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Selling a home in Ireland
Eight stages, four to six months, and a handful of places where sales reliably go wrong. Here is the whole process in order, with the timings and costs attached to each step.
8 min readLast reviewed 24 September 2026
The short answer
The Irish selling process has two halves that behave completely differently. The first half — getting a buyer — is a marketing problem, and how long it takes depends on price, location and demand. The second half — getting from sale agreed to closing — is a legal and administrative problem, and it takes as long as the slowest piece of paperwork.
Most sellers underestimate the second half. You can find a buyer in a fortnight and still be four months from your money.
| Cost | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Preparation and paperworkCan run alongside valuation | 1 – 3 weeks |
| BER assessmentMust be done before advertising | 3 – 10 days |
| On market to sale agreedHighly dependent on price and area | 4 – 8 weeks |
| Sale agreed to contracts signedSearches, requisitions, survey | 4 – 8 weeks |
| Contracts to closingFunds drawn down and keys handed over | 2 – 4 weeks |
Start here, before you speak to an agent. Nearly every delayed Irish sale is delayed by a document, and every one of those documents could have been found earlier.
You need:
The planning compliance one catches people out most often. If you built anything and never got a certificate of compliance at the time, you will need an engineer or architect to certify it now — roughly €300 to €800, and a few weeks.
A Building Energy Rating certificate is legally required before you advertise, and the rating has to appear in the advertising. Not before closing — before the property goes up.
Cost is €120 to €300, the assessment takes an hour or two, and the certificate lasts ten years. Use an assessor registered with the SEAI. If your property was assessed in the last decade and nothing structural has changed, the existing certificate may still be valid.
Get more than one opinion. Estate agents value for free because it is how they win instructions, which means valuations are not neutral — an agent who wants your business has an incentive to flatter you.
Cross-check against the Property Price Register, which lists the actual sale price of every residential property sold in Ireland since 2010. Asking prices on property portals tell you what sellers hope for; the register tells you what buyers actually paid.
Overpricing is the most expensive mistake in the process. A property that sits unsold for three months goes stale, and the eventual price is usually lower than if it had been priced correctly on day one.
Get three quotes. Commission runs 1% to 2.5% plus VAT at 23%, and it is negotiable — the gap between 1% and 2.5% on a €350,000 sale is €5,250 before VAT.
Ask each agent:
Sole agency gives one agent exclusivity for a set period at a lower rate. Multi agency has several competing, with only the winner paid, at a higher rate. Most Irish sellers use sole agency with a defined end date — eight to twelve weeks is normal, and eight is usually negotiable.
Full breakdown in our guide to comparing estate agent fees.
Do this before you go to market. A solicitor instructed early can start pulling title documents while the property is being advertised, which can take weeks off the back end of the sale. A solicitor instructed after you get an offer starts from zero, at exactly the point everybody wants to move fast.
Conveyancing costs €1,200 to €2,500 plus VAT and outlay of €150 to €400. Ask for one all-in figure so you can compare quotes properly.
Your agent handles photography, the listing, the portals and viewings. Your job is to make the property presentable and to be realistic about access — properties that are hard to view sell slower and for less.
Expect the most interest in the first two to three weeks. That early burst is the clearest read you will get on whether the price is right. If you have had plenty of viewings and no offers, the price is the problem. If you have had almost no viewings, the price or the presentation is the problem.
Offers come through the agent. When you accept one, the property is marked sale agreed and the buyer pays a booking deposit, typically €5,000 or so, held by the agent.
That deposit is fully refundable and sale agreed is not legally binding. This is the part of the Irish system that surprises people, especially anyone who has sold in another country. Until contracts are signed and exchanged, either side can walk away for any reason and at no cost.
Price is not the only thing to weigh. A cash buyer with no chain is frequently worth more than a higher offer from someone who needs to sell their own house first and has mortgage approval in principle rather than a formal loan offer.
Your solicitor sends a contract and the title documents to the buyer’s solicitor. They carry out searches, raise requisitions on title, and the buyer usually commissions a structural survey and finalises their mortgage.
Once satisfied, the buyer signs and pays the balance of the 10% deposit. You sign. Contracts are exchanged and a closing date is set — at that point it becomes binding on both sides.
On closing day, the buyer’s funds transfer, your mortgage is redeemed, the agent commission and your solicitor’s fee are deducted from the proceeds, and the balance goes to you. Keys are handed over through the agent.
In rough order of how often they bite:
The pattern is consistent: almost everything on that list could have been found at the start rather than in week ten. The single best thing you can do to make an Irish sale move quickly is to get the paperwork straight before you list.
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