Then and Now: Why One Wage Bought a Dublin Home in 1968 — But Two Can’t Today

Introduction

Across Ireland, a familiar question keeps resurfacing:
How could an ordinary worker once buy a three-bed semi-detached house in Dublin on a single income — while today’s generation, even with two salaries, cannot?

The contrast between 1968 and 2025 tells a wider story of shifting economics, land policy, and missed opportunities. It also links directly to Northern Ireland’s own affordability pressures, where different politics led to similar outcomes.

1. When One Wage Was Enough

In the late 1960s, a new suburban home in Dublin typically cost 2–3 times the average annual wage. Mortgages were conservative, but prices were low enough to be covered by one steady job.
Land was plentiful and planning straightforward. Builders worked on modest layouts — three bedrooms, one bathroom, no energy-rated insulation — but they were affordable, practical, and within reach of ordinary families.

2. The Price-Wage Gap Explodes

Fast-forward to today: an equivalent home can cost 8–10 times average earnings. Wages have risen, but housing costs have grown far faster.
Land values, compliance requirements, and urban concentration have all inflated the price of entry. Dual incomes are now a basic requirement, not a comfort.

3. The Rental Trap

In 1968, rents were low relative to wages, allowing first-time buyers to save.
Today, the rental market consumes most disposable income — deposits grow slowly while house prices keep climbing. Many families find themselves stuck renting well into their 30s and 40s, unable to bridge the deposit gap.

4. Supply Bottlenecks and Policy Drift

Ireland’s building rate has lagged behind population growth for decades.
Restrictive planning, high infrastructure levies, and limited state-led development have created a scarcity economy. Public housing output has collapsed since the 1980s, leaving private supply to fill a demand it cannot meet.

The outcome: rising rents, falling ownership rates, and an inter-generational divide where parents once helped their children into a first home — now they can only watch.

North of the Border: Northern Ireland’s Parallel Story

While Dublin’s market overheated under relentless demand, Northern Ireland followed a different — yet converging — path.

During the 1970s and 1980s, housing around Belfast remained affordable. Semi-detached homes in Lisburn, Bangor or Ards typically cost 2–3 times annual income, mirroring Dublin’s earlier ratios.
By the 2000s, the peace dividend and cheap credit triggered a major boom. From 2000 to 2007, NI house prices tripled — then collapsed spectacularly after 2008, with values dropping by 50–60 percent.

A long recovery began only after 2015, but build costs, energy regulations, and land scarcity have since pushed prices upward again, with homes costing now 5-6 times annual incomes and growing. Wages have not kept pace. Even with lower nominal prices than Dublin, affordability is tightening sharply for younger buyers.

5. A Shared All-Island Challenge

North and South now face the same fundamentals:

Too few new homes, built too slowly, in the wrong places.

Dublin’s pressures are visible in record rents and planning gridlock. Northern Ireland’s are quieter but spreading — especially around commuter belts where infrastructure hasn’t kept up.

Strategic investment in transport corridors, infrastructure balance, and projects like a Strangford Lough Crossing could help unlock developable land, reduce commuting costs, and stabilise house prices through smarter regional planning.

Affordable housing cannot exist in isolation; it depends on connectivity, land access, and economic distribution across the island.

Conclusion

The single-income home of the 1960s reflected balance — between wages, land, and policy.
Half a century later, that balance is gone.
Restoring it will require more than subsidies or shared-equity schemes: it demands long-term planning, infrastructure alignment, and the political will to treat housing as a public good, not a speculative commodity.