The Property Price Register explained

If you’ve ever wondered where “sold price” data in Ireland comes from, it’s the Residential Property Price Register. It’s free, public and genuinely useful — but it has quirks that catch people out. Here’s what it is, what it doesn’t tell you, and how to read it sensibly.

What the Property Price Register is

The Residential Property Price Register (PPR) is the official, public record of residential property sales in Ireland since 2010, published by the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA). For every sale it lists the date, address, county, Eircode (where available) and price. It is compiled from the stamp-duty returns solicitors file when a sale completes — which is why it reflects done deals, not listings.

What it does — and doesn’t — tell you

It’s a record of transactions, not a valuation tool, and it’s deliberately minimal:

• No floor area, number of bedrooms, or property condition.
• No way to tell a pristine renovation from a fixer-upper at the same address type.
• Addresses are free-text and inconsistent, which makes matching to a specific street fiddly.
• It doesn’t value anything — it just records what changed hands.

The VAT catch on new builds

This is the big one. New homes carry 13.5% VAT, and the PPR records new-build prices exclusive of VAT. So a new build showing as €321,586 actually cost the buyer about €365,000. Compare new builds against second-hand sales without adjusting for this and you’ll systematically undervalue them.

Reading it sensibly

To turn the register into something meaningful for one home you need to filter to genuinely comparable sales nearby, gross up VAT-exclusive new builds, drop the not-full-market and freak outlier sales, and weight recent sales more heavily than older ones.

How we use it

That’s exactly what HomeRange does under the hood — it cleans, adjusts and weights the register into a usable estimate for your specific property, so you don’t have to wade through hundreds of thousands of raw rows yourself.