How Much Does It Cost to Buy a House in Ireland?
A calculator that works out your stamp duty and the total cash you need on closing day, built on the current Revenue rates and the statutory Land Registry fee scale. Every figure is sourced and linked. No sign-up, no email.
Buying a house in Ireland costs more than the purchase price. You pay stamp duty, which is 1% of the price up to €1 million, 2% on the portion between €1 million and €1.5 million, and 6% on anything above €1.5 million. You also pay a Land Registry fee of between €400 and €800 depending on the price, plus your solicitor, a structural survey, and a lender’s valuation if you are borrowing. All of these are the buyer’s cost, and none is included in the asking price.
The calculator below works out the exact figures. Stamp duty and the Land Registry fee are computed from the current rates and the statutory fee scale. Your solicitor and survey costs vary genuinely between firms, so the tool asks you to enter your own quotes rather than inventing an average. Until you do, it marks them as not included and tells you the total is incomplete. It will never show you a €0 next to a cost you are definitely going to pay.
Stamp duty calculator and total buying costs
Enter your purchase price. Everything updates as you type. Sources for every rate are listed below the tool.
Stamp duty on a second-hand home is charged on the full purchase price.
Set this to the deposit your lender or broker has actually asked you for. Non-resident buyers are usually asked to put down more than a buyer living in Ireland. Your broker will confirm.
Your professional fees: you must add these
Do not have quotes yet? Ask two or three solicitors and a surveyor before you bid. Your solicitor must give you a written notice of their costs, known as a section 150 notice. If a cost genuinely does not apply to you, such as a lender’s valuation on a cash purchase, enter 0 and it will count as nil.
Land Registry fees
Set automatically from the statutory scale in the Land Registration (Fees) Order 2012, Schedule Item 1. Change your price and this updates. You can override it.
Item 10 of the same Fees Order sets this at €175. No fee is charged for a mortgage lodged electronically between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2026 (S.I. No. 677 of 2023), so you may not pay it. Your solicitor will confirm. Set it to zero if it is waived.
Buying more than one property?
Standard residential rates apply.
Buying from outside the eurozone?
Deliberately left blank. We will not print a stale exchange rate and call it a figure. Enter the rate your bank or currency provider is actually offering you, not the mid-market rate on a news site.
If your provider builds its margin into the rate rather than charging a visible fee, ask what the all-in cost is and put it here.
- Deposit towards the price€0
- Stamp dutyCharged on the full purchase price€0
- Land Registry, transfer€0
- Land Registry, mortgage€0
- SolicitorNot included
- Structural surveyNot included
- Lender’s valuationNot included
- Searches & outlaysNot included
- Total so far€0
- Mortgage required€0
An estimate for planning, not a quote, and not tax or legal advice. It does not include Local Property Tax, home insurance, mortgage protection, buyer’s agent fees, furnishing or moving costs. Confirm every figure with your solicitor and your lender before you commit.
Where every figure comes from
A calculator that gets the law wrong is worse than no calculator. Every rate and fee this tool applies is set out below, with the primary source and the date we last checked it. If you find something out of date, please tell us and we will correct it.
| What we apply | Primary source |
|---|---|
| Residential stamp duty: 1% up to €1m, 2% from €1m to €1.5m, 6% above €1.5m. In force for instruments executed on or after 2 October 2024. | Revenue, Stamp Duty and property: Rates. Checked 28 September 2026. |
| Non-residential stamp duty: flat 7.5%. | Revenue, Rates. Checked 28 September 2026. |
| Three or more apartments in the same block: 1% up to €1m, 2% on the balance. The 6% rate does not apply. | Revenue, Rates. Checked 28 September 2026. |
| Ten or more residential properties, excluding apartments, in any 12 month period: 15%, under Section 31E of the Stamp Duties Consolidation Act 1999. | Revenue, Rates. Checked 28 September 2026. |
| Stamp duty is charged on the consideration excluding VAT. On a new house (VAT at 13.5%) duty is calculated on the price divided by 1.135. On a qualifying new apartment (VAT at 9% from 8 October 2025 to 31 December 2030) it is the price divided by 1.09. | Revenue, Consideration; Revenue, Qualifying apartments and Second reduced rate of VAT; the worked example on Citizens Information, Stamp duty on property. Checked 28 September 2026. |
| Land Registry fee on a transfer on sale: €400 up to €50,000; €600 to €200,000; €700 to €400,000; €800 above €400,000. | Land Registration (Fees) Order 2012, S.I. No. 380 of 2012, Schedule Item 1. Administered by Tailte Éireann. Checked 28 September 2026. |
| Land Registry fee on registering a charge (your mortgage): €175. No fee is payable where the charge is lodged electronically between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2026, so ask your solicitor whether you will pay it. | Land Registration (Fees) Order 2012, Schedule Item 10, and the Tailte Éireann (Land Registry (Registration of Certain Charges)) (Fees) Order 2023, S.I. No. 677 of 2023. Checked 28 September 2026. |
| Solicitor, survey, valuation and search costs: not estimated, and not assumed to be zero. Until you enter a quote, the calculator marks each one as Not included and leaves it out of the total, so you are never shown a €0 that you might mistake for free. | Entered by you. Get written quotes. Your solicitor must give you a written notice of costs under section 150 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015. Checked 28 September 2026. |
| CG50A: on a house or apartment sold for over €1 million (other assets over €500,000), a buyer who is not given the seller’s CG50A clearance certificate must withhold 15% of the price and pay it to Revenue. Shown as a warning, not added to your costs. | Revenue, CGT Clearance Certificate (CG50A). Checked 28 September 2026. |
| Exchange rate: not supplied. The tool will not print a stale rate. | Entered by you, from the rate your provider is actually offering. |
Stamp duty in Ireland, explained
Stamp duty is a tax paid to Revenue by the buyer when ownership of a property transfers. It is usually the largest single cost on top of the price, and your solicitor files the return and pays it on your behalf as part of closing.
Residential stamp duty in Ireland is tiered. You do not pay one rate on the whole price. Each rate applies to the slice of the price that falls into that band, which is why a €1.6 million home does not suddenly attract 6% on the lot.
| Portion of the consideration | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to €1,000,000 | 1% |
| Over €1,000,000 and up to €1,500,000 | 2% |
| Over €1,500,000 | 6% |
| Non-residential property | 7.5% |
| Ten or more residential properties, excluding apartments, in 12 months | 15% |
Source: Revenue, Stamp Duty and property: Rates. These rates apply to instruments executed on or after 2 October 2024. Rates can change in the Budget. Checked 28 September 2026.
New builds are charged on the price excluding VAT
Stamp duty is charged on the consideration, and consideration excludes VAT. A new house carries VAT at 13.5%, so the amount your duty is charged on is lower than the price on the brochure. Citizens Information gives the worked example: a new home bought for €454,000 including VAT has a base price of €400,000, and it is the €400,000 that is stamped.
New apartments changed in the October 2025 Budget. Since 8 October 2025 a qualifying new apartment carries VAT at 9% instead of 13.5%, a rate Revenue applies until 31 December 2030. The same rule then gives a larger base: an apartment bought for €436,000 including 9% VAT has a base price of €400,000, and stamp duty of €4,000. Not every new apartment qualifies, so ask the developer’s solicitor which VAT rate is in your contract.
This one catches a lot of people out, including some of the free calculators currently ranking on Google, several of which either ignore the rule or apply it backwards. The calculator above handles it correctly when you select New house or New apartment.
Stamp duty at common prices
The figures below are worked out from the Revenue rates above, rounded to the nearest euro. For a new house or a new apartment the price is the one you pay, including VAT; the duty is charged on the price without it. For any other price, use the calculator.
| Price you pay | Second-hand home | New house (13.5% VAT) | New apartment (9% VAT) |
|---|---|---|---|
| €300,000 | €3,000 | €2,643 | €2,752 |
| €350,000 | €3,500 | €3,084 | €3,211 |
| €400,000 | €4,000 | €3,524 | €3,670 |
| €450,000 | €4,500 | €3,965 | €4,128 |
| €500,000 | €5,000 | €4,405 | €4,587 |
| €600,000 | €6,000 | €5,286 | €5,505 |
| €700,000 | €7,000 | €6,167 | €6,422 |
| €800,000 | €8,000 | €7,048 | €7,339 |
| €1,000,000 | €10,000 | €8,811 | €9,174 |
| €1,300,000 | €16,000 | €12,907 | €13,853 |
| €1,500,000 | €20,000 | €16,432 | €17,523 |
| €2,000,000 | €50,000 | €35,727 | €40,092 |
Computed from Revenue, Stamp Duty and property: Rates and the VAT-exclusive rule on the same page. Single purchases only; the multiple-unit rules are in the calculator. Your solicitor’s figure governs. Checked 28 September 2026.
The costs that are not the price and not the stamp duty
These are the ones that catch buyers out, particularly buyers arriving from a market where the seller carries more of the cost.
Your solicitor
Handles the conveyancing, the contract and the title. Fees vary between firms, quoted as a flat fee or a percentage, plus VAT at 23% and outlays. Your solicitor must give you a written section 150 notice setting out their costs. Get two or three quotes.
Structural survey
An independent check of the condition of the property before you are legally committed. Not a legal requirement. Not optional in practice, especially if you are buying from abroad.
Lender’s valuation
Required by your bank if you are borrowing. It protects the lender, not you, and it is not a survey.
Land Registry fees
Set by statute, not by anyone’s opinion. The transfer fee runs from €400 to €800 depending on the price, under the Land Registration (Fees) Order 2012.
Local Property Tax
An annual tax on the home, charged on the valuation band the owner declares to Revenue. It is charged to whoever owned the home on 1 November of the year before, so the seller normally covers the year you buy in. It is not an upfront cost, so it is not in the total above. Revenue, valuing your property.
Currency exchange
If your money is in dollars, moving it into euro has a real cost. Compare a specialist currency provider against your bank before you transfer anything.
Solicitor fees: what to ask before you instruct
Every buyer in Ireland needs their own solicitor, and the fee is one of the few costs you can compare. We do not quote an average, because fees vary by firm and by property. What you can control is how clearly you understand the quote.
- Ask for the section 150 notice. Your solicitor must give you a written notice of their legal costs, or of how they will be calculated, under section 150 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015. Read it before you agree to anything.
- Check whether VAT is included. Legal fees carry VAT at the standard rate of 23%. Compare quotes on the same basis.
- Ask what the outlays are. Outlays are costs your solicitor pays on your behalf and passes on, such as Land Registry fees and searches. They sit on top of the professional fee.
- Remember who pays the stamp duty. Your solicitor calculates it and asks you for the money before closing, then pays it to Revenue. It is not part of their fee.
Sources: Legal Services Regulatory Authority, legal costs duties; Revenue, Current VAT rates; Citizens Information, Stamp duty on property. Checked 28 September 2026.
When do you actually need the money?
Buyers often ask for a single number. In reality the money leaves your account in stages, and knowing the order matters more than knowing the total.
- Booking deposit, paid to the estate agent when your offer is accepted. It is normally refundable and it comes off the price later. It does not commit you legally.
- Contract deposit, paid when you sign contracts, commonly 10% of the price less the booking deposit already paid. Your solicitor will confirm the figure in your contract. This is the moment the purchase becomes legally binding.
- The balance, paid at closing, made up of the rest of your own funds and, if you are borrowing, your mortgage drawdown.
- Stamp duty and fees, settled through your solicitor at closing. The stamp duty return is filed electronically with Revenue.
An accepted offer in Ireland is not legally binding until contracts are signed. That cuts both ways, and it is one of the biggest differences from the American system. We cover it in our guide to buying a house in Ireland from the USA.
The buyers who get caught out are almost never the ones who misjudged the house. They are the ones who budgeted for the price and forgot the rest.
If you are selling: the costs on the other side of the deal
Stamp duty is the buyer’s cost, so it does not appear on a seller’s bill. Sellers have a different list, and some of it has to be in place before a sale can close. If you are selling one home to buy another, budget for both.
The estate agent
The seller appoints and pays the selling agent. Agree the fee in writing before the property goes on the market, and check whether VAT at 23% is on top.
Your solicitor
The sale needs its own conveyancing, quoted in a section 150 notice, plus VAT at 23% and outlays.
BER certificate
You must have a Building Energy Rating to sell a home, and adverts must show it. The owner arranges it with an SEAI-registered assessor.
Local Property Tax
All LPT returns must be filed and payments up to date before the sale closes. Unpaid LPT stays as a charge on the property.
Capital Gains Tax
CGT is 33% on most gains. If the property was your only or main home for the whole time you owned it, Principal Private Residence Relief can remove it. A return is still required.
CG50A clearance
On a house or apartment sold for over €1 million, give the buyer a CG50A certificate. Without one, the buyer must withhold 15% of the price.
Sources: Citizens Information, Building Energy Rating; Revenue, LPT when selling; Revenue, CGT and PPR Relief; Revenue, CG50A. Checked 28 September 2026. General information, not tax advice: a seller with a gain to report should speak to a tax adviser.
Knowing the cost is not the same as knowing the value
A calculator tells you what a purchase will cost. It cannot tell you whether the property is worth it, or whether you are about to bid against yourself.
What is it really worth?
Asking prices are a marketing position. We work from what comparable homes actually sold for, and we tell you when a guide price is optimistic.
What are you bidding against?
An independent read on the competition, the seller’s position and the agent’s strategy, so you know when to push and when to walk.
What will it cost after you own it?
Management charges, sinking funds, remedial works and running costs. The things that quietly turn a good buy into an expensive one.
Who is on your side?
In Ireland the estate agent works for the seller. We work only for buyers and investors, which means the advice you get is genuinely yours.
The best and most important decision when moving to Ireland from the US was hiring Alanna. She found exactly what we were looking for and I arrived in Dublin with a home ready for me.Caithlyn M. • relocated from the United States
Buy on a number, not on a feeling
The strongest buyers are the ones who know exactly what a purchase costs before they walk into the first viewing, because it is very hard to negotiate well when you are not sure what you can afford.
If you would like a second opinion on your budget, your brief or a specific property, we are always happy to talk it through.
Related guides from AH Property
Further reading for buyers, overseas purchasers and property investors in Ireland.
Buying from the USA
The full process for American buyers, from eligibility to the keys.
Read GuideForeign Buyers
Guidance for non-resident and overseas clients buying in Ireland.
Read GuideSecond Homes
What to know before buying a second home in Ireland.
Read GuideBuyer’s Agent Service
How AH Property supports buyers from search to completion.
View ServiceAbout Alanna
Ten years in the Irish market, working only for buyers.
Meet AlannaDiscuss Your Budget
Share your numbers and your timeline with Alanna.
Get in TouchFrequently asked questions
How much is stamp duty in Ireland?
How much is stamp duty on a €400,000 house?
Do first-time buyers pay stamp duty in Ireland?
Is stamp duty different on a new build?
Is there extra stamp duty on a second home in Ireland?
Do I pay Local Property Tax in the year I buy?
Can an overseas buyer claim the Help to Buy scheme?
What are Land Registry fees in Ireland?
Who pays the estate agent in Ireland?
Can a non-resident buy property in Ireland?
Important, please read
This is an estimate, not advice. This calculator is a planning tool. It is not legal, tax, financial or immigration advice, and it is not a quote or an offer. Alanna Hughes Property is a licensed buyer’s agent. We are not solicitors, tax advisers or financial advisers, and nothing on this page should be relied on in place of advice from one.
Rates and fees change. Stamp duty rates are set by Revenue and can change in any Budget. Land Registry fees are set by statutory instrument. We check the figures on this page and publish the date we last did so. If you are transacting, your solicitor will calculate the exact amounts for your purchase, and their figure governs, not ours.
What this tool does not include. Local Property Tax, home insurance, mortgage protection, management or service charges, capital gains or rental income tax, buyer’s agent fees, and moving or furnishing costs. It also does not model reliefs and exemptions, which are individual to you.
Sources. All rates and fees are set out with their primary sources in Where every figure comes from, above. Useful official references: Revenue, Stamp Duty, Citizens Information, Buying a home, Tailte Éireann, and the Residential Property Price Register.
Alanna Hughes Property Limited is a licensed property services provider regulated by the Property Services Regulatory Authority. PSRA Licence No. 004850. Content last reviewed 28 September 2026.
Got your number? Now let’s find the right property.
Working out what a purchase costs is the easy part. Knowing what to buy, what it is worth and how hard to push is where a buyer’s agent earns their place. Book a consultation and we will talk through your budget and your brief.
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