More than 5,000 miles separate Beverly Hills in California from the Irish capital, yet developer Kennedy Wilson, which is headquartered on the star-studded streets of Los Angeles, is taking a keen interest in the Dublin market.

Dublin scheme: developer Kennedy Wilson is building 700 homes for rent on the site of the former Player Wills tobacco factory

The developer is building 700 homes for rent on the site of the former Player Wills tobacco factory in south Dublin. The scheme is part of a €2bn (£1.7bn) deal with Dutch pension services provider APG that covers the construction of more than 1,500 homes across two other sites in Dublin, as well as an equity stake in a completed and tenanted 1,100-home portfolio. It will take Kennedy Wilson’s Irish build-to-rent (BTR) interest towards 7,000 homes.

John Keegan, senior managing director, head of capital raising for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Kennedy Wilson, says a number of factors have coalesced to make the Irish BTR market attractive.

The Irish government has introduced a number of reforms designed to ease the development of rental housing, while a housing shortage and a sizeable transient workforce have driven up demand. On top of this, EU membership makes investment easier and cheaper in Ireland than in the post-Brexit UK for many institutions returning to the sector for the first time since Covid hit.

There is a huge wall of quite accretive finance within this sector
John Keegan, Kennedy Wilson

“We went out for financing for Player Wills and had 17 investment and local banks look to finance the scheme, so there is a huge wall of quite accretive finance within this sector,” Keegan says. He adds that Ireland’s housing department “is trying to work with developers to get viability going again, especially in Dublin, and I’m sure there will be other [schemes] to follow”.

Consultancy CBRE describes the institutional rental sector as “the market to watch” in Ireland this year. “Policy changes and pent-up activity are expected to drive a significant uptick in transaction volumes over the next 12 months,” it says in a recent report.

Full-year investment volumes in the private rental sector, excluding purpose-built student accommodation, were €400m (£340m) last year, according to CBRE. But it anticipates this figure “will more than double in 2026”.

Trading returns

Shane Cahir, senior director of development and residential capital markets at CBRE Ireland, says trading in the sector has resumed in earnest following a “two-year hiatus” due to high interest rates.

He points to the sale of the 360-home Spencer Place scheme in August 2025 as a key moment. CBRE played a role in investor and developer Ardstone’s €177m (£150m) acquisition of the Dublin development, handling the disposal alongside Eastdil Secured on behalf of Ronan Group and Fortress Investment Group’s Spencer Place Development Company. The deal, featuring occupied BTR apartments and co-living spaces across two buildings, was the largest of its kind in Ireland for some time.

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Key moment: Ardstone acquired the 360-home Spencer Place scheme in Dublin for €177m in August 2025

“That was the first meaningful process that had been launched in the market in this new cycle and we saw really strong interest and participation,” Cahir says. “It was close to 20 inspections of the asset.”

He says yields of around 5% in Ireland were outshining those available in continental Europe at that time, while interest rates were lower than in the UK. The Irish government relaxed certain planning standards for apartments in July 2025 and this year brought in rental reforms that included allowing rent resets for qualifying new tenancies and developments.

“There were a number of bids that emerged for Spencer Place,” Cahir says.

“The Ardstone deal acted as a catalyst for additional vendors in the market to trade.”

The subsequent explosion of activity in the sector has been sustained. Singaporean state investor GIC bought Newmarket Yards, a fully leased 413-home BTR development in Dublin city centre, for €212m (£180m) in April; while German investor MEAG acquired the 140-apartment Seafield Strand project in the north of the Irish capital in July, having made its first foray into the Irish market earlier this year.

The BTR landscape in Ireland has compelling fundamentals
Kristian Branum-Burns, QuadReal

Meanwhile, last September, Canadian investor QuadReal acquired Realstar’s UK and Ireland residential operating platform, which includes homes in Dublin as well as the UK. The company also owns a number of private rental homes in Ireland.

Kristian Branum-Burns, managing director for residential Europe at QuadReal, says the “predominantly suburban” Irish homes are attractive to a wide pool of potential tenants.

“We are seeing great results in terms of occupancy and sustainable levels of rental growth,” he adds. “We are exploring opportunities to acquire similar properties in the Dublin market.”

Steady growth in employment and wages in the Irish capital is complemented by a young, “highly educated” population, Branum-Burns says. Investment has been “reignited” by the recent rental reforms, he adds. “The BTR landscape in Ireland has compelling fundamentals across the board.”

Investment mix

Bryn Griffiths, head of cost management in Ireland at professional services firm Turner & Townsend, believes an increase in investment in the sector is on the cards. Along with the hard-nosed property developers and investors, some more unusual bulk buyers are emerging, he adds.

“I’m hearing about buy-outs of apartment blocks by companies based in Ireland that are struggling to get their staff accommodated,” Griffiths says. “We’ve got a lot of big tech and pharmaceutical companies for whom housing is a real issue.”

There is a strong need to get more delivered and at greater density
Bryn Griffiths, Turner & Townsend

According to Griffiths, a mix of property is coming through in the sector. “There’s a lot of single-family builds, especially outside Dublin,” he says. “You’ve two or three significant housebuilders that drive most of that. There is a strong need to get more delivered, though, and at greater density, so the government and the industry recognise that’s got to come through apartment development in the main towns and cities.”

He adds that buyers are even snapping up property that is not necessarily BTR in the strictest sense: “We’ve worked on and delivered well in excess of 1,000 units over the past few years that have ended up in the rental stock but might not have set out that way. An investor came along and took a block.”

Active market: GIC bought Newmarket Yards, a 413-home BTR development in Dublin city centre, for €212m in April

Griffiths says apartment design has “homogenised” over the past few years as developers have worked out the market. “Most of it is a fairly mid-level, nicely designed, highly efficient, low cost of operation,” he adds. “You’ve not got the same specification competition and extreme levels of wealth as in London.”

However, the more nascent co-living market has been stymied so far, he says. “There is a very negative history here of bedsits and poor living conditions,” he adds. “The [model] was effectively banned [by ministers in 2020]. There is an expectation that it’ll come back, because it is needed.”

Market stability

Looking forward, Griffiths says stability in the market is required. “Lots of good things were done last year and I think the big call from the industry is to leave that alone now. Continual changes make people hold back a bit.”

Some economic uncertainty is beyond Ireland’s control, of course, with a broad range of economic and geopolitical factors having a possible impact on the Irish BTR sector. “The Middle East conflict has upset things a bit,” Griffiths says. “Almost every year for the past four or five you’ve had something that’s made people take a breather.”

Land prices remain high, he adds, and in the prime city centre locations, BTR developers are competing for space with other high-demand asset classes such as hotels.

Nonetheless, Griffiths is positive. “The single biggest problem for this government is housing,” he says. “Into the mix of that, we’ve got some significant infrastructure projects such as building Ireland’s first metro. There is nowhere for the labourers to live. If we don’t have the housing, we won’t have the people to deliver what we need. There is government will and government money. We will definitely see an increase.”

Keegan says Kennedy Wilson is “very positive” about the Irish BTR market. While the developer intends to focus on building the three projects it has acquired with APG, Keegan says it will “look at” the potential to buy more stabilised income-producing schemes. “Hopefully, we’ll do some deals over the next couple of quarters,” he concludes.

Alta Verde

Located in Dublin’s Blackrock coastal suburb, the 246-home Alta Verde build-to-rent development was fully let in July, just over a year after it was completed.

Irish developer Lioncor brought forward the three-building scheme with a belief in the fundamental requirement for high-quality housing.

The BREEAM ‘Excellent’-rated development features amenities including an onsite padel court, a dog park and rooftop terraces as well as fitness and leisure facilities and community spaces.

Lioncor chief executive Marcus Ryan says: “Ireland’s housing shortage is structural, not cyclical. Population growth and household formation continue to outpace delivery, while new apartment supply remains materially below requirements.

“The estimated deficit of 250,000 homes represents around seven years of current homes delivery, making long-term capital essential to increasing supply at scale.”