If you bought a 2020 Hyundai Tucson in 2023 for €24,000, you'd get about €19,500 for it today — a 19% drop in 18 months. Across the whole Irish market, asking prices are still drifting down, but the picture is more nuanced than the headline. Diesel residuals are crashing, hybrid is holding firm, EV pricing is volatile, and supply is tight in three specific segments. Here's the full picture in plain English.
This is the long-form analysis. If you want the live dashboard with refreshed numbers, head to /market-stats or pull a specific make/model on /market-data. For a single car valuation, /value-car will give you a price band in about thirty seconds.
The current asking-price benchmarks — by age band
Used car asking prices on Autoza in April 2026 are down roughly 6.8% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis. That's the blended number across all fuel types and all segments. Strip it apart and the spread is enormous — late-model hybrid SUVs are flat, seven-year-old diesel saloons are off 18%.
Here's where the market sits right now, blended across mainstream brands:
| Age band | Avg asking price | YoY change | Typical mileage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year (2025 plate) | €34,800 | -3.1% | 11,000 km |
| 3 years (2023 plate) | €24,200 | -7.4% | 52,000 km |
| 5 years (2021 plate) | €17,600 | -9.2% | 89,000 km |
| 7 years (2019 plate) | €11,900 | -12.6% | 128,000 km |
| 10 years+ (2016 and older) | €7,400 | -4.0% | 165,000 km |
Two things jump out. First, the older the car, the steeper the fall — except at the very bottom of the market, where bangernomics keeps a floor under cheap runners. Second, the one-year-old segment is barely moving. That's because new car supply is still constrained and lease returns haven't fully caught up.
By price band
Below €5k: stable, even slightly up in some months. Anything that passes NCT and starts on the button has a buyer. Above €40k: weakest segment in the country — supply is up, demand is thin, and dealers in Dublin 24 are stacking premium SUVs three deep on the forecourt. The middle, €12k–€22k, is where most of the action is and where most of the discounting is happening.
The diesel decline — residuals down 14% in the last 12 months
Diesel is the single biggest story in the 2026 used market. Across the Autoza dataset, diesel residuals have dropped 14% in the last twelve months on a three-year-old basis — and the curve is steepening, not flattening. A 2022 Skoda Octavia 2.0 TDI that traded at €22,500 in spring 2025 is now sitting at €19,300, and dealers in Cork and Limerick are reporting them stuck on the lot for 60+ days.
Three things are pulling diesel down at once: the BIK reform that punished diesel company cars in 2024, the rolling Low Emission Zone chatter in Dublin, and the fact that buyers under 40 simply don't want one. Dealers tell us roughly 70% of diesel enquiries now come from over-50s doing genuine motorway mileage — that's still a real market, but it's a shrinking one.
For a deeper look at the fuel-by-fuel picture, see our petrol vs diesel vs hybrid vs electric breakdown.
Hybrid is the segment holding firmest
Self-charging hybrid (Toyota, Lexus, Hyundai, Kia) is the strongest residual story in Ireland in 2026. A three-year-old Toyota Corolla Hybrid is down just 2.1% year-on-year. The RAV4 Hybrid is essentially flat. The Yaris Cross is, incredibly, holding higher residuals than it did a year ago in some specs.
The reasons are practical: hybrid sidesteps the diesel anxiety, sidesteps the EV charging anxiety, fits Irish driving patterns (lots of short urban runs), and Toyota's reliability halo means buyers will pay a premium for one over almost any equivalent petrol. Galway and Donegal in particular — counties with mixed urban-rural mileage and patchy charging — are paying near-Dublin money for clean hybrid stock.
Plug-in hybrid is a different and weaker story. PHEV residuals are softer, partly because the BIK incentive that drove fleet uptake is being phased down and partly because three-year-old PHEV batteries are now old enough to worry buyers.
EV pricing — the volatility
Used EV is the most volatile corner of the market. The headline: a three-year-old Volkswagen ID.3 that listed at €27,000 in early 2024 is now €19,500. That's a 28% drop, well ahead of the wider market.
The maths driving it is brutal. New EV list prices have come down sharply — a new MG4 is now under €30k, the BYD Dolphin lands around €27k. When a new car drops €5k in eighteen months, every used one of the same model has to drop further to stay attractive. Buyers run the numbers and conclude that for €4k more they can have factory warranty, latest battery chemistry and the SEAI grant.
That said, the floor is now visible. Sub-€15k used EVs (older Leafs, e-Niros, Kona Electrics) are moving briskly because at that price the running-cost saving pays back inside two years for an average commuter. The pain is in the €20k–€30k bracket where the new-car comparison is sharpest.
For the full picture on used EV buying, including which models hold value and which to avoid, read our used electric car buying guide.
By county — where prices are softer, where firmer
Geography matters more than people realise. Same car, same year, same mileage — the asking price varies up to 9% across the country.
| County | Indexed price (Dublin = 100) | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Dublin | 100 | Firm — strongest demand |
| Galway | 97 | Stable |
| Donegal | 95 | Stable, hybrid premium |
| Limerick | 93 | Soft — diesel overhang |
| Cork | 92 | Softest — supply heavy |
Cork is the value market right now. There's more dealer stock per head than anywhere else in the country, the NI import flow comes through Munster ports, and several large independents are running monthly clearance pushes. If you're price-sensitive and willing to travel, a Cork buy and Dublin sell — even with VRT and registration faff long settled — can still net a couple of hundred euro on the right car.
Dublin remains the firmest market because demand is concentrated, public transport is not a real substitute for most commutes, and parking-permit constraints push buyers toward smaller, newer hybrid hatchbacks at premium prices.
Brand-level — who's holding, who's bleeding
The brand story tracks the fuel story but with twists.
Holding strongest: Toyota and Lexus, no contest. Across the three-to-five year band, Toyota residuals are within 3% of where they were a year ago — astonishing in this market. Honda and Mazda are close behind. Kia and Hyundai hybrids are also holding well, especially Niro and Kona.
Weakening sharply at the older end: the German premium trio (BMW, Audi, Mercedes) on diesel. A 2018 BMW 520d that traded at €18k a year ago is €14,500 today. Buyers are nervous about repair bills outside of warranty, diesel sentiment is poor, and the lack of hybrid options in older premium German stock is hurting. Late-model German hybrids and EVs (i4, EQE, e-tron) are holding much better.
Volatile: Tesla. Model 3 prices moved 11% in a single quarter following price changes from the factory. If you're shopping Tesla, watch Autoza's /market-data tracker week by week — it moves that fast.
Stable bottom-end: Dacia, Suzuki, base-spec Ford Focus and Fiesta. Cheap, simple, and always in demand.
What's actually driving the changes
Four forces, all pulling at once:
- The PCP wave. The 2022–2023 PCP boom is now hitting its three-year endpoints. Cars are coming back to dealers, dealers are pushing them onto the used market, and that's adding supply at exactly the moment new-car activity is steady-to-soft.
- Fuel prices. Diesel and petrol have been bouncing around €1.75–€1.85 a litre for most of the last year. Not high enough to drive panic into EV, not low enough to make a 1.6 diesel feel cheap to run. The result: buyers default to hybrid as the safe middle.
- BIK reform. The shift in benefit-in-kind treatment continues to push fleets out of diesel and toward EV/hybrid. That dumps three-year-old fleet diesel onto the used market in volume.
- NI imports. The flow from Northern Ireland and Britain has slowed compared with peak (sterling and VRT changes have closed a lot of the arbitrage), but it's still material in segments like 7-seat SUVs and premium diesel — and it adds supply.
For the broader monthly picture across registrations, transactions and supply, see the latest Irish used car market report.
If you're a buyer in 2026 — what to negotiate, what to walk past
Negotiate hard on: diesel premium German saloons over five years old, used EVs in the €20k–€30k bracket, and any car that's been listed for more than 45 days. Dealers in Cork and Limerick especially have rooms to move on stuck stock. Five to eight per cent off the screen price is realistic. Bring the comparable listings printout — the data on /cars is on your phone, use it.
Don't waste your time haggling on: three-year-old Toyota hybrid, RAV4 and Yaris Cross especially, anything sub-€10k that drove on to the forecourt last week, and Tesla Model Y. Margins are thin and the next buyer is already in the queue.
Walk past: high-mileage premium diesel without service history, PHEVs older than five years with no recent battery health report, and Cat-N or imported cars that aren't priced at least 12% below clean-history equivalents. The discount has to compensate for resale pain when it's your turn to sell.
Run the monthly cost on a finance calculator before you sign anything — a €2k discount on a six-year PCP can be wiped out by half a percent on the rate.
If you're a seller in 2026 — list-price strategy
Selling private in this market needs realism. Three rules:
- List 4–6% above your target. Not 15%. The days of optimistic pricing and waiting for someone to bite are gone — a car priced 15% over market sits invisible, because buyers filter and sort. Be in the search results.
- If it hasn't sold in 21 days, drop it. Drop by enough to register — €500 minimum, €1,000 ideally. A token €100 cut just resets the listing date without changing the buyer's mind.
- Sell hybrid in summer, diesel in winter. Hybrid demand peaks April-July when buyers are prepping for new commutes and city driving. Diesel sells best Oct-Feb when towing, motorway and farmer demand peaks. Time your listing.
Get a starting valuation on /value-car — it'll pull live comparables from the Autoza dealer network and give you a defensible asking price, not a wishful one.
The 30-second summary
Asking prices are down 6.8% on average, but the market has split. Hybrid is bulletproof, diesel is in steady decline, EV is volatile but starting to show a floor at the cheap end. Cork and Limerick are softer than Dublin. Toyota holds, older German premium diesel doesn't. If you're buying, bring the data and walk past anything that hasn't been priced for the 2026 reality. If you're selling, price it for the search results — not for a dream — and be ready to move within three weeks.
Numbers move every week. The dashboard at /market-stats is where to check before you list, before you offer, and before you walk away.
