House Price-to-Income Ratio Ireland — 5.81x National (2024)
Ireland's median house price is now 5.81x the country's mean annual earnings — well past the 5x "severely unaffordable" threshold. This page tracks the ratio year-by-year, 2015 to 2024, for all 26 counties, using only publicly-reproducible data: raw PPR transactions for the numerator and CSO NEA08 mean annual earnings for the denominator. Updated daily for the latest PPR filings.
National ratio 2015–2024
Ireland's national price-to-income ratio over time, vs the 5x "severely unaffordable" threshold:
2024 league table by county
Each county's ratio for 2024 — coloured by band (red ≥8x, amber 7–8x, purple 6–7x, green <6x). Threshold line at 5x.
| County | Ratio | PPR median | Mean earnings | PPR n |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wicklow | 6.92x | €414,097 | €59,827 | 2,596 |
| Dublin | 6.68x | €440,000 | €65,822 | 19,308 |
| Kildare | 6.15x | €370,044 | €60,121 | 3,387 |
| Meath | 5.99x | €339,207 | €56,669 | 2,602 |
| Galway | 5.89x | €315,000 | €53,497 | 2,661 |
| Louth | 5.84x | €290,000 | €49,652 | 1,765 |
| Kilkenny | 5.80x | €295,000 | €50,886 | 1,057 |
| Wexford | 5.67x | €265,000 | €46,746 | 2,226 |
| Cork | 5.51x | €315,725 | €57,273 | 7,068 |
| Westmeath | 5.49x | €280,000 | €50,960 | 1,155 |
| Laois | 5.26x | €265,000 | €50,339 | 1,221 |
| Kerry | 5.25x | €242,000 | €46,139 | 1,470 |
| Waterford | 5.22x | €263,452 | €50,441 | 1,766 |
| Carlow | 5.17x | €247,250 | €47,834 | 666 |
| Limerick | 5.07x | €274,008 | €54,051 | 2,114 |
| Clare | 5.01x | €265,000 | €52,879 | 1,268 |
| Offaly | 4.93x | €237,000 | €48,121 | 873 |
| Monaghan | 4.70x | €207,000 | €44,045 | 461 |
| Sligo | 4.41x | €220,000 | €49,875 | 748 |
| Tipperary | 4.38x | €214,975 | €49,115 | 1,596 |
| Cavan | 4.24x | €200,000 | €47,173 | 830 |
| Mayo | 4.20x | €200,000 | €47,575 | 1,413 |
| Donegal | 4.03x | €175,000 | €43,445 | 1,523 |
| Longford | 3.82x | €172,250 | €45,056 | 480 |
| Roscommon | 3.73x | €182,000 | €48,826 | 802 |
| Leitrim | 3.64x | €171,806 | €47,235 | 493 |
Key counties 2015–2024
Trend lines for the seven counties most discussed in housing commentary. Most converge upward; only the rate of acceleration differs.
Explore the live map — every county, every year
The charts above are snapshots; the map below is the full dataset. Click to open an interactive choropleth of the price-to-income ratio. Hover any county for that year's ratio + the median sale price and mean earnings it derives from, and switch year (2015–2024) with the year picker inside the panel.
Methodology — transparent and reproducible
Ratio = raw PPR median sale price ÷ CSO NEA08 mean annual earnings (both sexes, all NACE sectors), per county per year.
Numerator: Property Price Register annual CSVs (PPR-YYYY.csv) — every recorded residential sale in Ireland. Median is the simple statistical median of all transactions in that county-year, no filtering, no hedonic adjustment, no VAT adjustment. Refreshed daily from propertypriceregister.ie.
Denominator: CSO PxStat dataset NEA08 "Mean Annual Earnings" — both sexes, all sectors. Refreshed daily; CSO publishes annually with ~6-month lag (e.g. 2024 earnings released mid-2025).
Why these numbers may look lower than press coverage: most affordability commentary (CSO/ESRI/Central Bank) uses CSO's RPPI hedonic-adjusted median, which controls for the high share of new-build apartments in PPR transactions. That adjustment typically produces ~20–25% higher ratios for urban counties than our raw PPR median. Neither approach is "right" — they answer slightly different questions. We use raw PPR because every input is publicly downloadable and reproducible from primary sources.
Snapshot last refreshed: 2026-05-24. 2024 earnings is the latest CSO publication; 2024 PPR is YTD where applicable.
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