The legislation to enable the setting up of a property price register, accessible to the public, should be enacted urgently, writes ED CAREY

A PROPERTY price register with comprehensive information on the actual sale prices of residential property is long overdue. This week, two of the largest property websites in the country issued their own reports on changes to house prices in Ireland in the second quarter of the year.

Myhome.ie reported that asking prices fell by 4 per cent over the quarter bringing a total fall from the peak of 40 per cent. Daft.ie said that asking prices were down 5.1 per cent in the quarter and 47 per cent from the peak.

Recently, the CSO, which produces its own monthly index of property prices, reported a decline of 41 per cent from the peak of the market in 2007. Furthermore, the index showed an increase of 0.4 per cent in house prices in Dublin.

With such an array of surveys, and there are several others, is it any wonder that there is confusion about exactly what is happening in the Irish property market?

While the data in these surveys is valid and timely, some are based on averages of asking or advertised prices and others provide only sale price changes rather than actual amounts paid. As a result, they measure different points of the sales transaction and individually cannot provide us with a full and complete picture of the Irish property market. Furthermore, the CSO index does not capture the increasing number of non-mortgage sales.

It is the experience of members of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI) operating in residential property that average national house price figures are no longer relevant to a market that has become increasingly fragmented. Furthermore a number of “micro-markets” have begun to emerge.

Typically, for properties that have the fundamentals of location, quality stock, schools, job opportunities and transport, the decline has moderated, and in many situations has stabilised. Properties without these positive fundamentals are suffering. The nuances of local issues are not properly reflected in the surveys containing only average figures.

The SCSI believes that a comprehensive property price register containing the actual sale price of every property in every county in the country is the only way to fill the gaps in the data which is currently produced, and provide full transparency for consumers in relation to property prices nationwide.

While transaction prices and other property-related data are currently recorded by various State bodies, a central database which compiles this data was never established. Furthermore, current data protection legislation prohibits the publication of the actual selling prices of residential property, even though it is recorded by different Government departments.

Enabling consumers to have access to full property price details would promote transparency in the Irish property market in line with international best practice.

In the UK, other European countries and Canada, data protection legislation allows this data to be published and accessed by the public. Countries where this data is available have a more transparent – and a more stable – property market than in Ireland.

One of the recommendations of the Commission on Taxation (2009) was for the creation of an up-to-date property database as a matter of urgency. In August 2010, the then Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, announced that a property database would be established and operated by the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA). However, since the legislation to set up the PSRA, the Property Services (Regulation) Bill 2009, has yet to be enacted; the proposed Property Price Register has yet to be established.

This essential legislation will also provide for the regulation of estate, letting and managing agents and this should be introduced as a matter of urgency in order to make the market transparent and accountable, and provide the public with a much needed new source of data on the property market.

Ed Carey is chairman of the residential professional group of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland