Price, Size and Density: Dublin housing in an EU context

The current discussions and analysis around housing in Ireland lack a detailed analysis of the relationship between house size and prices in Ireland. Related to house size is the density of an area. In this paper I contribute a measure of price per square metre (ppsm) for housing. Using webscraped data a kriging methodology is used to interpolate a ppsm at the Small Area level for Dublin and its commuter area. Results show that the highest ppsm is located around the city centre. Houses however in these areas are smaller compared to areas south of the city where ppsm is remains high as well as house size. Exploring affordability shows that households can trade-off distance to the central business district (CBD) in exchange for a lower ppsm and higher house size. Properties >90m2 remain unaffordable even for households in the 75th percentile of disposable incomes. Using radial analysis along with scaling to control for city size, comparisons in population density and building heights are made between Dublin, Vienna, Copenhagen and Paris. Controlling for city size, the analysis highlights the low density nature of Dublin and limited quantity of living space when compared to the other cities. Solutions are required to increase the supply of living space around the CBD in an attempt to improve affordability.