Will the lengthy delay in appointing the Property Services Regulatory Authority hold up publication of the urgently needed property price register, asks PAT IGOE

APART FROM insolvency practitioners, few people can be happy with an economy in recession. And even fewer can be happy with the state of the property market. It is a sector in slow gear in an economy in slow gear.

Problems include lending institutions that are not lending and properties that are worth less than nothing to many owners. Then there is the disconnect between what vendors need and what purchasers can afford.

Both vendors and purchasers lack confidence and are looking to their own problems. Estate agents are still struggling with the new realities.

Overshadowing all of this is a basic problem that would prevent any market from functioning properly – secrecy.

Estate agents, vendors and purchasers are increasingly asking: when, when, when will the promised register of actual sale prices be available to the market?

The long-awaited Property Services Regulatory Authority must be appointed before work can commence on the database for the register. The deadline of July 5th for licensing of estate agents under the Act may give a timeframe. Recently, in the Dáil, Patrick Nulty was told that the authority would be established “as soon as possible”, whatever that means . . .

This week’s report from Goodbodys – that prices have fallen 68 per cent since the peak – based on Allsop Space auction results – highlighted the contrast with other figures that do not include cash sales.

Recent figures from the Central Statistics Office on the residential property market indicate a continuing fall in residential property prices by 17.4 per cent nationally over 12 months to January, a drop significantly greater than that of 10.7 per cent the previous year. But the CSO figures are only based on figures of eight mortgage lenders.

They entirely exclude cash buyers, who now appear to have a significant share of the market.

Then property website Daft.iereported that asking prices for residential property fell by an average of 7.7 per cent between September and December last year. They noted that this was the sharpest three-month fall in prices to date. The percentage fall in prices over the course of 2011 was 18 per cent. Again, these figures are only the asking prices.

The gap between asking prices and achieved prices, which is what matters, remains known only to individual buyers and sellers.

So the market, which is struggling, remains locked out.

The most recent figure of the other major property website, Myhome.ie, noted that Dublin asking prices were now 50 per cent below their peak in 2006, with the figure being 43 per cent nationally.

But these too were also based on asking prices only. The actual drop could be even greater.

All these reports have one thing in common – they cannot be relied on. So buyers and sellers must continue to nervously feel their way in the fog.

It is not the fault of the authors of these reports, nor is there any significant fault in their methodology. They do not have enough information available to them. And they do add to our limited knowledge of the Irish residential property market and are accompanied by helpful commentaries.

Ronan Lyons, Daft.ieeconomist, properly noted that recovery in the market does not mean recovery in prices. It means recovery in activity.

In 2006, lending institutions provided more than 200,000 mortgages. Last year, the figure was down to 13,000.

For her part, the author of the Myhome.iereport, Annette Hughes of DKM Economic Consultants, noted that house prices would not stabilise "until we have a period of sustained economic growth and employment growth".

Now the absence of reliable information for buyers and sellers is finally to be filled under section 86 of the Property Services (Regulation) Act, following the appointment of the members of the authority.

It also awaits the signing by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter of a commencement order to bring the section into operation.

Then the authority will publish the actual sale prices of individual houses and apartments. The information will be obtained by the authority from the Revenue Commissioners who, in turn, obtain it from purchasers’ solicitors.

It will be accurate and will be available free of charge and will be on the authority’s website.

The new property prices register will usher in a new era of credible property price information. It may, or may not, be online before July 5th.

Information on when it will begin is simply not available.

But its urgency is undisputed. It can only help to stop the slide of a sluggish and nervous market where secrecy still reigns supreme.

Pat Igoe is a solicitor in Blackrock, Co Dublin