Report reveals minimum salary levels required to buy in Cork

THE combined average minimum salary levels to purchase a new three-bedroom semi-detached house in Cork is €104,000, a new study estimates.

The report by the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland bases its figure on an average 3.3-times loan-to-income limit (LTI).

To put this figure in persepective, the average minimum salary levels to purchase a house in the North West of the country would be €85,000, while in the greater Dublin area it would rise to €127,000. The maximum first-time buyers can borrow is four times LTI.

In the siutation of four-times LTI, the combined salary level figure required in Cork is €86,000.

This is just one of the findings of the SCSI study, entitled The Real Cost of New Housing Delivery 2023.

It estimates the average cost of delivering a new three-bed semi in Cork is €433,000. Nationally it ranges from €354,000 in the North West to €461,000 in the greater Dublin area.

Chartered quantity surveyor Micheál Mahon, one of the report’s authors, said the impact of Covid and the conflict in Ukraine have been the main contributors to the increase in ‘hard costs’ – bricks and mortar – over the past two years.

‘The main hard cost drivers have been energy, fuel, and shipping costs. The cost of various building materials, particularly concrete, insulation, electrical and plumbing products, steel reinforcement, and timber products, also increased dramatically.’

He said that nationally, hard costs now comprise 53% of the total costs of overall delivery. The primary soft cost drivers have been land costs, financing due to higher interest rates, levies and an uplift in the cost of professional fees.