Property prices across State ahead by 1.4% in year to November

Dublin property prices down again as supply cools market

The highest house price growth in the capital was in Fingal at 3 per cent, while prices in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, often viewed as an indicator for the market generally, fell by 6.3 per cent. Photograph: Photocall Ireland

Dublin property prices fell again in the year to November, while prices across the State rose by just 1.4 per cent, the latest Central Statistics Office figures show.

While the annual rate of inflation for properties nationally rose modestly on the previous month, it was well below the 7.2 per cent recorded a year previously. The slowdown in price growth has been linked to the pick-up in housing supply.

Just under 15,000 new homes were built in the first nine months of last year, an 18 per cent increase on the same period in 2018.

In Dublin, average prices declined by 0.7 per cent in the 12 months to November.

READ MORE

The highest house price growth in the capital was in Fingal at 3 per cent, while prices in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, often viewed as an indicator for the market generally, fell by 6.3 per cent.

Excluding Dublin

The latest figures show residential property prices in the Republic, excluding Dublin, were 3.6 per cent higher in the year to November. The region outside of Dublin that saw the largest rise in property prices was the Border at 9.9 per cent, while the smallest rise was recorded in the mideast at 0.4 per cent.

Property prices across the State have increased by 85.7 per cent from their trough in early 2013. Dublin residential property prices have risen 94.9 per cent from their February 2012 low, while residential property prices in the rest of the State are 84.3 per cent higher than in May 2013.

The modest pick-up in headline inflation was seen by some analysts as evidence of a turn in the market.

“The behaviour of property prices in the past couple of months offers tentative evidence that the drop in Irish property price inflation may be bottoming out,” chief economist with KBC Bank Austin Hughes said.

“However, this process could remain quite bumpy over coming months,” he added.

Analyst Alan McQuaid said: “Lack of supply remains the key issue for the Irish housing market. First-time buyers continue to be priced out of the market.”

“Subsidising purchasers through tax breaks is not the answer. But at least new supply is coming on stream,” he said.

Eoin Burke-Kennedy

Eoin Burke-Kennedy

Eoin Burke-Kennedy is Economics Correspondent of The Irish Times