First Home Scheme Price Ceilings Ireland: How to Check the Limit for Your County

If you’ve landed here looking for the First Home Scheme price ceiling for a specific area, start with the lookup below. Select the correct local authority, choose the property route, and optionally enter the purchase price or self-build valuation to see whether it sits within the current ceiling.

Prefer the full searchable version? Open the First Home Scheme Price Ceiling Lookup Ireland page to compare every local authority area in one table.

This lookup is designed for quick planning. The official First Home Scheme table remains the final source before you apply, go sale agreed or sign contracts because ceilings are reviewed periodically and may change.

• Use the property’s local authority, not just the county name.
• Choose house, apartment or self-build carefully because some areas have different limits.
• For a new-build or tenant purchase, compare the ceiling against the purchase price.
• For a self-build, compare the ceiling against the approved completed-home valuation or scheme-relevant build figure used by your lender/FHS process.

The First Home Scheme uses a maximum property price per local authority. If the home you want costs more than the ceiling for the county or city it sits in, FHS will not support the purchase. There is no negotiation on the ceiling figure itself — it is a fixed scheme parameter set per local authority.

Ceilings vary because property markets vary. The larger urban areas (Dublin’s four local authorities, Cork City, Galway City) typically have higher ceilings than rural counties. Within the same local authority, apartments and houses can have different ceiling values to reflect typical price points for each property type.

The system is designed so a first-time buyer can use FHS to access homes that are reasonably priced for the area they want to live in — not unlimited support for any price point.

The official source is the First Home Scheme property price ceilings page. When you open it, work through these four steps carefully:

Step 1 — Identify the correct local authority

Ireland has 31 local authorities, not 26 counties. Dublin alone has four: Dublin City Council, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Fingal, and South Dublin. Cork has two: Cork City and Cork County. Galway has two: Galway City and Galway County. If you look up "Dublin" or "Cork" without confirming which local authority the address sits in, you can read the wrong ceiling.

The local authority is decided by the property’s address, not by your assumption of which "county" it is in. The Eircode lookup tool on the official local government site is the safest way to confirm which local authority an address belongs to.

Step 2 — Confirm the property type

In some local authorities, houses and apartments are listed separately on the ceiling table. In others, the same ceiling applies to both. Read both columns of the table for your local authority. The FHS portal will classify the property based on its planning permission and BER cert — what the estate agent calls it isn’t always definitive.

If you’re buying a duplex, a townhouse, a maisonette, or any other hybrid type, ask your solicitor (or the FHS application portal directly) which ceiling applies before relying on either figure.

Step 3 — Confirm the purchase price or approved valuation

For a new-build purchase, the ceiling applies to the contract purchase price. For a self-build, it applies to the lender’s approved valuation of the completed home. These are not always the same number — your lender’s valuation might come in higher or lower than the cost you’re paying to build.

Step 4 — Check if the price is at, below or above the ceiling

If your number is at or below the ceiling, the property is within FHS support. If it’s above — even by a few thousand euro — FHS is unavailable on that home in its current form.

Suppose the FHS ceiling for houses in a particular Cork City local authority is in the high four-hundred-thousands. Two buyers look at almost identical 3-bed new-builds in the same estate.

Saoirse finds a property listed at €485,000, comfortably below the local ceiling. Her funding stack is €380,000 mortgage approval + €30,000 deposit + €22,000 HTB = €432,000. Her funding gap is €53,000. The 20% combined FHS cap easily covers this. Saoirse can complete the purchase using HTB + FHS.

Aisling finds a near-identical 3-bed in the same estate listed at €515,000, above the ceiling. Her funding stack and eligibility are otherwise just as strong as Saoirse’s. But because the property price exceeds the FHS ceiling, FHS will not support the purchase in its current form. Aisling’s options are: negotiate the price down to the ceiling, walk away and find a property below the ceiling, look at a different local authority with a higher ceiling, or attempt to fund the purchase without FHS (which most buyers in her position cannot).

A €30,000 difference in asking price flipped a working FHS funding plan into a dead end. This is why checking the ceiling before going sale agreed matters far more than checking it after.

The most common practical answer is the first: negotiate the price down to or just below the ceiling. Many sellers and developers will accept a small reduction to keep a sale alive, especially when the alternative is a contract collapsing at the lender stage.

The second-most-common answer is widening the search to include the next local authority. A buyer searching only "Cork" might find that Cork County has stock that meets their needs and sits within the appropriate ceiling, even if Cork City does not.

Once you know the ceiling for your local authority, estimate your funding gap

The First Home Scheme reviews ceilings periodically. Recent reviews have reflected:

• General property price changes in particular markets
• Government priorities for housing affordability in specific local authorities
• Changes to the scheme’s overall design or funding capacity

Ceilings can move upward or stay flat. They are not indexed automatically to any single official property price measure. The only reliable way to confirm the current ceiling at the moment you go sale agreed is to open the official First Home Scheme page on that day.

This is also why this guide doesn’t reproduce the table. Today’s correct ceiling becomes tomorrow’s stale figure with no warning, and a buyer relying on a third-party reproduction can plan a funding stack around the wrong number.

Before going sale agreed on a new-build you intend to fund with FHS:

1. Open the official First Home Scheme property price ceilings page.
2. Identify the local authority for the property (Eircode-based, not what the estate agent labels it).
3. Identify the property type under FHS classification (house, apartment, or other — check both columns).
4. Confirm the purchase price (new-build) or approved valuation (self-build) does not exceed the relevant ceiling.
5. If you’re at the edge of the ceiling, build a small negotiation buffer into your offer to avoid being caught by any small revision before contracts.

This single check, done in five minutes before any offer is submitted, prevents most of the late-stage FHS application failures.

• Understand how FHS itself works: First Home Scheme Explained.
• If you’re considering both schemes: Using HTB and FHS Together.
• Plan for the long-term cost: Service Charges Explained.
• Check your borrowing limit: Mortgage Affordability Calculator.
• Estimate stamp duty: Stamp Duty Calculator.