RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY PRICES increased by almost 11% nationwide in the year to August, according to new CSO figures.

While the price of houses and apartments nationally remains 8.9% lower than their 2007 peak, prices have increased by 103.2% since their recession-era low in 2013.

Figures from the Central Statistics Office today show that residential prices have increased by 10.9% between August 2020 and August 2021.

House prices are rising faster outside of the capital, up by 10.2% in Dublin compared to 11.5% in the rest of the country, during the same period

The highest house price growth in Dublin was in South Dublin at 12.6%, while Fingal saw a rise of 8.3%. The region outside of Dublin that saw the largest rise in house prices was the Border at 20.7% – at the other end of the scale, the South West saw an 8.3% rise.

Apartment prices have also increased, up by 5.7% in Dublin and up 16.7% outside of the capital.

Senior CSO Statistician, Barra Casey, said today’s figures represent the largest annual change in prices since June 2018.

Casey also notes that despite rising prices there were significantly more transactions in the market in August with households purchasing 3,764 dwellings, an increase of 59.6% compared to August 2020.

Rachel McGovern, Director of Financial Services at Brokers Ireland said “it is worrying that prices are accelerating into double-digit growth and that long-standing supply and affordability issues remain.”

“While there is a headline increase in volume of transactions of 59.6% year-on-year in August it is coming off a low base resulting in an increase of just 1,463 transactions.”

Following the latest CSO data, mortgage experts have warned that values are increasing a lot more than the averages quoted in the report.

Joey Sheahan, head of credit at MyMortgages.ie, said new builds and coastal properties, in particular, are continuing to soar.

“We are seeing a huge number of buyers buying off plans, with whole developments being sold before they are built,” he said.

Trevor Grant, Chairperson of the Association of Irish Mortgage Advisors, said the acceleration in property price growth cannot be ignored but hoped prices might stabilise with the resumption of construction.

“With construction sites back up and running following more than a year of stop start production, we would hope to see an increased supply of new homes coming onstream in the near future which should help stabilise prices,” said Grant.

“That said, there are still too many developments caught in planning limbo and that is something that requires urgent action by Government.”

Social Democrats Housing Spokesperson Cian O’Callaghan said it was “utterly unsustainable” that house price increases are now almost three times higher than the rate of inflation. 

“What is the government going to do to control soaring costs? Its only big idea, to solve the housing crisis, is to pour petrol on the fire of an already red-hot property market, through their proposed shared equity scheme,” said O’Callaghan. 

Why do they do this? Because the construction industry tells them it’s a good idea – and, they are not the ones being engulfed by the flames. 

“Schemes like the ‘help to buy’ scheme and the ‘shared equity’ scheme will not increase the supply of affordable homes – they will ratchet up prices to ever-increasing unsustainable levels.”