{"id":508994,"date":"2025-10-18T08:39:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T08:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/508994\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T08:39:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T08:39:16","slug":"meet-the-americans-moving-to-ireland-for-a-better-life-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/508994\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Americans moving to Ireland for a better life \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Nick Howley (41) came to live in Limerick<\/a> in October 2024, a month after his husband Brendan Roddy (45), a secondary-school art teacher and ceramicist who is also from the US<\/a>, moved to the city to study, on a Master of Fine Arts programme at Limerick School of Art and Design. <\/p>\n

The couple, who moved from southern Maine, initially planned to move to Limerick for a year while Roddy studied and Howley completed a special project for his American employer, which had just acquired a Dublin<\/a>-based language ed-tech company.<\/p>\n

When Howley\u2019s company then offered him a permanent role in Ireland, \u201cwe kind of jumped at it,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

The couple first visited Ireland on their honeymoon in 2017, attracted in part by the fact that Roddy has Irish heritage through his great-grandparents. Since then, they had returned for holidays every year, except during the Covid pandemic. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a slow build-up. I think part of it was fuelled by [the idea that] it could be a better financial choice, part of it was fuelled by the [US] is getting a little bit scary, and then part of it was fuelled by the fact we loved the idea of living in Ireland or in other countries that we have visited \u2013 so it\u2019s multifaceted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howley describes \u201ca palpable shift\u201d in Washington DC, where he and Roddy lived before moving to Maine, after Donald Trump was first elected US president in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could feel this change occurring,\u201d Howley says. \u201cAnd for us [the move to Limerick] wasn\u2019t down to the fact that [the Trump] administration took over; we were already here. We had been planning during the Biden administration to be here for my husband to go to graduate school, so it wasn\u2019t necessarily fuelled to come here by politics, but I think part of the reason we\u2019re staying is because of politics. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re watching a case get worked up to the US supreme court that would reverse our marriage at the federal level, which is really scary. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe got engaged the day before the supreme court decision came down in 2015 [establishing marriage equality nationwide in the US] and then we got married a year later, and we are one of the lucky ones where our marriage has always been recognised at both the state and the federal level. And now to watch a case get worked up that could reverse that for us and so many of our friends, it\u2019s scary to watch. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then you turn on the news in general and watch what\u2019s happening in the United States and it should give people pause. It should scare people to watch what\u2019s occurring: their reversal of Roe V Wade, like there are so many things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NickNick Howley now lives in Limerick with his husband and fellow American Brendan Roddy. Photograph: Brian Arthur <\/p>\n

The \u201crental situation\u201d was the impetus for the couple to look for an alternative place to live, Howley says, as they are currently paying \u20ac3,000 a month to rent a new-build two-bedroom apartment in Limerick.<\/p>\n

It was when Howley accidentally selected the \u201cbuy\u201d rather than the \u201crent\u201d tab on a property listings website that he started to wonder if the couple would be able to buy a home rather than continue to rent. <\/p>\n

They had the proceeds from the sale of their house in Maine and Howley, who is now on a critical skills visa, was able to apply for a mortgage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn buying a house, we are going to pay less than half our rent on a mortgage,\u201d says Howley. \u201cOnce we had the approval-in-principle letter, we were able to start looking in earnest, so we got into a few bidding wars and got to experience the joy of the Irish bidding war.<\/p>\n

\u201cI watched an apartment go from \u20ac245,000 to \u20ac297,000 in the matter of four minutes. That was kind of the craziest thing I\u2019ve ever seen, ever, having bought and sold real estate previously.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0A US couple in Clonmel: \u2018America is me-me-me-me. Ireland still has that community feeling\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Howley, who has documented the ups and downs of the couple\u2019s experience on TikTok (@wayfaringandwhiskey<\/a>), adds: \u201cThings just move so much faster and binding contracts are signed so much earlier in the process in the US.<\/p>\n

\u201c[And] the idea of \u2018gazumping\u2019 is totally new to us \u2013 that someone could just swoop in and grab the property out from under us weeks or months into the process is wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty days after obtaining their approval in principle Howley and Roddy went \u201csale agreed\u201d on a three-bed semidetached home in the suburb of Corbally; they are hoping for the sale to close as planned this month.<\/p>\n

In terms of house prices in the US versus Ireland, Howley describes it as \u201cthe same [level of] crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sold our home [in Maine] for a profit that I don\u2019t think we should have been able to get for that house, but that\u2019s how the market worked. The same thing\u2019s happening here in Ireland; people are selling houses for profits they shouldn\u2019t be able to get for the houses they\u2019re selling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The couple are eager to move into their new home and make it their own and they also plan to turn a shed in the back garden into a ceramics studio for Roddy.<\/p>\n

\n

Right now we don\u2019t really feel like it\u2019s a safe place for our daughter to be and that\u2019s just the bottom line<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Kim Mathis<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cOnce we are both on a Stamp 4 [citizenship by naturalisation] residency, it is my husband\u2019s intention to open some type of ceramic business in the area,\u201d says Howley.<\/p>\n

The Central Statistics Office migration estimates made headlines this summer as they showed a 96 per cent jump in the number of people moving from the US to Ireland<\/a> between April 2024 and April 2025. That represented a total of 9,600 people, up from 4,900 in the preceding 12 months. <\/p>\n

There is no available breakdown on the reasons why people have moved, so it is likely some have come for a set period of time, for education or for work projects, while others may be returning Irish expats. <\/p>\n

Nevertheless, some are laying down roots by buying homes, as noted by south-Dublin-based estate agent Vinnie Finnegan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main pull that we would see for coming to Ireland would be safety, education, general community \u2013 and recreation seems to be more accessible here as well. I know the Irish schools are also a big draw,\u201d Finnegan says. \u201cMost of the people we\u2019re meeting, they already have some sort of a tie to Ireland, so in most cases one might have an Irish passport and the kids would have dual-citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim Mathis (61) and Richard Reep (65), a former preschool art teacher and an architect, moved to Dublin from Orlando, Florida, in June to join their 22-year-old daughter who is in Ireland on a student visa, pursuing a bachelor\u2019s degree at University College Dublin. <\/p>\n

\"KimKim Mathis and Richard Reep in Dundrum, Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

In US terms, \u201cthey are a little young for retirement\u201d but they realised a retirement visa was their best option to move to Ireland, says Mathis. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a transgender daughter and that was one of the things as to why we really felt like we needed to make that move. She had expressed before, long before the [second] election [of Trump], some interest in maybe going to school here \u2026 so she was kind of a catalyst.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re encouraging her to stay and do an advanced degree if she can. She doesn\u2019t know yet what she wants to do, but we want her to put some time in between what\u2019s going on [in the US] now and her future.\u201d Mathis pauses before adding: \u201cBecause right now we don\u2019t really feel like it\u2019s a safe place for her to be and that\u2019s just the bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFlorida is a permitless carry state. So any fool can go look at a gun and \u2018open carry\u2019 [such a weapon] anywhere at any time. So, the United States in general, but Florida specifically, just feels really unsafe for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even before their daughter decided to study here, Mathis was deep into researching a potential move for the couple to spend their \u201cgolden years\u201d in Europe, prompted by a 15-day tour they took of seven countries (not including Ireland) in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually looked at France but the language barrier was really a big deterrent because it\u2019s one thing to travel in a country, but it\u2019s a whole different ball game when you\u2019re trying to live and work and buy a house, for example, in a country with a language that you don\u2019t speak.\u201d Ireland, she says, \u201cjust kept coming up\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd [my mother] brought a great deal of Irish heritage and culture to our family when I was little, so it felt like a good fit,\u201d adds Reep, who had three Irish grandparents. <\/p>\n

When their search zoned in on Ireland, Reep started to compare Orlando and Dublin and found \u201cwe\u2019re in a brief period when the cost of living in Orlando and Dublin is pretty close to one-to-one. That tells you how expensive [it is] and the inflation that America is being subjected to right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

I don\u2019t want anybody to be scare-mongered into thinking the Americans are coming to take over. They\u2019re not<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nonetheless, they still had \u201ca little bit of sticker shock\u201d when it came to how expensive homes were in Dublin in particular. Were it not for their daughter being at university in the capital, they say they might have been more open to looking for homes in the southeast.<\/p>\n

The couple have gone sale agreed on a three-bedroom mews home in Dundrum and are hoping for the sale to close as soon as possible. They are planning to buy in cash using the proceeds from the home they sold in Orlando.<\/p>\n

Even with the premium on homes in south Dublin, Mathis and Reep say other factors made the move the right decision for them.<\/p>\n

Referring to the accessibility of public transport, Reep says: \u201cHousing prices are very expensive, but you save if you don\u2019t have to operate a car. Insurance here is drastically cheaper, so a lot of things work out better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mathis talks about there being \u201can insurance crisis\u201d in Florida due to the number of weather events. \u201cYou know, the hurricane season.And so many of the insurance providers have pulled out, so insurance premiums are skyrocketing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when you say, \u2018Well you\u2019re buying a house that\u2019s X,Y,Z,\u2019 but we\u2019re not paying several thousand \u2013 I mean, thousands of dollars \u2013 to insure a home. Some people are looking $10,000, $12,000 now [to insure] a middle-class family home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LizLiz O\u2019Kane, a buyers\u2019 agent, says some clients are ‘worried about the political climate in the States’. <\/p>\n

Liz O\u2019Kane, who has been a buyers\u2019 agent since 2002, says: \u201cMy clients are primarily the Irish trying to return, or right now it is Americans trying to get a foothold into Ireland, who have connections with Ireland.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re coming and they are safeguarding their future, really. And they\u2019re worried; they\u2019re worried about the political climate in the States and they\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019re not staying [in the US]\u2019,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0I am an emigrant who has recently returned to Ireland. This is why I\u2019m glad to be backOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the interesting thing is because our transaction process is so inefficient and so slow, you have Americans who land in Ireland on a Monday and think that they\u2019re going to property sale agreed by Friday. That\u2019s not going to happen. They cannot understand that we have sales and marketing campaigns that can go on for anything between three to six weeks and that the bidding process is highly competitive.\u201d <\/p>\n

In terms of the property market, prospective buyers from the US \u201care around all right, but not in thousands\u201d, says O\u2019Kane.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want anybody to be scare-mongered into thinking the Americans are coming to take over. They\u2019re not.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"BrianBrian and Olivia Kelly moved to Ireland from California with their children Finbarr, Sunday and Adelaide. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni <\/p>\n

His own dad hailing from Portlaoise, moving to Ireland for a period of time with his wife Olivia and their three children, Sunday (15), Finbarr (13) and Adelaide (11), was something Brian Kelly (51) had always wanted to do.<\/p>\n

Brian\u2019s father, Tom, was the first in his family to go to university. He studied at UCD in the 1960s before being recruited by General Electric and moving to the US, where he met Brian\u2019s mother, Mary Beth, in Pennsylvania. They later moved to Arizona where Brian was born.<\/p>\n

Previously tied to the US because of work, Brian and Olivia started planning a move to Ireland after Brian stepped down from his role as president of a veterinary company in 2023.<\/p>\n

Brian and the couple\u2019s children have Irish citizenship and Olivia, who worked in the US as a preventive health consultant, has a Stamp 4 visa as his spouse. Having focused on settling the family into life in Dublin since they moved, Olivia is now setting her sights on figuring out the job market in her field, while Brian serves on the boards of five companies.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Americans talk about how difficult it is to make friends in Ireland. I\u2019ve not found that\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In August of last year, the Kellys moved from the California beach town of Santa Monica and engaged O\u2019Kane as their buyers\u2019 agent to find them suitable potential homes to buy as they were struggling to find a long-term rental for a family of five.<\/p>\n

As an Irish citizen, Brian would be able to take out a mortgage, but as he currently has equity in the companies for which he is a board member rather than a salary, that was not an option, so they took out a loan from a US bank for the home, he says. The family ended up buying an extended period home on a sought-after road in Glenageary. <\/p>\n

\n

The quality of life here is so great for us and for the kids. They have so much freedom<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Olivia Kelly<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cEveryone said \u2018the housing market\u2019s really tough in Dublin\u2019,\u201d says Olivia. \u201cAnd in Los Angeles, especially where we lived, the housing market is very tight and competitive so we were like, \u2018Oh, we\u2019re used to that\u2019, but they were right. It\u2019s actually an even tighter market here and even more difficult to find something than we were used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brian says he was keen to enrol their children in an Irish-curriculum school but the family opted for the Nord Anglia International School, having been placed on waiting lists at all but one of the seven or eight other schools to which they had applied.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing I had in my head before we came, which proved not to be practical, was I thought our kids could play GAA, but it\u2019s really hard at their age to start, if you don\u2019t know anything about Gaelic football or hurling and you\u2019re a teenager, so you kind of can\u2019t do it,\u201d Brian says.<\/p>\n

The couple say they are not entirely sure how long they will stay in Ireland. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think the family part is the biggest challenge, because we do miss them, the kids miss them and we don\u2019t get to see them very often. So I think, you know, those strings are pulled a bit,\u201d says Olivia.<\/p>\n

\u201c[But] the quality of life here is so great for us and for the kids. They have so much freedom, being able to take public transit with their friends and go off and do things on their own, which would not be as possible in LA.\u201d<\/p>\n