ASKING PRICES for houses in Ireland fell by as much as 18 per cent last year, two reports on the beleaguered Irish property market suggest.

Property website Daft.ie said the average asking price for homes was now €175,000 – some 52 per cent below the 2007 peak and down 18 per cent annually.

Asking prices fell 7.7 per cent in the last three months of the year, the sharpest quarterly fall in asking prices to date, Daft.ie said.

A similar report by property website MyHome.ie indicates that asking prices for residential property plunged 13 per cent in 2011. MyHome.ie’s average asking price for a home nationally is higher than that of Daft.ie’s, coming in at €236,000.

MyHome.ie, which is owned by The Irish Times, said asking prices were down 43 per cent since their peak in late 2006.

“It is unlikely that years down the line, 2011 will be remembered in the annals of Ireland’s property market. It is much more likely to be tucked away between the start and end dates of what will be regarded as the legendary Irish property market crash,” said Ronan Lyons, economist at Daft.ie and author of its report.

Both the MyHome.ie and Daft.ie reports pointed to sharper declines in the Dublin property market than outside the capital.

MyHome.ie said Dublin prices fell 14.7 per cent last year compared to a 13 per cent national average.

Daft.ie said asking prices in Dublin fell 8.9 per cent in the final quarter, compared to a 5.4 per cent fall in Cork city. However, Galway showed the steepest rate of decline, with asking prices falling more than 14 per cent in the final three months. Daft.ie also released figures showing the varying speeds at which homes are sold nationwide. In Dublin, about half of the properties put on the market through the site are sold within six months, while in Connacht and Ulster, it takes a full year for the same proportion to sell.

Mr Lyons said it was tempting to see large house price falls “as a bad thing”, especially for those in negative equity, but a fast rate of decline had some advantages in a situation where the decline was inevitable.

“If the size of the correction in house prices is determined by fundamental factors, then it is better for the prices to race to the finishing line than crawl there.”

Annette Hughes, director of DKM Economic Consultants, who wrote the MyHome.ie report, said prices would not stabilise until there was sustained economic and employment growth.

HOUSE PRICES IN NUMBERS

€236,000The average national asking price – MyHome.ie

€268,000The average asking price of a house in Dublin – MyHome.ie

61Percentage decline in asking prices in central Dublin city, the steepest to date – Daft.ie.

41Percentage decline in asking prices in Limerick city since their peak - the most modest falls of any city, according to Daft.ie.