International capital is circling Irish housing again, its biggest resi REIT has received a €720M takeover bid, and the once-dormant Glass Bottle site is seeing apartment blocks completed and leased.

Housing crisis? What housing crisis?

Lioncor is one of the biggest developers in the latest wave of housing in Ireland, one where capital is starting to flow, but more development is still required.

Its chief executive, Marcus Ryan, said that the sector has reached a pivot point and that his most recent apartment building is just the latest symbol of a market enticing global money back to a neglected sector.

“There was undoubtedly interest in the Irish residential market from international capital, but until the regulation changes, the Irish build-to-rent market wasn’t of much interest to that money,” Ryan told Bisnow in an interview. “Now, we’re seeing players like GIC, MEAG, Quantum, DWS, Kennedy Wilson, Hines all coming in. To me, that’s a sea change, taking us out from the sidelines.”

Indeed, at Dublin’s Glass Bottle site, residents are moving into the early phases of Lioncor’s apartment buildings, and the 37-acre Poolbeg West site is beginning to look like the new urban district its backers long promised.

For Ryan, the significance of the project extends well beyond the 4,000 or so homes eventually planned at Glass Bottle. It is also a test of whether Ireland can turn a renewed appetite for residential investment into meaningful housing delivery.

The timing is significant. Ireland completed 36,284 homes in 2025, 20% more than the previous year and the highest annual total since the Central Statistics Office series began in 2011. Apartment completions rose 39% to 12,047, but the total was still tracking behind the government’s objective of 300,000 new homes between 2025 and the end of 2030.

However, Ryan argues that the ingredients for a much deeper institutional residential market are now falling into place.

“We have all the fundamentals: a young, well-educated population and a strong economy. But we needed that political impetus,” he said. “It’s not perfect, but the rent cap changes, plus the planning and design requirement changes, the council zoning and utility provision have all added impetus.”

Nowhere is that more obvious than at the Glass Bottle scheme, formerly one of the most visible symbols of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger property boom and subsequent collapse.

Lioncor is the residential development manager and leads the design, planning and delivery of the residential phases. The wider project is being delivered through Pembroke Beach DAC, in which funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management hold 83%, Ronan Group Real Estate holds 12%, and a Lioncor-linked company owns 5%. The overall development has been estimated at €3.5B and is expected to include roughly 4,000 homes alongside almost 1M SF of commercial space, including a hotel and new public spaces.

The first residential building, Lime House, was completed in November 2025 with 212 homes, followed by Glass House with 176 apartments, which was sold to Co-operative Housing Ireland for €82M in July.

Sand House and Batch House have brought another 499 homes to the site, taking the number delivered across the initial buildings to 887.

Batch House, which forms Phase 1B, contains 323 apartments and rises to 18 storeys. Its amenity package includes a residents’ lounge, meeting and coworking areas, soundproof pods, a gym and fitness studio, three roof terraces, dining areas, sauna and cold plunge facilities, a music room, a golf simulator, a cinema, private dining and a landscaped courtyard.

Lioncor is operating the residential assets under its Domu living platform. At Sand House, which comprises 176 units and, Ryan said, is close to 50% let, studios are around €2,100 a month, one-bedroom apartments about €2,600, two-beds €3,200 and three-beds more than €4,100. The building includes a basement gym, yoga and spin studios, cinemas, private dining rooms, a library and working areas, including private pods. But the amenity strategy is not intended to become a standard template, with each phase a separate proposition.

“The offer is evolving as we listen to tenants and hear what they want from their accommodation," Lioncor Head of Sales & Marketing Carolyn Strauss said. "For all the phases, we don’t want to rinse and repeat, so each block will have its own design and its own amenities to give each its own identity."

A further phase is already being reshaped by changes to apartment design requirements. Ryan said Lioncor had originally been looking at about 540 homes for its next block but is now considering as many as 586.

“The design changes in terms of the mix required in our blocks means that, in Phase 2, we’re looking at increasing our units, so it makes a significant difference to viability,” he said.

Lioncor and its partners are also advancing a much larger future application. In June, the Glass Bottle consortium lodged plans for 1,510 apartments across six blocks ranging from six to 18 storeys on 3.89 hectares.

“Looking at what is left to do, I think we’ll be on-site for another five to seven years to complete the residential component of the Glass Bottle site,” Ryan said.

The project also has a significant financial foundation. In January, Deutsche Bank arranged and underwrote a €415M refinancing for Pembroke Beach, replacing the construction financing and providing capital to support completed and leased phases as well as the next stages of development.

That financing is particularly important because Ryan sees development capital, rather than demand for housing, as one of the critical constraints on future supply.

“What we need is not just the capital for existing assets but also for development, and I think for that, we need confidence that investors can not only get in but can exit, so they want to see a liquid market,” Ryan said, stressing that he believes the market is moving in that direction.

Although construction costs have climbed sharply, he said the industry has become more predictable, and as a result, so has pricing.

“Although costs have risen steeply — we reckon around 40% since Covid — inflation has calmed down, and I think, up and down the supply chain, people have honed their prices,” he said. “So building is expensive, but it’s more predictable, and I think we might have more forward funding to unlock new residential development.”

The market has already seen major institutional investors active across living and wider real estate. Knight Frank reported €1.4B of Irish commercial real estate investment in the first half of 2026, up 55% year-on-year, with GIC involved in transactions representing 50% of total investment.

For Lioncor, the opportunity is not confined to Glass Bottle. The company said it has a pipeline of about 4,000 homes, spanning both institutional rental and private residential development.

One of the largest projects is Marmalade Lane in Dundrum, where Lioncor is developing 471 homes: 463 apartments and eight four-bedroom houses. The scheme includes four apartment blocks of up to 10 storeys and amenities including coworking and event spaces, an outdoor cinema, a screening room, a chef’s kitchen and private dining area, a yoga studio, a gym, pet-washing facilities and rooftop gardens. Construction is underway, and completion is expected next year.

In Terenure, Lioncor has submitted a large-scale residential development application for 364 apartments and 21 houses, together with residential amenities and a new public park linking Fortfield Road and Lakelands Park.

And at Railway Lane in Donabate, planning has been granted for approximately 1,020 homes across about 25 hectares, with childcare, retail, medical and community facilities and around 3.4 hectares of public open space. Lioncor also delivered 208 homes at Kilruddery Glen in Bray for Co-operative Housing Ireland, part of 521 homes completed in 2025.

The mix is becoming increasingly important to Ryan. The government and the Land Development Agency have been pushing Ireland toward higher-density development, particularly around Dublin. In Ryan’s view, attitudes toward density may be changing.

“With the recent Land Development Agency move to develop Ireland’s tallest residential building, it does feel as if there may have been a shift in attitude towards more densification, preventing urban sprawl,” he said. “Once again, the fundamentals are very strong for such schemes, but we’d also like to look at more family housing developments to have a good mix.”