Property prices are increasing all over the country.

Despite a challenging year, a new report by the property website Daft.ie reveals that prices jumped by 3.5% in the last 12 months.

According to the Daft.ie Wealth Report, Kinsale is the most expensive place in Munster to buy a home, with houses in the seaside town costing an average €364,000.

Crosshaven, where the average property goes for €299k, Blarney/Tower (€289k) and Durrus/Mizen (€280k) make up the next three most expensive spots on the list.

Montenotti/Tivoli and Rochestown in Cork – together with Cork’s commuter towns – are the most expensive ‘micro’ markets.

What are prices like in other counties?

Of 54 regional markets, Dublin 6 is the most expensive – with an average property price of €616,000 – followed by South County Dublin and Dublin 4. Dublin 6W and Dublin 14 are the two other markets where the average property value is above €500,000.

Leitrim is the cheapest market in the country, with average property values there of just €128,000, well below Roscommon, at €143,000 the second cheapest. Three other markets – Longford, Mayo and Sligo – also have average property values below €150,000.

Commenting on the findings, Trinity College economist and author of the Daft Wealth Report Ronan Lyons said: “Overall housing wealth in Ireland is up about 3.5 per cent on a year ago — at €536.4 billion, up almost €18 billion on the figure in the 2019 H2 report.

“That increase of almost €50 million per day was driven not by the completion of €6 billion of new homes, which was affected by the pandemic, but instead by higher values of existing homes.

“If you had surveyed 100 economists at the start of the year, when there was only the first inklings of the potential impact of Covid-19, I doubt whether any – in all honesty – would have predicted that such an economic shock would have caused property prices to rise, not fall, but yet that is what happened.”