Where the schemes come from
Every council, approved housing body and the Land Development Agency has to advertise cost rental and affordable purchase homes on the Housing Agency’s Starter Home Supports portal (newstarterhomes.ie, formerly affordablehomes.ie). That portal is our main source. We re-check it every 15 minutes, and every scheme page links back to its official listing and to the provider’s own page.
There is no national waiting list, and the portal shows one scheme at a time. So far we have recorded 362 schemes with 11,792 homes, the oldest listed on Thu 12 Jan 2023. Closed schemes stay on the site: what a provider charged in a development last year is the best guide to what the next phase will cost.
A second source for “open”
The portal sometimes lags the providers. On 5 October 2026 it showed Ballycomyn (Tuath) and The Paddocks (Clúid) as open while both providers’ own pages said applications had closed, and it was behind on two Clúid launches that Clúid already showed as launching soon. Since then the scheme pages of Tuath and Clúid, who run most cost rental schemes, overrule the portal’s status. Council and LDA schemes follow the portal, and the provider’s page is always one click away.
What we add, and how it is worked out
- Net income. The cost rental limits (€66,000 in Dublin, €59,000 elsewhere) are on net household income. The eligibility calculator takes gross pay and applies income tax, USC and PRSI from Revenue’s published rates for 2026, the PRSI change of 1 October 2026 and the Budget 2027 figures from 1 January 2027.
- The income a rent needs. Under each rent in a scheme table: the net household income at which that rent is exactly 35%, the affordability rule providers use. Rent times 12, divided by 0.35, rounded up to the next €100.
- The income limit for a purchase. For affordable purchase homes without a printed limit: 85.5% of the market value divided by four, the rule in the Housing Agency FAQ.
- Release history. 72 estates have been listed more than once. Each has a page with every release, the rents by date and the usual gap between phases.
- County notes. The “2026 so far” text on the busiest county pages is written by hand from the schemes listed there, with the date it was last updated.
Checks before every update
The site rebuilds several times a day. Before anything is published an automatic test suite runs, and if one test fails nothing is published: the previous version stays live and we get an alert. Among the checks:
- a single PAYE worker on €50,000 in Dublin comes out at €39,667.18 net, matching a calculation by hand from Revenue’s rates (€7,200 income tax, €1,032.82 USC, €2,100 PRSI);
- the purchase income limit reproduces the figure the portal prints for Canal Bank, Clonburris (€420,000 market value, €89,775 limit), and the deposit and price follow the worked table in the Housing Agency FAQ;
- Help to Buy is capped at the Budget 2027 maximum of €35,000;
- the portal pages we read still have the layout we expect, tested against saved copies, so a redesign cannot turn a rent into a blank;
- every scheme, county and estate page has a title and a description short enough to show in full in search results.
What we do not do
- We do not change a provider’s figures. A rent or price that looks wrong is reported to us and checked against the provider, not edited by guesswork.
- We do not decide eligibility. The calculators say “likely”, “borderline” or “unlikely” because only the provider decides, from your documents.
- We do not take applications or pass your details to a provider.
Found a mistake?
Email hello@costrentalradar.ie with the page and what you saw, or see contact. Corrections that change a rule or a calculator go in the log below.
Change log
- 26 October 2026. New guides: the Local Authority Home Loan with the April 2026 price caps and income limits, and what rent to buy means in Ireland when there is no State scheme. See the page.
- 26 October 2026. New pages: how we check the scheme data and the calculators, and a contact page for corrections. See the page.
- 25 October 2026. Alert subscribers sign in with a six-digit email code and see their counties, settings and recent emails in one place. A scheme opening within 36 hours is now emailed at once even to people on the morning digest: on 20 and 21 October the digest held back an evening-before reminder. See the page.
- 16 October 2026. Purchase calculator: the deposit now counts in the 95% test, as the Housing Agency FAQ applies it. Before, a large deposit could show a home as within reach when it was not. See the page.
- 14 October 2026. Rent tables: the "% reduction from open market" column is no longer read as the market rent on schemes that publish it that way.
- 11 October 2026. Eligibility calculator: PRSI at 4.35% from 1 October 2026, and the Budget 2027 tax bands, credits and USC from 1 January 2027, picked by date. See the page.
- 11 October 2026. One page per estate that the portal has listed more than once, with every release, the rents by date and how often a new phase comes.
- 6 October 2026. Help to Buy cap raised to €35,000 in line with Budget 2027. New guides on Help to Buy and the First Home Scheme. See the page.
- 5 October 2026. Second source for "open": the Tuath and Clúid scheme pages now overrule the portal. That day the portal showed Ballycomyn and The Paddocks as open while both providers said applications were closed.
- 24 September 2026. Documents checklist and eligibility rules checked line by line against the Housing Agency FAQ and Citizens Information. New guides on social housing income limits and affordable homes in Dublin by council. See the page.
- 22 September 2026. County pages for all 26 counties, and a side-by-side guide to the six affordable housing schemes. See the page.
- 8 September 2026. Guides on how cost rental works under the Affordable Housing Act 2021, cost rental rents in 2026, the equity share in affordable purchase, and who provides cost rental. See the page.