / Kells | Cavan | 214 | +9.30% | +8.04% | 74.8% |
| 5 | V95 Ennis | Clare | 175 | +9.25% | +7.42% | 75.4% |
| 6 | W12 Newbridge | Kildare | 117 | +9.21% | +8.42% | 75.2% |
| 7 | V94 Limerick City | Limerick | 974 | +8.85% | +7.27% | 79.0% |
| 8 | A75 Castleblayney / Carrickmacross | Monaghan | 74 | +8.30% | +6.69% | 66.2% |
| 9 | H18 Monaghan town | Monaghan | 155 | +8.29% | +7.04% | 77.4% |
| 10 | H12 Cavan town | Cavan | 191 | +8.03% | +8.11% | 72.8% |
| 11 | E45 Nenagh | Tipperary | 172 | +7.90% | +5.13% | 72.7% |
| 12 | W23 Maynooth / Leixlip | Kildare | 276 | +7.86% | +7.63% | 84.1% |
| 13 | X35 Dungarvan | Waterford | 98 | +7.84% | +4.96% | 75.5% |
| 14 | W91 Naas / Sallins | Kildare | 337 | +7.77% | +7.21% | 79.5% |
| 15 | N41 Carrick-on-Shannon | Leitrim | 344 | +7.53% | +6.46% | 68.6% |
| 16 | V42 Newcastle West | Limerick | 55 | +7.52% | +3.49% | 65.5% |
| 17 | V31 Listowel / Ballybunion | Kerry | 118 | +7.38% | +6.39% | 71.2% |
| 18 | V92 Tralee / Killarney | Kerry | 396 | +7.14% | +6.78% | 69.9% |
| 19 | P51 Mallow | Cork | 69 | +6.98% | +3.03% | 62.3% |
| 20 | V35 Kilmallock | Limerick | 68 | +6.98% | +4.41% | 66.2% |
And where the asking price is just a suggestion
Here’s the news the headlines never give you: there are places where the seller is the nervous one. In F23 Castlebar and D07 Dublin 7, the average home actually closes below asking — the only two areas in the country where that’s true. Sellers there list optimistically, and buyers quietly negotiate the difference back down.
The surprise for a lot of people is Dublin. The postcodes you’d bet on being fiercest — D07, D08 (The Liberties) and D18 (Foxrock/Cabinteely) — all sit at or under 1% over asking. That’s what real supply looks like: more listings per head than the regions, and buyers who are canny enough not to chase. Foxrock, of all places, lands on the cool list this quarter. High prices, sure — but the gap between asking and sold is small, because the bargaining converges.
| # | Routing key | County | Matched sales | Avg premium | % over asking |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | F23 Castlebar | Mayo | 181 | -0.36% | 30.4% |
| 2 | D07 Dublin 7 / Phibsborough | Dublin | 51 | -0.27% | 47.1% |
| 3 | Y21 Wexford / Enniscorthy | Wexford | 222 | +0.25% | 34.2% |
| 4 | F92 Letterkenny | Donegal | 128 | +0.38% | 34.4% |
| 5 | Y14 Arklow | Wicklow | 118 | +0.71% | 38.1% |
| 6 | F28 Westport | Mayo | 162 | +0.87% | 45.1% |
| 7 | A67 Wicklow town | Wicklow | 217 | +0.89% | 45.2% |
| 8 | Y34 New Ross | Wexford | 110 | +0.91% | 37.3% |
| 9 | D08 Dublin 8 / The Liberties | Dublin | 97 | +0.94% | 47.4% |
| 10 | D18 Dublin 18 / Foxrock | Dublin | 98 | +1.12% | 54.1% |
The lesson isn’t “Dublin is cheap.” It plainly isn’t. The lesson is that expensive and competitive are two different things, and you shouldn’t auto-bid over asking just because the news told you bidding wars are everywhere. In an area like this, opening at asking is perfectly sensible, and opening a few percent under is entirely defensible.
So what do you actually do with this?
Right, the practical bit — because a chart you can’t act on is just decoration. Find your area in one of those tables and let the number set your expectations before you walk into a viewing.
If it’s in the hot top 10, build at least +8% over asking into your budget from the start, because the median sale — not the outlier, the middle one — closed at that premium or more. Don’t get to best-and-final with nothing left in the tank. If it’s on the cool list, relax your shoulders: open at asking, or under, and don’t talk yourself into a war that isn’t happening.
But a routing-key average is a screening tool, not the final word. It tells you the temperature of the room; it can’t tell you what one specific three-bed semi is worth on one specific street. That’s the validation step — paste the actual address into BuyerIQ and you’ll get an offer range calibrated to that property, its real comparables, and the live temperature of its own little patch. Screen with the area; decide with the property.
Related reads on the same dataset: ghost-bidding rates by area and areas where asking prices outpaced sale prices.