I sat down recently with Jen Stevens, executive editor of International Living, to talk about what's happening on the ground in Ireland. The number that opened our conversation: 9,600 Americans immigrated to Ireland in the twelve months to April 2025. A 96% increase. The highest figure the CSO has ever recorded.

Everyone knows why they're coming - lifestyle, language, location. The more interesting question is what happens when they try to buy a house.

A couple came to me late last year. He'd taken a senior role with a multinational in Dublin. She'd left a career to make the move work. Two kids, strong budget, highly motivated.

They'd been on Daft and MyHome for three months from their kitchen in Connecticut. Forty saved properties. A spreadsheet. They flew over for a long weekend with viewings booked across four counties.

Eleven properties in three days. By the time they sat down with me on day four, they were exhausted and no clearer on what they wanted than when they landed.

What went wrong wasn't effort. It was approach.

They'd been looking at Ireland through the lens of how property works in the US. They assumed listings meant availability. They expected agents to respond quickly and advocate for them. They thought asking price was a starting point for negotiation, not a floor for competitive bidding. They treated the whole thing like a transaction when it's actually a relationship.

I said this during the interview with Jen and it seemed to land, because it captures the single biggest mistake international buyers make.

They tried to apply their own system to a foreign one. When it didn't work, they assumed the market was broken rather than accepting they didn't understand it yet.

In Ireland, the agent represents the seller. There's no MLS. Sale agreed isn't sold - it's a handshake that can take months to reach contracts. The process is relationship-driven and opaque. That doesn't make it wrong. It makes it different.

That couple? Their spreadsheet was impressive. But half the properties they'd saved were already sale agreed. A quarter were mispriced to generate bidding. And the locations were based on a postcard version of Ireland that didn't match the life they were going to live.

I use an analogy with clients that I think captures what happens when international buyers rush.

If you skip breakfast and lunch and you're starving at the end of the day, you walk into a shop and grab the first thing that fills the gap. You eat it too fast in the car and immediately wonder when it was made.

That couple flew over for three days and tried to make a decision because they were here and the flights were booked. They were buying hungry. And buying hungry leads to regret.

What I told them - and what I'd tell anyone reading this - is come to Ireland with curiosity rather than urgency. Don't view properties on your first trip. Walk to the school. See what the commute feels like at 8am on a Wednesday. Ask yourself whether this is a place you could live on a Tuesday, not just visit on a Saturday.

We stripped the spreadsheet back to nothing. Started with one conversation - I call it the token method. Half an hour each, uninterrupted. He talks about what he wants from the move. She talks about what she wants. No editing, no compromising in real time. Just listening.

They were surprised by how different their versions were. He was focused on commute and proximity to the office. She was focused on community, schools, and having a life beyond his job. Both valid. Neither properly heard until that moment.

From there we built a brief. Two areas, not four counties. A clear sense of value. They came back six weeks later and were sale agreed within a month.

Not because they got lucky. Because they stopped looking at Ireland through someone else's lens and started seeing it as it actually is.

This week's takeaway: Ireland is attracting more Americans than at any point in recorded history. But the ones who land well aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones who understand the terrain before their money hits the table.

Curiosity before commitment.