House Price Slowdown in Dublin Inevitable – Savills

The CSO has reported that In the year to June, residential property prices increased nationally by 10.7%. In Dublin however residential property prices fell by 0.4% in June.

Despite this fall, Dublin residential property prices were still 11.1% higher than in June 2014.  Dublin house prices fell by 0.3% in June whilst Dublin apartment prices fell by 0.4%.  However, it should be noted that the sub-indices for apartments are based on low volumes of observed transactions and consequently suffer from greater volatility than other series

This compares with an increase of 13.8% in May and an increase of 12.5% in the twelve months to June 2014.

Residential property prices rose nationally by 0.1% in the month of June.  This compares with an increase of 0.5% recorded in May and an increase of 2.9% recorded in June of last year.

Outside of Dublin residential property prices rose by 0.4% in June.   Prices were up 9.7% compared with June 2014.

Overall Decline

At national level residential property prices were 37.4% lower than their peak level in 2007.  Dublin house prices were 36.6% lower than their peak, Dublin apartment prices were 42.2% lower than their peak and Dublin residential property prices overall were  38.4% lower than their highest level.  Outside of Dublin residential property prices were 40.5% lower than their highest level in 2007.

Commenting on today’s house price figures from the CSO, John McCartney, Director of Research at Savills said; “Today’s figures confirm that the housing market in Dublin has cooled significantly with prices down around 1.1% in the year to date. This slowdown was probably inevitable given the very rapid price growth seen between April and October 2014, but it also reflects the impact of tighter mortgage lending rules which have been in place since February.”

Looking ahead McCartney said; “Agents are reporting that there has been a definite cooling in the market. As the CSO index lags the market by three months this means the rally that has been seen in the second half of recent years is unlikely to materialise in 2015.  Therefore we expect price growth to be modest at best for the remainder of this year. Looking further ahead, the detailed demographic data show that Dublin’s population has picked up strongly as people follow the jobs.  Given sluggish house building, this will keep upward pressure on prices in the long run.  However, given affordability constraints, cash funded investors rather than owner-occupiers may move to the forefront in the next phase of the market.”