🇪🇺 Week 13 of 26: Placemaking in County Waterford
Growth Without Building
“Faigheann cos ar siúl rud nach bhfaigheann cos ina cónaí” — a walking foot finds something the resting foot never would.
🇪🇺 Week 13 of 26: Place Engage arrives in County Waterford – the halfway point of the series, and the county where I spent my student years. On the published record, Waterford grew without building: the population rose 10% between the last two censuses, the housing stock rose 4%, and the number of vacant dwellings fell by a quarter. Residential vacancy is now the third-lowest in the State. On the ground, IPAV agent Maria Clifford of Liberty Blue Estate Agents shared insights on the market that draws a distinct affordability line at €300,000, and we learn of home buyers near SETU where student-let investors used to dominate the viewings.
The headline figures:
127,363 people, up 10% since 2016 · 63% born in the county · housing stock up 4%, vacant dwellings down 25% · residential vacancy 2.2%, third-lowest in the State · average commute 23.6 minutes against 29.1 nationally · median house price €306,874 (~21% below national) · new-tenancy rent €1,371 (~25% below national), about 36% above what sitting tenants pay · 151 completions last quarter, 10 of them apartments · commercial vacancy 15.5% (as reported) · 615 entire homes on Airbnb against 52 to rent long-term.
Through iProperty Radio, Place Engage is undertaking a non-political placemaking series across 26 counties throughout the 26 weeks of Ireland’s EU Council Presidency. Each county week builds a Placemaking Data Baseline from primary sources before we arrive, and then our time on the ground is spent listening to people and exploring where the published record tracks lived experience, and where it diverges. Waterford is Week 13 of 26, the halfway mark; a separate piece reflecting on the series so far will follow.
A personal note before the data
After a post-Leaving Cert summer in London in the mid-1990s, I ended up at Waterford IT (now SETU) studying law and business, while working behind the bar in the Mount Sion GAA club, as a lifeguard in Splashworld, and then as a receptionist in the old Grand Hotel in Tramore. I loved every minute of working life, and I certainly spent more time working than in college or studying. My love of education took a few decades to kick in.
Unlike most students, I spent my summers there, and, although I was studying law, I had my first property experience in Waterford. In my first year in the city I fell in love with a slightly unloved apartment in the centre of town, over a taxi office. I hunted down the landlord in Tramore and convinced him to rent it to me for the following year. When moving day arrived, I was surprised and delighted to find that the apartment had had a makeover. The landlord said that was because he was going to have female tenants; he had apparently had negative experiences with male tenants in the past. In any event, my very first introduction to landlords was a wholly positive one. I agreed to let out the second unit in the building for him, collected the rent for both units each week from the various student tenants, and handed it over to the landlord when he arrived at the door each month. It was my first foray into property letting, and I was so enthusiastic about it that it never even occurred to me to charge the tenants an extra fee, or to charge the landlord for my efforts. That enthusiasm for property over income has been the bane of my bank manager’s life for the past few decades!
I adored living in Waterford. In my first year I lived over the old Metropole bar on Mary Street, not the best part of town, so I used the Quays as my main route at night. For second and third year, I worked late hours in the Mount Sion GAA club and walked back to my apartment overlooking City Square late at night, and I never felt unsafe. Then I would be up for the early bus to Tramore for a morning swim, a shift in Splashworld or a shift in the Grand Hotel, before catching the last bus back to the city. Classes were not my priority at the time. It was the only urban setting I ever really enjoyed, and even today, when I find any excuse to return, the city still surprises and delights me with new shops, new street art and murals, and some of the best urban realms in Ireland.
This city is also where I started my family, so I understand what it is like to live, work, study, access childcare and use other services here. All in all, I found Waterford to be the most liveable city in Ireland, and from chatting to people in the city centre this week (admittedly after 5pm), that remains broadly true. Access to childcare, in both availability and affordability, was raised as an issue. When I wrote in Week 6 that I would like to hear from working parents about life in our regional cities today, this is the answer that came back first.
If there were a measure of rooted creative energy in a place, I genuinely believe Waterford would rank highest, and that is coming from a former Kilkenny worker and current Galway resident.
The excitement about the North Quays development is palpable (waterfordnorthquays.ie).
To challenge myself this week, I spent most of my time outside the city, in the market towns, coastal villages and rural parishes, which is where most of the conversations below took place.
Growth without building: housed in homes that were already standing
Waterford’s population reached 127,363 in April 2022, up 10%, or 11,187 people, since 2016, against 8% nationally (CSO Census 2022). Over the same period the housing stock rose only 4%, from 52,491 to 54,847 dwellings, while the number of vacant dwellings fell by a quarter, from 5,194 to 3,871, against an 11% fall nationally. By June 2026, residential vacancy stood at 2.2%, the third-lowest in the State after Dublin (1.4%) and Kildare (1.6%), against 3.7% nationally (GeoDirectory).
It appears that Waterford housed much of its growth in homes that were already standing, which is positive. But that route has a limit. With residential vacancy at 2.2%, few vacant homes remain to absorb the next round of growth, and the pressure moves onto new supply. There is also a hard core that has not moved: 1,144 dwellings were recorded as vacant in both the 2016 and 2022 censuses.
The county’s centre of gravity is Waterford city and suburbs, with 60,079 people in 2022. That figure carries the same caveat as Drogheda in Week 5 and Carlow in Week 7: the city’s suburbs extend across the River Suir into County Kilkenny, so it is a count of people living in the city and suburbs, not a count of County Waterford residents.
The anti-Meath: a short commute and a rooted county
Five weeks ago, Meath gave us the longest average commute in Ireland, at 35.2 minutes. Waterford is its opposite. The average journey to work here is 23.6 minutes, against 29.1 nationally. The number of people at work rose 21% to 55,330, against 16% nationally, and manufacturing is the largest employer, with almost 9,000 workers (CSO Census 2022). Of those commuting, 31,639 drive, 4,616 walk, 1,252 take the bus, 794 cycle and just 73 take the train. These are named modes only and do not sum to the 48,925 total.
The county is also rooted: 63% of residents were born in Waterford, against 32% in Meath and 43% in Carlow. The average age is 39.9, above the national 38.8, and the over-65s are up 21% since 2016 to 21,032 people.
One figure deserves a place of its own. Gaeltacht na nDéise, the Waterford Gaeltacht of An Rinn and An Sean Phobal, recorded 2,063 people in 2022, up 14%, the highest rate of population growth of any Gaeltacht area (CSO Census 2022, Profile 8). It comes back later in this article.
What a home costs
On the transaction record, the median house price in County Waterford was €306,874 across 2026 to date, up 2.3% on the €300,000 recorded in 2025, against a national median of €390,000 on the same basis. That is about 21% below the national line and 14th of 26 counties (HousePrice.ie’s county page for Waterford, drawn from the PSRA Residential Property Price Register; 1,030 sales registered, captured on the page’s data-updated date of 16 September 2026).
These are achieved prices, what buyers actually paid on the register, as distinct from the asking prices in the Daft.ie snapshot later in this article. The same page bridges the two: of 747 Waterford homes HousePrice.ie tracked from listing to registered sale, the typical gap from asking to sold was +3.2%, and 63.6% sold above the asking price.
Beneath the single median, the median detached house sold for €460,000 in 2026 to date, a semi-detached for €333,250, a bungalow for €310,000, an end-of-terrace for €258,000, a terrace for €224,000 and an apartment for €185,000. Over six years the county median rose from €182,368 in 2020 to €306,874, about 68%, against a national move from €248,000 to €390,000, about 57%. Waterford sits below the national line, but over six years it has been closing on it, even as this year’s 2.3% runs behind the national pace.
Rents sit further below the national line. The standardised average rent for new tenancies in County Waterford was €1,371 in Q1 2026, up 8.4% year on year, against €1,839 nationally, about 25% below. Existing tenancies averaged €1,011, against €1,513 nationally (RTB/ESRI Rent Index, Q1 2026). The gap between those two figures is the part I would put to any Waterford renter. A new tenant pays about €360 a month more than a sitting tenant, roughly 36%, against a national gap of 21.6%. In a tight market, the cost of moving is high.
Waterford City’s new-tenancy rent of €1,423 is the lowest of Ireland’s five cities, but it rose 10.7% in a year. Within the county, Waterford City East is the most expensive Local Electoral Area at €1,491 for a new tenancy, and Tramore–Waterford City West is the least expensive published, at €1,304. New-tenancy rents in Lismore and Portlaw–Kilmacthomas had too few registrations to publish.
What’s built, and what’s empty
County Waterford completed 151 new dwellings in Q2 2026. That is about 1.7% of national output from a county holding about 2.5% of the national population. Of the 151, 102 were scheme houses, 39 were single houses and 10 were apartments, under 7% against 30% nationally. A county containing one of the State’s five cities completed 10 apartments in a quarter, while its median apartment sells for €185,000, some €275,000 below a detached house.
The homes are full; the shopfronts are not.
Commercial vacancy in the county was 15.5% in June 2026, above the national 14.5%, with Dungarvan at 20.4% and Tramore at 12.1% (GeoDirectory). Homes 2.2% vacant, shopfronts 15.5% vacant: in Waterford the empty-building question is a town-centre question, not a housing-stock one.
And the short-let balance. On a live capture on 20 September 2026 there were 359 homes advertised for sale and 52 available to rent long-term (Daft.ie), while a same-day capture found 615 entire homes listed on Airbnb (Airbnb, entire-home county search). That is roughly 12 whole homes offered to visitors for every one offered to a long-term renter, and one rental listing for roughly every 2,450 residents (derived). Of the 52 rentals, 29 were in Waterford City on Daft.ie’s own area definition, which leaves 23 homes to rent outside Waterford City: Tramore, Dungarvan, Dunmore East, Lismore, the Gaeltacht and everything in between (derived).
*These are live platform snapshots, not comparable to trailing-listings measures, and Daft.ie’s city area is not the census boundary.
The view from the market: a €300,000 line, and fewer student-let investors near SETU
Testing the baseline against someone close to the transactions, Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers (IPAV) agent Maria Clifford of Liberty Blue Estate Agents in Waterford, describes a market divided at a single price line.:
“What we are seeing on the ground in the Waterford market is there is huge demand for properties priced €300,000 and under,” she says.
Above €300,000, her agency sees what she calls a more normalised level of viewing activity.
Read against the baseline, that line falls almost exactly on the county’s achieved median of €306,874. It also falls between the property types. On the register, the terrace (€224,000), end-of-terrace (€258,000) and apartment (€185,000) sit below it; the bungalow, semi-detached and detached sit above. The homes in highest demand are the types Waterford builds least: 10 apartments in the quarter, and a completion mix that is two-thirds estate housing. This is the same supply-mix argument the series has made since Meath, and Waterford’s agent evidence lands on it independently.
On who is looking, Maria’s agency finds that 85% of viewers are home buyers and 15% are investors. Her sharpest observation concerns a particular kind of investor. Over the past 24 months, areas close to SETU that would typically have drawn investors buying properties to let to students have seen those investors investing less; in those areas, she finds that the viewers are now predominantly home buyers.
Maria’s experience raises a question: if student lets near a campus are passing to owner-occupiers, where are students now housing themselves?
On new homes, her account is specific. Four-bedroom, larger homes sell out first. At Copper Close, Summerfields, Liberty Blue sold out a recent phase and held a waiting list of over 42 people for future four-bed homes.
Dungarvan and the Déise Gaeltacht: a view from housing advocacy
Image
Image @Rob Cass
Outside the city, the sharpest challenge to the baseline came from Waterford resident and sustainable housing advocate Rob Cass of One Million Homes (onemillionhomes.ie). His analysis, built on first-time-buyer data compiled by Edward Dixon (lnkd.in/eT5nkwb8), measures how many first-time buyers of new homes each Eircode area records, and converts that into an estimate of how long it would take a household without a home to get keys.
On his figures, Dungarvan recorded around three first-time buyers of new homes a year, and none in the past seven months. That puts the town, on his measure, at more than 85 years to get a home. He sets it against Drogheda, which his data ranks first nationally at over 500 first-time buyers of new homes a year, with more than 70% of all new-home sales going to first-time buyers, which he puts at about six years. He points out that the two towns have similar pricing. The Drogheda half of that comparison is consistent in direction with our own Week 5 record, where Drogheda Rural was one of only two Local Electoral Areas outside Dublin in the national top ten for completions (CSO, Q1 2026). The measures differ, and Drogheda’s Built-Up Area extends into County Meath.
Rob also relays the traders’ side of Dungarvan’s success. The town is widely held up nationally as a model, not least for the Waterford Greenway. But on his account, traders say the Greenway’s success has hollowed out the town from Monday to Thursday and inflated prices over the past ten years, with a premium he estimates at about €100,000 in Dungarvan and €200,000 in An Rinn and Ard Mór. He estimates that there are around 200 vacant units above shops in the town. His policy ask is to extend the Living City Initiative tax relief beyond above-the-shop units and to Gaeltacht areas.
His Gaeltacht point is where the advocacy view and the census meet, and where they pull in different directions. Gaeltacht na nDéise grew 14% between 2016 and 2022, the fastest of any Gaeltacht. Rob’s figure is that the Gaeltacht has had just one new home built, and he describes a decline of around 30% across parishes, schools and GAA in the wider rural area over the past decade (onemillionhomes.ie/#gaeltacht). A Gaeltacht growing faster than any other, with, on his figures, almost nothing new being built for it, is the question I would most like to put to Comhairle Ceantair na nDéise and to the families of An Rinn…
??? The Dungarvan pattern the traders describe is one the series has now seen three times. In Week 1, remote working had emptied the midweek from the Dublin Docklands. In Week 5, Louth’s commuter towns had the reverse, and the cafés still closed on Mondays. And now there is a Greenway town that fills at weekends and empties from Monday to Thursday. Tourism success and resident life run on different calendars, and a town centre has to work on both.
Notes from the coast and the villages
Tramore: By coincidence, on the day we were in Tramore, Waterford City and County Council announced the signing of contracts with Conor Phelan Construction for a water sports facility on the Prom. It will include hot and cold showers, a Changing Places toilet, induction space and beach wheelchair storage, along with an upgrade of the existing toilet facilities. Tramore retained its Blue Flag in 2026 and was newly added to the Green Coast Award list. As a former Splashworld lifeguard, who trained in the sea there, I can report that the sea is still the town’s best asset. The Changing Places toilet and beach wheelchair storage are the details that decide who else gets to use it.
Ardmore: The council opened a public consultation on 18 September on a public realm scheme for Main Street and Cois Trá in Ardmore, a village of around 468 people within an architectural conservation area, as described in the scheme documents. The proposals include new pedestrian crossings, continuous and widened footpaths with the carriageway narrowed to 6 m where appropriate, a 3 m shared footpath where feasible, new street furniture, planting and lighting, a coach stop, and the removal of the Main Street roundabout. The roundabout removal depends on a new relief road and car park due to begin construction in Q4 2026, which will carry Bus Éireann and Local Link services on a clockwise route and avoid U-turns on Main Street. It is a good small example of how a public realm scheme depends on enabling infrastructure: the street can only change once the bus has somewhere else to turn.
Kilmeaden: The week’s most contested local planning application sits on the site of the former cheese factory at Kilmeaden. Crag Rathnew DC Limited and Kent Homes Limited have applied to Waterford City and County Council for a ten-year permission for a mixed-use development across 108.79 hectares. It comprises a village centre with an element of residential development, including accessible units for older people and those with limited mobility; three ICT buildings; an energy centre; battery storage; a solar farm; and a rewilding area. The applicants’ planning report, prepared by John Spain Associates, describes a new village centre and public realm, redevelopment of former industrial lands for employment, and the use of waste heat from the ICT buildings to supply low-carbon heat to the village centre.
Also, local opposition has been organised through the campaign group Kilmeaden Says No, and around 400 submissions, observations and objections have been lodged with the council. A document circulated by the group highlights several points in the further information received on 25 August. It reports that Uisce Éireann’s correspondence states there is currently insufficient wastewater capacity for the full development, and that archaeological testing has confirmed remains within the footprint, some assessed by the applicant’s own specialist as of high importance. It also questions whether the stated maximum electrical demand of about 195 MW is consistent with the stated annual consumption of about 1,781 GWh. As reported, submissions on the further information close on Monday 28 September, and a decision is due by 19 October.
Place Engage takes no position on the application. What it illustrates, for a series about how national ambitions reach the ground, is that the questions residents are asking are placemaking questions: wastewater headroom, heritage in the ground, scale relative to a village, and who the new village centre is for. Wastewater capacity is the same ceiling we met at Mortarstown in Carlow and in the north Louth water outages. And the waste-heat proposal is, in principle, the kind of integration between data infrastructure and community that national policy says it wants. Whether this is the right site and scale for it is a matter for the planning process.
The takeaways for Waterford
Three things stand out from our Week 13 trip:
- First, Waterford has grown without building. Its population rose 10% on a housing stock that grew 4%, its vacant dwellings fell by a quarter, and residential vacancy is now the third-lowest in the State. The growth of the last census period was largely absorbed by homes that were already standing, and there is little room left to do that again.
- Second, the affordable rungs are where the demand is, and where the building is not. Maria Clifford’s €300,000 line sits almost exactly on the county median, the property types below it are terraces and apartments, and the county completed 10 apartments in a quarter. A new tenant pays roughly 36% more than a sitting one, and outside Waterford City there were 23 homes to rent on a live September search.
- Third, success has a calendar. Waterford’s shorter commute, rooted population and creative energy make it, to my mind, the most liveable city in the series. But the county’s standout places carry costs that a county median cannot show: a Greenway town that, on the traders’ account, empties from Monday to Thursday; a Gaeltacht growing faster than any other while, on an advocate’s figures, almost nothing is built for it; and villages from Ardmore to Kilmeaden working through what new infrastructure means for them, in public, this month.
As ever, this is a starting point only. Waterford is a city I have lived in, worked in and started a family in – albeit decades ago – which is exactly why I want the county tested against what residents and practitioners see day to day: in the city and Ferrybank, in Tramore, Dungarvan and Dunmore East, in Lismore, Cappoquin, Portlaw and Kilmacthomas, and in An Rinn and An Sean Phobal. Does the data match what you see?
Corrections and contributions are always welcome: carol@placeengage.com