JUST OVER A year and a half ago, we asked readers a simple question: how does anyone actually manage to buy a house in Ireland?

The answers were complicated.

Readers told us about inheritances and loans from parents, years living at home, sacrificing holidays, moving counties and, in one memorable case, living in a freezing cabin where slugs came through the walls.

Many who had bought felt lucky to have done so when they did, saying they couldn’t afford the same home today.

They were right: prices have kept climbing. The median home sold for €396,000 in the 12 months to June, according to the CSO.

Figures from the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers (IPAV) are even more stark. They show the average price across three- and four-bedroom semi-detached houses and two-bedroom apartments has risen from €280,629 in early 2021 to €411,241 this year, an increase of around 46% in five years.

And the asking price is often only the beginning. MyHome found homes were selling for 7% to 8% above asking this summer, rising to around 9% to 10% in Dublin.

That’s a lot of figures, but behind them is a fairly simple reality: people trying to buy their first home are having to spend more, look further afield and compete harder for what’s available.

So, this week, we went back to first-time buyers to ask what trying to buy a home in Ireland looks like now.

Many thanks to the readers who shared their stories. Here’s what you told us.

‘We have viewed about 50 properties’

One Cork couple, both aged 29, have spent close to a year constantly going to viewings and bidding on homes.

On paper, they said, there are plenty of houses they can afford. In reality, it has been a different story.

“We have viewed about 50 properties now, all with an asking price within our budget and mortgage approvals,” they told us.

However, almost every house we have bid on has gone €50,000 above asking price, making them unachievable.

They estimated that the houses they have been interested in have generally ended up about 10% above the asking price.

After close to a year of trying, they said they are now at their “wits’ end”.

“We will have to start looking for smaller houses, which are still going above asking [price], or move further away, which I really do not want to do.”

There are other costs too. The couple have delayed getting married while trying to buy.

“We’ve also postponed travel plans to try save up more.”

They are far from alone.

A Dublin couple, aged 38 and 40, told us they had seen apartments they bid on eventually go for between 12% and 27% above asking price.

“There is always someone willing to pay more than you, even when you do not think that price is worth [it],” they said.

In one case, they said they tried to bid on a one-bedroom apartment in south Dublin but were told the seller preferred competing cash buyers, despite the couple being willing at that stage to offer more money.

Their response has been to consider borrowing more, putting down a smaller deposit and widening their search beyond the parts of Dublin they originally wanted to live in.

Saving more, falling further behind

Perhaps the neatest illustration of the problem came from another reader in Cork, who is 49 and has been searching for five years.

They said they had managed to increase their savings by 40% over that period.

But house prices in the areas they were watching had, by their calculation, risen by 54%.

“So I’m still behind on where I was in 2021,” they wrote.

That feeling, of running hard simply to stand still came up repeatedly.

A 44-year-old reader in Galway said she and her partner now earn a combined €110,000 after years of retraining and changing careers.

Yet she described finding themselves caught between house prices, deposit requirements and the limits of various State schemes.

“The frustration is that we’re so close,” she said.

We’re close to being able to do it and each time we get closer, the prices increase.

She questioned the prospect of spending close to half a million euro on a relatively modest new-build simply because cheaper routes to homeownership appeared closed off to them.

Today’s first-time buyer is not necessarily someone on a low income who simply needs to save a little longer.

MyHome said in its latest quarterly report that the average first-time buyer with a mortgage had a household income of €95,000 last year.

The median mortgage and property value among first-time buyers have both risen by around a third in the space of five years.

And even the economists examining whether Irish property is outright overvalued are finding a sizeable gap.

New ESRI research estimates that Irish house prices were around 17% above the level suggested by underlying economic fundamentals in the third quarter of last year.

The ESRI does not see this as a replay of the Celtic Tiger. Debt levels and credit conditions are significantly less alarming than they were before the crash.

Instead, the researchers say today’s pressures are more consistent with a structural shortage of housing, alongside affordability problems, than a credit-fuelled bubble.

The IPAV says first-time buyers are struggling to find homes within their budgets, fuelling fierce competition for those they can afford.

The ESRI also found that the current overvaluation appears to be hitting middle-income households particularly hard.

That description tallies rather neatly with the readers who contacted us.

They included couples on solid salaries, people who had retrained to earn more, people with mortgage approval and people who had accumulated sizeable deposits.

One 25-year-old Dublin reader, Dáire, is in the unusually fortunate position of having received €200,000 from his parents after they sold a rental property.

He earns €53,000 himself, giving him a total budget of around €450,000.

Even at that level, he said three-bedroom houses listed at €450,000 can quickly disappear beyond his reach once bidding begins.

The choice he now sees is between a smaller apartment or compromising heavily on where he lives.

“On Daft.ie there are several 3 bed one-bath houses available also at 450k in my area – however this appears to be a tactic used by sellers to get a higher price,” Dáire said.

“People will rush to put a bid in and continue bidding until the price is several tens of thousands higher.”

More homes, but still not enough

There are signs of improvement in housing supply.

There were 7,856 new homes completed in the first three months of this year, the strongest first quarter since the CSO series began in 2011.

Another 8,823 were completed between April and June, meaning 16,679 new dwellings were finished in the first half of 2026.

But the second-quarter figure was actually 3.6% lower than the same period last year, driven partly by a 12% fall in apartment completions.

And demand is not standing still while homes are being built.

The IPAV says first-time buyers are competing not just with one another, but with cash purchasers, investment funds and State bodies for a still-scarce pool of homes.

Its report points to a particularly bleak measure of sentiment: 52% of people aged under 35 surveyed for a recent PTSB report said they did not believe they would ever be able to buy a home.

‘Life is on hold’

That can all sound abstract until you get to what people are postponing to stay in the race.

Muriel, a 30-year-old living in Dublin 24, told us she has been watching the housing market for around three years and began searching seriously this summer.

A standard three-bed home in the places she wants to live, she said, can cost €400,000 to €500,000.

She has widened her search and cancelled travel while trying to save.

It feels like life is on hold just to chase a market that keeps moving.

“This entire process has taken a massive toll on my personal life,” she added.

“The compounding pressure of trying to buy a home, constantly saving every penny, and managing daily responsibilities has forced me to cancel travel plans. More importantly, it has severely affected my health—the stress has made me incredibly sick.”

Another reader summed up the consequences in even broader terms.

After six years of saving while renting in Dublin, she moved to Belfast, where she was eventually able to buy an apartment and later a house.

Two of her sisters, she said, are still trying to buy in Ireland and now expect to rent indefinitely.

“The housing crisis is creating housing refugees, scattering families across the country or abroad,” she wrote.

The phrase is dramatic, but the underlying experience is one we heard again and again: moving farther from family, delaying marriage or travel, changing jobs to earn more, saving harder and then discovering that the property you were saving for has risen faster still.

When we asked readers in January 2025 how anyone managed to buy a house, one of the answers was essentially: buy a few years ago.

In 2026, even that bleak bit of advice is becoming more expensive by the month.