Dispatch · Housing · 5 Sep 2026 · 5 min read
A side garden in Dublin 12 goes up for 600,000, a year after the whole house sold for 750,000
Dooley stands on a street in Dublin 12 in front of a house that sold in November 2025 for 750,000 euro, with planning permission for one house on its side garden. Less than a year later, he says, that side garden alone is up for sale at 600,000 euro, now with permission for two three bed houses on it. He uses it as the visible version of what the Economic and Social Research Institute said the day before, that Irish house prices are overvalued by 17%, a figure he thinks could go well above that. His explanation is a demand side one rather than the supply argument he says the government and the mainstream media never move off: houses flipped by speculators, wages flatlined against price increases, public housing stopped after the bank bailout on the orders of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Union, and the door opened to international investors and vulture funds. He adds the money printed during covid, the central bank's call for cheap labour and the over 100,000 Ukrainians who came in under the European Union's temporary protection directive, and ends on an economy where he says the richest 10% hold 50% of the wealth.
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