Ireland gained thousands of millionaires last year as property prices shot up

IRELAND GAINED ALMOST 5,000 dollar millionaires last year, according to research by a wealth analysis and property firm.

The country had 83,100 people with assets of over $1 million (€948,000) last year, said the latest Wealth Report by Knight Frank.

That’s up from 78,400 in 2015 and the firm predicts there’ll be more that 100,000 millionaires in the country by 2026, 108,000 to be exact.

The healthy increase in some people’s wealth is driven largely by increases in property prices.

Global real estate delivered returns of 9% globally over the five years to the end of December 2015.

However, in Ireland this figure was 14.7%. The country was described as a “star performer” in property terms, alongside Indonesia and the US, in the report.

The report also looked at the super rich in Irish society and counted the number of multi-millionaires and even billionaires.

Multi-millionaires

The number of people in Ireland with wealth greater than $10 million is estimated at 2,760, 160 more than 2015.

A total of 890 people are estimated to be worth more than $30 million and 95 people are ‘centa-millionaires’, with more than $100 million.

Ireland didn’t gain any new billionaires last year with five people already beyond that threshold.

Dublin accounts for about a third of Ireland’s millionaires, 28,200 of the 83,100.

Lisbon, another EU capital with a similar population to Dublin, has 19,000 millionaires.

Some of those listed are likely paper millionaires, with their value held in property. Irish property prices have continued to rise, jumping by 8.6% in the year to the end of November.

The trend is expected to continue after the loosening of the Central Bank’s mortgage lending rules and the introduction of the government’s first-time buyer scheme.

Analysts have said that there is a real possibility that house prices will rise by more than 10% across the country in 2017.

Written by Rónán Duffy and posted on TheJournal.ie