The real estate market in Ireland is looking strong as the Irish house prices are up. According to the most recent property price index from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) the price increase is by 10.7% in the 12 months to the end of February.
As much as this is happening, this figure may place doubt on Government figures for the supply of new houses in the country. This increase was almost 3% higher than the yearly rate of inflation recorded in January.
To blame the demand in the absence of a sufficient housing supply it could be seen as down to the new Government’s tax-incentive scheme for first-time buyers and loosening the Central Bank’s lending rules.
In Dublin, prices went up by 8.3% and this is a location where supply pressures are most apparent. In a breakdown of figures, the numbers show that te highest rate of annual house price growth around the capital was in Dublin city at 9.2%. Fingal had the lowest where house prices went up by 3.7%.
Not only that but residential property prices in the rest of Ireland also went up, not just Dublin. The West region highlights the biggest price growth, where they went up by 19.8%.
Goodbody economist, Dermot O’Leary, spoke about the connection to newly built properties. He touched on how 4,407 properties have been acquired in the past 12 months.
“This compares to the 15,256 ‘completions’ according to the Department of Housing (generated from electricity connections).
“If we strip out self-build, the new completions figure would fall to about 8,500.
“It does not seem plausible that roughly half of newly completed homes have not been purchased over the past 12 months, adding further evidence to the view that the official completions figures are overstating the scale of new supply.”
Davy analyst, Conall Mac Coille, said:
“Ireland’s robust economic recovery was always likely to lead to significant house price rises.
“The key uncertainty is how much extra momentum to Irish house price inflation has been added by the help-to-buy scheme and the loosening of the Central Bank mortgage lending rules.”
For investors who have bought property in Ireland then it is promising that the Irish house prices will only be going up in the future. This means that for those investors looking to sell a property in Ireland, it is more than likely that they will witness a lot of profit and successful business ventures during the journey.
Written by Gemma Smith
