ASKING PRICES FOR residential property fell by 14 per cent in Ireland in 2010, according to the latest report published by property website Daft.ie.
The last quarter of 2010 saw the most drastic drop, with asking prices falling by 5 per cent. By the end of 2010, the national average asking price had fallen by 40 per cent from the peak in 2007 and stood at just below €220,000.
The fall in asking prices was not spread uniformly across the country, however: Prices in Dublin fell 14 per cent on average, compared to a fall of 15 cent outside major cities. Prices in Galway were 13 per cent lower than a year before, after prices in the city fell sharply in the final 3 months of the year. In Cork, Limerick and Waterford, prices fell by between 10 and 12 per cent over the course of 2010.
Elsewhere, the extent of price falls varied from less than 10 per cent in Mayo to 20 per cent or more in Wexford and Kilkenny.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie, Ronan Lyons, economist with Daft.ie, said that the drop in asking price was “quite predictable” but added that parts of the country were adjusting at such a different pace from each other as to effectively mark the end of a single national property market.
He explained: “Speaking of ‘the property market’ will confuse people because prices will be significantly different in cities compared to rural parts of the country”.
Lyons also said: “Parts of Dublin have seen price falls of up to 50 per cent from the peak, and we are seeing a steady fall in the total number of properties for sale in the capital. Some counties however, have seen price falls of just 30 per cent and the number of properties for sale remains very high. It is the cities and in particular Dublin that are most likely to stabilise first, and it remains to be see if this happens in 2011.”
Lyons said that, in Dublin, stabilsation could be seen as early as this mid-2011, as prices had already dropped by an average of 50 per cent; oversupply was relatively small; yield was better; and employment prospects in the capital were broadly better than elsewhere.
In badly effected parts of the country, such as Mayo, it could potentially take seven or eight years for the market to stabilise and true prices to be revealed, Lyons said – although he stressed that this would be a worst case scenario. The biggest driver in this case would be sellers not reducing prices, he warned.
The Daft Report also outlines that the typical time it takes to sell a property remains high but has fallen from 41 weeks to 36 weeks over the course of the year.
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