{"id":612720,"date":"2026-09-03T00:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T00:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/612720\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T00:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T00:02:11","slug":"cairn-homes-flags-higher-construction-inflation-as-average-selling-prices-rise-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/612720\/","title":{"rendered":"Cairn Homes flags higher construction inflation as average selling prices rise \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The average price of homes sold by Cairn Homes<\/a> rose by \u20ac6,000 to \u20ac393,000 in the past year, which tracked lower than inflation in the wider market.<\/p>\n

New interim results published by the home-builder on Wednesday flagged that the firm has faced elevated building costs this year compared to 2025.<\/p>\n

Last year, the home-builder\u2019s average sale price fell marginally to \u20ac387,000 exclusive of VAT in the first half of the year. <\/p>\n

The latest interim results have shown Cairn Homes\u2019 average selling price rose 1.6 per cent to \u20ac393,000, exclusive of VAT, in the year to the end of June this year.<\/p>\n

Cairn Homes chief executive Michael Stanley<\/a> said sourcing of materials from outside Ireland has helped the company maintain inflation in its sale prices below the 5.6 per cent increase recorded by the Central Statistics Office<\/a> in its latest residential price tracker.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur scale is allowing us to procure outside of Ireland. We\u2019re procuring an awful lot more materials in mainland Europe now, including Eastern Europe. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s helping us drive down cost and control cost. We are an island economy, we\u2019re a small economy, and we need our scale to be able to have that purchasing power.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Has the Government\u2019s strategy to keep fuel costs down proved to be \u2018knee-jerk\u2019 and difficult to reverse?<\/p>\n

Last year, Cairn Homes forecast that inflation would run between 1 per cent and 1.5 per cent. The firm\u2019s latest financial update has forecast build cost inflation will be higher at circa 2.5 per cent this year.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Stanley said the company would closely monitor the ongoing war in the Middle East to assess how events could impact on its supply chain.<\/p>\n

Last week, data from the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI) linked a 3 per cent rise in commercial construction prices<\/a> to turmoil in the region, which has impacted supply chains.<\/p>\n

Stanley said: \u201cThe longer it lasts, the slightly more challenging it becomes, to be honest.\u201d <\/p>\n

He added that the company, and wider sector, has been better prepared to weather recent supply chain issues due to lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our supply chain had hedged this particular challenge. That was probably a lesson learned from Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our conversations around price increases are really in the sort of area of surcharges. The challenge is, if those hedges unwind, and it lasts longer, will some of those surcharges become more sticky? We\u2019re not seeing that yet, but I would say towards the end of the year, if this continues, we might see more and more of that challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on the company\u2019s financial update, Cairn Homes now has a record forward order book of 5,020 new homes, valued at \u20ac1.89 billion, being built across 30 sites.<\/p>\n

Compared to the first six months of 2025, Cairn Homes\u2019 work-in-progress has risen by \u20ac69.1 million to \u20ac482.9 million. Revenue also rose in the first half of the year by 60 per cent to \u20ac455.5 million following the sale of 1,139 units.<\/p>\n

The company recorded a gross profit of \u20ac96.9 million, up 54 per cent year on year compared to \u20ac63.1 million in the first half of 2025, and its operating margin grew from 15 per cent to 16.4 per cent.<\/p>\n

Cairn Homes has updated its revenue forecast this year, with the firm expecting turnover of \u20ac1.08 billion. It previously said revenue would range between \u20ac1.05 billion and \u20ac1.08 billion.<\/p>\n

It added that operating profit of circa \u20ac185 million is expected this year, while its guidance on return on equity was upgraded from 16.5 per cent to 17 per cent.<\/p>\n

Stanley said the confidence the firm has in its result has led it to announce a new \u20ac50 million share buyback programme and to increase its interim dividend by 10 per cent to 4.5 cent per share.<\/p>\n

Further details in the interim results showed the company\u2019s net debt has fallen from \u20ac307.4 million to \u20ac194.5 million year on year, while it recorded \u201csignificantly stronger\u201d cash flow, improving by \u20ac141 million year on year to an inflow of \u20ac22.4 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The average price of homes sold by Cairn Homes rose by \u20ac6,000 to \u20ac393,000 in the past year,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,21443,14787,3662,61,60,126998],"class_list":["post-612720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-cairn-homes","tag-central-statistics-office","tag-housing-crisis","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-michael-stanley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}