New figures from the Central Statistics Office show the overall proportion of new home builds comprising of apartments continued to increase in the third quarter of 2021.
The CSO said there were 1,000 apartment completions in the third quarter of 2021, up 39.9% from the third quarter of 2020, and representing about a fifth of all new home builds.
But single dwellings were down 18.1% from the third quarter of 2020, while scheme dwellings also saw a decline, falling by 14.3% in the last year.
Today's figures show there were 4,656 new dwelling completions in the three months from July to September, down 7.7% from the same time last year.
Of all completions in Q3 2021, 52.8% are scheme, 25.7% are single and 21.5% are apartments. This is a notable rise in the proportion of apartments completed from Q3 2020 when this was just 14.2%.
Only two regions saw an increase in completions from the third quarter of 2020, Dublin with a 12.1% increase and the Midlands with 4.2%.
The CSO noted that more than two-thirds of all apartment completions were in Dublin (67.4%) with 674 completed this quarter.
More than half of all new dwelling completions in Dublin (54.6%) were apartments, it added.
The Mid-East region accounted for 34.6% of total scheme dwellings this quarter while the South-West region had the highest number of single dwelling completions, with 17.3% of all nationally.
Meanwhile, Kildare had the highest number of completions by a local authority in the third quarter of 2021.
At a Local Electoral Area level, Glencullen in Sandyford in Dublin had the most completions.
With the exception of Skibbereen in West Cork, all of the top ten Local Electoral Areas with the most completions were in Dublin, Kildare or Meath, the CSO added.
Property Industry Ireland (PII) said the growth in completions for the first three quarters underlines the work the sector has done to make up for lost time given the 4-month lockdown at the start of the year.
"While completions in Q3 are down on the same quarter in 2020, this reflects the decline in commencements during 2020 as COVID restrictions impacted on activity," PII Director, Dr David Duffy stated.
"Given the response of the sector, we expect housing completions to be close to or over 20,000 this year."
"Addressing the barriers to new housing supply is vitally important. Measures within Housing for All that tackle the barriers to housing supply should be prioritised. Public and private sector collaboration to implement housing policy is crucial to ensure the targets within Housing for All are met."
