While difficult to compare because of different controls it seems clear to me that it is the rental sector which is in crisis.
Of course it is........the rental sector is the real health check for the supply-demand equilibrium or imbalance of any country or region's housing sector......rents are the best 'signal' any market has re: supply/demand......because tenants pay for the product using their own monthly cash flows....the prices are being set unconstrained by any external factors (excusing price controls themselves).
How do people pay for houses that they own?......mainly with bank loans.......which are a function of incomes and lending multiples permitted by banking regulators.....so house prices in Ireland is not where one should look for dysfunction or health in the housing market....put simply house prices in Ireland are pretty much anchored by incomes (sure some cash buyers and bank of mum and dad inflation things beyond this at the margins) but the gravity of house prices in Ireland are constrained by incomes and lending multiples.
The rental market outside of RPZ tenancies is where all the
SIGNAL is.......and that signal is telling us what we know already.......unsupported private rents (non-HAP, non-AHBs) are consuming larger and larger chunks of median household disposable income....housing for most adults is not a consumer discretionary item.....its a consumer staple....rents will continue to rise as long as the supply/demand dynamics continue to deteriorate.
It's why the RPZ introduction was such a cowardly move by the politicians couched as it was in the language of helping citizen renters.....lets be clear.....the RPZ wasn't introduced to help renters....it was introduced to help the incumbent politicians of the day sidestep the embarrassment of extreme rental price inflation which they knew was the true real time scorecard on what a poor job they we're doing re:housing supply. What made it doubly toxic (apart from its nakedly political motives) is that removing the price signal itself meant housing supply was going to be impaired (and it was)....they then doubled down on the cowardice during COVID by capping RPZ increases to 2% when CPI was heading towards 10%). In doing so they nuked the market.
As we head to 2026 - you are looking at a full decade of policy mistakes by the ruling parties....and IMO they've blown it now with these reforms.....and so they'll fail to meet their housing targets and will have no story to tell at 2029 election....and you'll get a government of the left in power then that goes down the socialist housing route which will be a double disaster......and there you have it 2016 to 2036 in a blink of any eye.....20yrs of political incompetence to deal with a problem completely within our own domestic control.