Mayo ranked among top five most affordable places for first-time house buyers

MAYO has been ranked as one of the most affordable counties in Ireland for first-time house buyers. 

According to research in Switcher.ie’s First Time Buyer Affordability Index, the average price of a house in Mayo for first-time buyers stands at €232,000. The county was ranked fourth for affordability, with first-time buyers taking an average of 2.2 years to save for a deposit - down from 2.9 years last year. 

Mayo was second to Longford, Leitrim and Donegal, where first-time joint-buyers take between 1.7 and two years to save for a deposit. 

The average time to save for a mortgage deposit in Ireland is 4.7 years, according to Switcher.ie

Their research showed that the most affordable places for first-time buyers ‘were not necessarily the areas with the lowest house prices’. 

“Although cheaper property prices help, having a comparably higher income makes your mortgage more affordable, and deposits take less time to save.”

Commercial Director of Switcher.ie Eoin Clarke said that counties like Donegal and Mayo were in the top five most affordable counties ‘possibly due to their distance from Dublin and other commercial hotspots’.

According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), the median price of a home bought in the 12 months to December 2024 was €355,000.

According to the latest report of the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI), the average loan approval for first-time buyers was €313,547.

Switcher.ie ranked Dún Laoghaire as the least affordable place for first-time buyers, where it could take up to 21.4 years to save for a deposit.