Dear reader,
Welcome to the Business Post’s inaugural Property 100 listing.
In curating this list, we have attempted to capture a snapshot of the most influential individuals, companies and authoritative bodies that drive the country’s demanding real estate market.
These are the builders and family developers that have stayed the course over the last few rollercoaster decades.
They are the risk-takers, the visionaries, the strategists and investors who often balance bold ambition with calculated risk – chasing high returns in uncertain markets, to create our ever-evolving built environment.
This is an industry that is often lauded as being resilient. It flourished during the Celtic Tiger era making millionaires out of masons and ending property empires just as swiftly when it all came crashing down in 2008, taking almost a decade to right itself.  And just as it did, the sector was slammed by Brexit-related inflation, infrastructure, housing and construction hold-ups, all of which was repeated again during the global pandemic.

Aggressive

Now, an aggressive US-led tariff war has plunged the sector once more into uncertainty. There is no doubt this challenge, too, will be overcome.
As a nation, our relationship with real estate has often been described as ‘obsessive’ and perhaps, for historical and cultural reasons, it is deeply ingrained in our collective psyche.
Whatever its genesis, as a relatively small country, the real estate sector plays a huge role in our day-to-day lives. Despite its many imperfections, it employs thousands of people and houses almost 5.5 million of us in the Republic.
This listing does not include the hundreds of people who work hard selling properties across hundreds of agencies nationwide.
In truth, extending the listing to the hundreds of agents, architects and designers who each play their own crucial part in the real estate industry, would result in a ‘Fortune 500’-style inventory, which space and time did not allow.
It did, however, take a dedicated team and a lot of time to research, compile, lay out and present this index in both its print and digital forms.
We hope you enjoy it.

Tina Marie O’Neill
Property Editor