Irish buyers are the ones who do the sums fastest. They arrive at a viewing having already worked out what the same money does at home, and the answer is usually the reason they came.
So let us start with the figures, because they are published and they are not in dispute.
The comparison, in numbers that are checkable
The Central Statistics Office puts the median price of a home sold in Ireland at €399,999 in the twelve months to July 2026, up 5.5% on the year. In Dublin the median was €500,000, up 4.4%. Outside Dublin prices rose faster still, by 6.4%, with Wicklow the dearest county at a €475,000 median and Longford the cheapest at €200,000.
Against that, our houses in Brittany, Normandy and the Vendée start at €160,000 for a two-bedroom bungalow, €170,000 for a three-bedroom and €185,000 for a four-bedroom house — and those are all-inclusive prices on the plot, with the land, the kitchen, the bathrooms, the heating, the driveway and the connections in the figure. Not a shell. Not plus land. Not plus extras.
Put the two side by side and the Dublin median buys a brand new four-bedroom house in Brittany with something close to €300,000 left over. The national median buys the same house with €200,000 left. Even Longford's median, the lowest in the country, buys a new three-bedroom bungalow outright with change for the furniture.
That is the whole proposition, and no amount of writing improves on it.
Four things Irish buyers have that British buyers lost
This is where the Irish position has quietly become the best in Europe, and a lot of people have not noticed.
You keep free movement. An Irish passport is an EU passport. There is no 90-day limit, no rolling 180-day window to count, no biometric clock at the border. You can stay in your French house for as long as you like, come and go as you please, work remotely from it and register as resident whenever you choose. British buyers now plan their year around the 90/180 rule; you simply do not have that conversation.
There is no currency risk. You pay for a French house in euro out of a euro account. On a build, where the money goes out in stage payments over roughly twelve months, that matters more than people expect — a British buyer watching sterling move three or four per cent between the foundations and the roof is watching real money. For you the price you agreed is the price you pay, to the cent, and SEPA transfers between an Irish and a French bank are same-day and effectively free.
Healthcare is straightforward. As an EU citizen you use your EHIC for visits, and if you retire to France on an Irish state pension the S1 route puts you into the French system properly. We covered the detail in healthcare in France for British and Irish retirees.
The crossing is direct. Rosslare to Cherbourg runs year round in 17 to 19 hours, and Cork to Roscoff takes 14 to 16 — no land bridge through Britain, no second set of formalities, and you sleep through most of it. From Cherbourg, our Normandy plots are an hour to an hour and a half away. From Roscoff, central Brittany is about ninety minutes. The full breakdown is in which ferry port, and how far to the house.
What you cannot do: borrow from an Irish bank
The one practical obstacle, and it catches almost everybody.
Irish banks do not lend against French property. AIB, Bank of Ireland and PTSB will not take a house in Morbihan as security, and no amount of being a good customer changes it. What people do instead is one of three things: release equity on the Irish home and buy in France for cash; sell up in Ireland entirely; or borrow in France, where lenders do write mortgages for non-resident EU buyers at rates that have generally been lower than Irish ones, typically up to 70 or 80 per cent of value over fifteen to twenty years. Our guide to French mortgages for non-residents sets out what the French banks ask for.
The timing point is the one worth planning around: a French lender wants to see the build contract, so the mortgage conversation comes after you have chosen a house, not before. Start the conversation early anyway, because French lending is slower than Irish lending and nobody enjoys discovering that in month three.
Why Irish buyers mostly build rather than renovate
Because the Irish buyers we deal with have usually already renovated something at home, and they know exactly what it costs.
A French stone longère at €90,000 looks like the bargain of the century until you price insulation, rewiring, re-roofing, drainage, double glazing and a heating system in a country where you do not speak the trade language and cannot drop in on Thursday to see how it is going. We went through that arithmetic properly in new build or old house in France, and the honest conclusion was that a renovation of real quality lands very close to the cost of building new — only with no fixed price, no timetable you can rely on and no guarantee at the end.
New build inverts all three. The price is fixed in writing under a CCMI contract, the French builder's contract we explain in the CCMI contract explained: the figure cannot move, the stages are inspected, the money is released against them, and there is a ten-year structural guarantee backed by insurance taken out before the first block is laid. The house is built to RE2020, which is why heating one of our bungalows costs around €35 a month rather than the €250 an uninsulated farmhouse swallows in January. And there are no notaire fees on the construction itself — only on the land, which is the smaller part of the price.
For managing a build from Cork or Kildare, that structure is the whole point. You are not relying on trust and good intentions; you are relying on a contract that French law wrote for exactly this situation.
The two bits of paperwork to get right
Succession. French law has reserved heirs — children have a protected share of an estate — and it does not work the way Irish succession does. As an EU citizen you can elect for the law of your nationality to govern your estate under the EU succession regulation, but it has to be done properly, in the right instrument. Raise it with the notaire at the point of purchase, not years later. It is a twenty-minute conversation that saves a family a great deal.
Tax residency. Owning a French house does not make you a French tax resident; spending most of your year there can. If you are going to split your time, get that straight at the outset, because the two countries' treaty decides which of them taxes your pension and it is far easier to arrange before you move than after.
In one paragraph
The median Irish home sold for €399,999 in the year to July 2026, and the median Dublin home for €500,000. A brand new four-bedroom house in Brittany, Normandy or the Vendée starts at €185,000 all-inclusive on its plot, so the Dublin median buys one with roughly €300,000 to spare. Irish buyers also keep the four things that matter: free movement with no 90-day limit, no currency risk on the stage payments, EU healthcare rights, and a direct ferry from Rosslare or Cork. The one genuine obstacle is that Irish banks will not lend on French property, so it is equity release, a sale, or a French mortgage arranged after you have chosen the house. Sort succession and tax residency with the notaire at the outset and the rest is simpler than buying in Ireland.
Our free guide walks through the whole build — the contract, the stage payments, the guarantees and the timeline. Download it here; there is nothing to pay. Every house and land package is listed with its all-inclusive price and grouped by region, or book a free 30-minute call and we will go through the numbers for a specific plot. You can also reach us on WhatsApp Email Us if that is easier.
Irish price data from the CSO Residential Property Price Index, July 2026 release. Our prices are current at October 2026 and vary by plot. We build houses; we are not tax or legal advisers — take advice on succession and residency from a notaire and from your own accountant before you commit.