State agencies, financial institutions and property investors purchased over 12,000 dwellings
Information filed with Revenue shows that non-household entities – which includes private companies, charities and State bodies – bought 12,696 dwellings last year out of a total of 61,471 sales. This represented a 4pc increase on 2023.
The total value of the properties sold to entities other than private buyers was €5bn. This was a rise of 18.5pc on the previous year.
Of this, €2.6bn related to 6,557 homes purchased by government agencies such as the Land Development Agency and Approved Housing Bodies, making them the largest non-household entities in the housing market. The volume of homes purchased by the State rose from 2023, according to the CSO, as the figure then was 5,778.
The financial and insurance sector, which includes banks, trusts, funds and holding companies, was the second-biggest non-household buyer of homes, accounting for transactions totalling €746m in 2024.
Just €247m in property was acquired by entities registered outside the State – about 5pc of all purchases by non-household entities. The other 95pc of purchases was by Irish-registered companies and institutions.
Purchases by companies with an address in Northern Ireland were valued at €14.8m, while almost €5m was spent by firms with an address in Britain.
The CSO has not provided a figure for how much property was bought by European buyers, which it has given in previous years. The value of such purchases in 2023, for example, was €250m.
The European figure has been “suppressed”, with the CSO explaining that this is to protect the confidentiality of individual companies or institutions. This can be done when one institution accounts for over 80pc of the transactions in that category, or if two companies account for over 90pc.
New dwellings accounted for just over half – 56.4pc – of all purchases. Some 6,804 houses were bought, of which half of them were new, plus 5,892 apartments, with almost two-thirds of those being new.
Meanwhile, non-household entities sold 20,841 dwellings at market prices last year, up over 9pc on 2023. The total value of the sales was €9bn. Two thirds of the transactions were by entities in the construction sector.
Combining purchases and sales, it meant there was a net monetary flow of €4bn from the household sector to the non-household sector last year. Meanwhile, there was a net flow in volume terms of 8,145 residential properties to the household sector.
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