04/07/2011

Irish House Price Fall 'Accelerating'

An influential property website has said on Monday, that the ongoing fall in property prices is "accelerating".

Writing on the site today, lecturer in Finance with Trinity College, Dr Constantin Gurdgiev, said there was a bleak forecast for Irish property markets - both commercial and residential.

Dr Gurdgiev said that Greater Dublin asking prices were now down to just 44% in North County Dublin and 55% in Dublin City Centre compared to their peak.

"The latest data from daft.ie on asking rents and prices clearly shows that there is some room for continued significant losses in residential real estate.

"Across all geographies covered in today's report, asking prices continued to fall and these falls are accelerating once again. Nationwide, asking prices are down 5% in three months through June 2011 - the steepest quarterly decline in 18 months."

The latest Property Barometer has also been issued this morning by another leading property website, MyHome.ie, showing that asking prices had fallen by 4.1% nationally in the first quarter of the year.

The survey also showed that, based on average mix adjusted asking price, the average house price is now €249,000, compared with €260,000 three months ago.

In Dublin, the average price is the €286,000 compared with €302,000 three months earlier.

Ahead of the release of Monday's figures, during the 2011 Housing Practitioner’s Conference in Mullingar at the end of last week, Housing Minister Willie Penrose unveiled "radical" Government plans to transform policy in the housing sector.

Speaking at the conference he said: "Ireland’s housing bubble will never happen again."

During the speech, Mr Penrose committed the Government to new laws that, he said, would transform the sector.

"Based on a number of fundamental principles and goals that will form the foundation of a substantial reform programme, the new framework of housing policy responds to current and emerging conditions in the housing sector, taking account of the dramatic cycle of rapid growth and sudden collapse in the residential property market."

(DW/GK)

Related Northern Ireland Business News Stories
Click here for the latest headlines.

03 August 2001
Halifax report house price rises dip in July
Rampant house price rises at the start of the year have shown their first dip according to a new survey released by the Halifax. In July the average house price rise dropped off to 0.7 percent, which has been interpreted as the first sign that the early year rises of almost 11 per cent may be tailing off.
03 January 2002
House price growth to slow in 2002
The property market is set to experience a slip in demand during 2002 according to leading UK mortgage lender Nationwide and a twice-yearly survey by the CBI and property advisers GVA Grimley. The Nationwide review of 2001 revealed that UK house prices grew significantly during 2001 despite the global economic slowdown.
08 June 2004
NI housing market shows sustainable rise
Northern Ireland’s housing market is growing at a much more sustainable rate than in the rest of the UK, with the cost of the average property going up by 8.6% over the year.
29 April 2002
Property firm Lisney on top of NI property market
Belfast Property consultancy Lisney has been identified as the busiest property agency in Northern Ireland by UK commercial property resource EGi, the online version of leading property journal Estates Gazette.
03 April 2002
RICS urges businesses to "wake up" to property issues
The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has launched a new tool aimed at helping UK business to ensure their property arrangements work harder for the bottom line. “Property Solutions” is a web based device designed by RICS to help the UK’s 3.