Cork city housing starts down 79% as of November

November was Cork City’s most successful month this year for housing commencement notices, with 366, but commencements are down 79% on last year, according to government data.

The city November figure includes 331 apartments, 30 scheme units, and five one-off houses. It brings total city commencements in 2025 to 941, including 335 scheme units, 582 apartment units, and 24 one-off units, with figures outstanding for just one month.

This year’s November commencements are a significant increase on the seven in November 2024 in the city, however, barring an exceptionally busy December, the city for 2025 looks likely to be far off last year’s total of 4,584.

Cork county had just 39 commencements in November, down from 118 in November 2024. This includes 22 one-off units, nine scheme, and eight apartments.

The county is performing better than the city in terms of overall commencements, with 1,128 so far this year, the second highest in Ireland, after Dublin city, though still far below last year’s total of 4,630.

As of November 2024, there had been 4,471 commencements in Cork city and 3,368 in Cork county, meaning a 79% decrease in Cork city in 2025 and 67% decrease in Cork county, or an overall decrease of 74%.

However, housing completions across Cork are up slightly this year, so far, with 2,602 in the first three quarters of 2025 across Cork city and county, compared to 2,513 in the first three quarters of 2024, a 3.5% increase.

This includes a 30% increase, from 844 to 1,100, in Cork city, with the city looking likely to surpass last year’s 12-month total of 1,220 completions.

In Cork county, completions have decreased by 10%, from 1,669, for the first three quarters of last year to 1,502 this year, with considerable ground to be made up in the last three months of this year to surpass the 2,316 figure of last year.

It comes as chief economist with BPFI, Ali Ugur, notes in the group’s Housing Market Monitor that, across Ireland: “The rate of increase in housing supply seems to have improved in 2025, with around 35,000 units expected to be completed during the year.

“We expect a similar or slightly higher level of completions in 2026. However, looking at the current commencement activity in the residential construction sector, it looks challenging for the sector to increase output significantly after 2026, unless we see a significant increase in the commencement activity in the first half of next year.

“In addition, there still seem to be skills gaps for certain occupations in the wider sector, and especially in the occupation groups which the residential construction sector heavily relies on in order to increase output significantly.”