Ireland's valuation options run from free government tools to formal chartered reports, and they answer different questions. This guide maps each one — Revenue's LPT tool, estate-agent appraisals, data-driven valuation reports, and chartered valuations — to what it is actually for.
Revenue publishes an interactive valuation tool for Local Property Tax self-assessment. It shows average valuation bands by area and property type — an official, free anchor for what Revenue considers plausible in a locality.
Its limits are stated by Revenue itself: it is a guide to area averages, not a per-property estimate, and taxpayers are told to combine it with the Property Price Register, current listings, and the specifics of their own home (size, age, condition). Use it to sanity-check a range, not to price a specific house.
Most Irish agencies offer a free 'market appraisal' when you're thinking of selling. The local knowledge is real — a good agent knows which side of a road sells better and what the last three quiet off-market deals closed at.
Two caveats. First, an appraisal is not a valuation: it carries no professional liability and no lender will accept it. Second, the appraisal is also a pitch for your listing, which can pull the number optimistic. Getting two or three appraisals and checking them against PPR comps neutralises most of the bias.
Between free tools and professional fees sits a newer category: automated reports built from sold-price data. These generate a fair-value range for one specific property from PPR comparables, and present the underlying evidence so you can audit it.
iHouse's valuation report is in this category. It combines a model trained on verified PPR sold prices with comparable-sales and rental-comparable tables, live competing listings, bid guidance, running-cost estimates (energy, LPT, mortgage scenarios), Help-to-Buy / First Home Scheme eligibility screens, and planning / flood / radon context, delivered online and as a PDF. It is a data product for buyer research — explicitly not a professional valuation.
The honest comparison with doing it yourself: everything in such a report is derivable from public sources, and this glossary explains how. What the report adds is the assembly — comps already matched, adjusted and trend-indexed, with the context data joined on — which otherwise takes an afternoon per property.
A formal valuation is carried out by a chartered valuer — in Ireland, an SCSI/RICS member working to 'Red Book' standards — who inspects the property in person and takes professional liability for the figure. Fees vary by valuer and property; get quotes.
It is the only valuation accepted for mortgage drawdown (lenders typically require a valuer from their own panel), and the standard instrument for probate, separation, Fair Deal, and tax matters. If the number needs to stand up to a bank or a court, this is the one.
Only a valuation by a professional valuer, normally one on the lender's own panel, arranged as part of mortgage drawdown. Online estimates, data-driven reports and estate-agent appraisals do not qualify, whatever their accuracy.
They carry genuine local knowledge but also an incentive to win your listing, which can skew the number upward. Take more than one and check each against actual sold prices on the Property Price Register before anchoring on it.
Nothing you couldn't derive yourself from public sources — the value is assembly and adjustment: comps matched on type, size and recency, trend-indexed to today, with BER, listing history and area context already joined. Verify the comps it shows; a good report makes that easy rather than hiding them.