European Cities: Dublin Property Prices to Q4 2028

Key figures (as of October 2026)

What the Dublin City index measures

This study resolves on the official house price index for Dublin City, a city-level index covering the area of the city council. The national statistics office publishes it each month from stamp duty returns on purchases by households. It covers houses only, because there are too few apartment sales to publish a separate apartment index for each Dublin area; the index for the whole of Dublin, which includes apartments, is shown for context. The index is quality-adjusted: it uses a statistical model that controls for the characteristics of each home sold, so a change in the mix of homes sold does not move it. The latest three months in each release are provisional and are revised as late returns arrive. Because the index is monthly, the fourth quarter is measured by its December reading. The median prices are not quality-adjusted and are shown for scale only.

Growth has slowed sharply in 2026

The Dublin City index rose 6.7% in the year to December 2025 and 7.7% in the year to January 2026, but the annual rate has fallen in every month since, to 1.0% in August. The index itself peaked at 178.5 in January 2026 and was slightly lower in August. Across all of Dublin, prices were still rising 3.9% a year, with apartments rising faster than houses, and prices outside Dublin rose 6.2%. National prices were 28.2% above their 2007 peak in August 2026, according to the statistics office.

Two-year changes since 2019

On the Centre's own calculation from the published index levels, the change in the Dublin City index from one December to the December two years later was 13.5% (2019 to 2021), 18.4% (2020 to 2022), 6.1% (2021 to 2023), 12.6% (2022 to 2024) and 17.1% (2023 to 2025). Taking every month since 2015, two-year changes have ranged from -5.3% (September 2018 to September 2020) to 25.1% (September 2020 to September 2022).

Rents and yields

The tenancies regulator's rent index, compiled with a research institute, put the average rent on new tenancies in Dublin City at 2,301 euros a month in the first quarter of 2026, up 8.3% on a year earlier and the highest of any city in Ireland. Sitting tenants paid an average of 1,901 euros. No gross yield is given, because the official rent figure is an average and the official sale price is a median, and the Centre computes a yield only from two measures of the same kind.

Credit, demand and policy

The average rate on new home loans in Ireland was 3.52% in August 2026, slightly below the 3.58% of a year earlier and steady through 2026. The euro area's central bank raised its deposit rate to 2.50% in September, saying financing conditions had tightened and energy prices kept rising, and held it on 29 October.

On policy, revised rent rules took effect on 1 March 2026. They allow rents to be reset to market levels between tenancies. The regulator said it was too early to tell how much of the rise in new-tenancy rents in the first quarter came from that change.

What forecasters expect

A major credit rating agency's July 2026 outlook expected national house prices to rise 5.0% in 2026, 4.1% in 2027 and 3.9% in 2028. Together, the 2027 and 2028 figures imply about 8.2% over two years on the Centre's own calculation. They are national figures for calendar years, not the Dublin City house index, which is now rising much more slowly than the country.

What it means

House prices in Dublin City rose strongly through 2025 but have nearly stopped rising in 2026, while the rest of Dublin and the country are still rising faster. Rents on new tenancies are climbing quickly under the new rules, and mortgage rates are steady. The central case is slow growth over 2027 and 2028, with a return to moderate growth almost as likely.

Scenarios: the change in the Dublin City house price index from Q4 2026 to Q4 2028

These probabilities are the Centre's analytical estimates, reasoned from the figures above. Because the bands are ordered, the forecast is scored with both the multi-category Brier score and the ranked probability score.

The variable is the nominal change in the official monthly residential property price index for houses in Dublin City, published by the national statistics office, from December 2026 to December 2028, the final months of the fourth quarters of 2026 and 2028. If the statistics office publishes this two-year change directly, that figure is used. Otherwise the Centre computes it from the two index levels as published in the first release that contains December 2028, normally in February 2029. If the index has been rebased by then, both levels are taken on the same base from that release. Later revisions are ignored. The figure is read in percent, so a fall of 0.5% counts as -0.5%. A figure with more than one decimal place is rounded half up to one decimal place, once, before it is placed in a band, so 4.95% counts as 5.0%. A figure stated as "more than", "over", "about", "around", "nearly" or "almost" a number counts as that number. A figure reported as a range counts at its midpoint. The bands cover every possible value, and each edge falls in the higher band: exactly 0.0% falls in band 2, exactly 5.0% in band 3, exactly 10.0% in band 4 and exactly 15.0% in band 5. If no figure for December 2028 is published by 30 June 2029, the forecast is withdrawn.

What to watch

1. Monthly index: the Dublin City readings for the rest of 2026, especially December, which sets the starting point for this forecast.
2. Revisions: changes to the provisional latest three months in each release.
3. Rents: the regulator's quarterly rent index for new tenancies under the March 2026 rules.
4. Mortgage rates: the average rate on new home loans, steady at about 3.5% through 2026.
5. Gap with the rest of Dublin: whether the city's houses catch up with the faster rise elsewhere in Dublin.

Figures as of late October 2026. Probabilities are analytical estimates by the Ghaf Centre for Studies & Research.