The Irish stock market is pretty unique in the small number of property companies that have a listing, especially compared to London, where publicly-quoted property companies are abundant.

If an investor wants to invest in the Irish property market, and does not want to use a vehicle like a property-based investment fund or does not want to buy property assets directly, then his or her choice is restricted to three pure property companies - Green Property, Dunloe Ewart and Jermyn Investments. There are other quasi-property companies like Abbey and McInerney, but these two are in reality housebuilding companies with some minor property interests.

So, how have the three pure property stocks fared this year and what are their prospects for the next year or so?

First of all, it must be said that two of the stocks - Dunloe Ewart and Green Property - have changed dramatically over the past year as a result of aggressive acquisition activity - Dunloe through its takeover of Northern Ireland group Ewart, and Green through its £155 million acquisition of Trafford Park Estates in the north of England.

But like virtually every stock on the market, the property shares have been hit badly in recent months by the turmoil on world markets. Green, which started the year at 333p, hit a high some months ago of 580p before the slump in share prices brought the share back to 370p at the end of last week.

Dunloe Ewart started the year at 21p, hit a high of 47p before falling to 27p last week, while Jermyn - a UK company with Irish interests and a Dublin listing -started the year at 203p sterling, peaked at 352p before trading last week at 274p. Those trading patterns are broadly in line with the rest of the market, which roared ahead in the first eight months of the year before the international turmoil brought the turnaround of the past two months.

Analysts with Dublin stockbroking firms are generally united in the view that Dunloe Ewart has the best short to medium-term prospects - mainly because the bulk of its interests are concentrated in the comparatively healthy property markets in the Republic and Northern Ireland. Dunloe has recently broadened its base to mainland UK with the acquisition of a £73 million portfolio, but the bulk of its assets are concentrated on development projects on the island of Ireland.

According to one Dublin analyst, who asked not to be named, "Dunloe is a different story to the others, it's primarily an Irish story. Green and Jermyn have about 60 per cent of their assets in the UK and the British property sector has been in retreat since last March. Put simply, the economic story in the UK is not as sound as in Ireland and shares of companies with the bulk of their assets in Ireland have performed and will continue to perform better than those with extensive UK interests."

Dunloe is also different from Green and Jermyn, he adds, in that much more development potential is built into its share price than for Green and Jermyn. The latter are more mature property companies with a greater portion of their net asset value coming from the flow of investment income rather than development potential being built into the net asset value.

Dunloe's development portfolio is impressive taking in the giant Cherrywood project in south Dublin, another site in Dublin dockland on Sir John Rogerson's Quay while other major development projects are thought to be in the pipeline, including ones in Clondalkin - not to mention various projects in Northern Ireland.

Green's activities are not simply confined to generating income from its various investments and it does have development projects in progress, including the expansion of the retail park element of the Blanchardstown Town Centre. But the additional exposure to the UK market that the Trafford Park acquisition has brought, and also the way that deal was financed, has weighed on the Green share price.

Green had initially hoped to pay for Trafford Park mainly by swapping its own shares for the Trafford shares held by British institutional investors. At the end of the day, however, those Trafford Park shareholders opted for cash and Green had to call on the underwriters to the deal to take up about 30 million shares. This has caused an "overhang" in the shares, and dealers believe that it will be some time yet before that overhang is eliminated.

Jermyn's Irish interest comes through its 50 per cent stake in Castle Market Holdings, where the other shareholder is the John Ronan-Richard Barrett investment vehicle, Treasury Holdings.

CMH's main assets are 20 acres in Sandyford, the Stillorgan Shopping Centre - where a major redevelopment is planned - and a portfolio of office properties in Dublin.

But as a British company, Jermyn also has a substantial exposure to the British property market and it is this exposure, and the overall weakness in the stock market, that has caused the shares to fall.

In the short-term, analysts in Dublin believe that Dunloe Ewart offers the best return, although one analyst emphasised "We're positive on all the stocks, but in the short-term, Dunloe looks the best."