One out of every four new homes sold in Galway last year was a block sale – bought by a housing agency, local authority, speculator or developer, predominantly for the rental market.

That’ s according to new research published by property advisors DNG, which revealed that just 351 new homes sales were to individual buyers in Galway in 2023.

The research also reveals that the Property Price Register underreported new homes sales by 30% in 2023, because of the many instances where the sale of multiple units in a development – known as a block sale – is registered on the PPR as one transaction when that transaction actually involves multiple units.

The analysis relies on the assumption that block sales are units purchased by the non-household sector. They include entities such as Approved Housing Bodies, financial institutions, local authorities and charitable organisations.

Compared to the total sales shown on the PPR, the analysis of multi-unit sales found that in 2023 there were an additional 5,163 new homes sales that were part of Block Sales that were not captured by the PPR, equating to 30.3% of all new homes sales last year.

When the adjustment is made to the total new homes sales to take into account all units included within Block Sales, the research shows that a total of 17,039 new units were transacted in 2023 compared to the 11,876 sales reported on the PPR.

In 2023, four out of every ten (42% or 7,306) new homes nationally were sold as part of Block Sales meaning only 58% (9,201) were sold to individual private buyers.

In Galway alone, the percentage of new homes sold as part of block sales to the non-household sector was 27% in 2023, or over one out of every four new homes sold.

This significantly reduced the volume of individual units available to buy on the open market by private households in 2023.

In total 148 out of 553 new homes sales in County Galway last year were sold as part of Block Sales.

As a result, only 361 new homes sales were to individual buyers in the County Galway market in 2023. The remainder were one- or two-house sales outside of blocks or scheme sales.