ANOTHER REPORT on residential property prices in Ireland in 2012 has concluded that the average price of family homes in Dublin stabilised – and even rose moderately – while the rest of the country continued to see prices fall.

The report from the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland concurs with reports from Daft.ie and MyHome.ie in suggesting that the market for domestic property in the capital has almost flattened out, and suggests the price of a four-bed semi-detached home fell by 1.1 per cent in 2012.

This compares to a fall of 13.6 per cent in 2011, while three-bedroom semi-detached homes fell by 12.6 per cent in 2011 – but only by 2.7 per cent last year.

The society suggested that the cessation of the Mortgage Interest Relief scheme in the final quarter of last year helped to stimulate demand for housing stock and therefore arrest the decline in values.

Dublin’s shortage of completed family-type home units also helped to contribute to modest increases in prices in some areas, it added.

There was still a significant fall in domestic prices outside Dublin, but the rate of decline was lower than it had been the previous year. In the rest of Leinster, the average price of a three-bedroom semi-detached home fell by 7.7 per cent in 2012 – after a 16.8 per cent fall in 2011.

In Connacht, a value similar home had declined 15.2 per cent in 2011 but by 7.1 per cent in 2012. Munster, where prices in 2011 fell by a comparatively low 9.3 per cent, saw a further fall of 7.6 per cent in 2012.

“How we deal with the legacy issues under our control will have a major bearing on the future of the property market in this country,” said society president Roland O’Connell, who added:

2012 was very much a year of transition with increasing levels of both commercial and residential transactional and rental activity being experienced by a growing number of agents in different sectors.

O’Donnell said the lack of any nationwide uniformity in property prices pointed to the emergence of ‘micro markets’, which would mean there would not be a single point at which someone could say the Irish property market had hit the bottom and begun to recover.

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