The Northern Ireland finance and personnel minister, Sammy Wilson has this morning released the residential index and property price series for the three months ending 30th September 2012.
In summary, prices declined 1% in Q3, 2012 which represents a slowing in the rate of decline, prices are down 12% in the year to the end of September 2012 and overall since the peak in 2007, prices are down 55%. Given UK inflation generally since the peak in 2007 is 18%, the real decline in Northern Ireland is estimated to be 62%, which as far as can be determined on here, makes the Northern Ireland residential property crash to be the worst in the world.
Minister Wilson puts our own administration to shame. Although we finally saw the launch of the property price register at the end of September 2012, we still don’t have any index though commercial players like DAFT.ie may fill that void. (The Republic of) Ireland’s official residential property index remains the CSO monthly series which is based on mortgage transactions only, which appear to represent about 50% of the market apparently.
Elsewhere in the release, we learn there were 3,400 residential property transactions in Northern Ireland in Q3,2012. Our own Property Price Register reveals there were 6,258 during the same period here. Relative to the 800,000-odd houses in Northern Ireland compared to the 2m in the Republic, the figures confirm that there are, relative to total housing stock, more transactions in Northern Ireland.
The recent trend with residential property prices in the Republic has been stabilization and gentle rises, in Northern Ireland, it appears the pace of decline is slowing, but will it is curious that the real decline in Northern Ireland stands at 62% compared with 51% in the Republic.
The Northern Ireland index was launched in August 2012 – read the blogpost here.
Northern Ireland is a region not a nation-state so it is not a valid comparison to rank it on a list consisting only of nation-states. Lots of regions have had worse crashes I would guess (Nevada, 1930s Florida, others?). Also you have used UK national inflation to deflate a regional house price index which again makes it a bit inconsistent with the other entries on the list where the house price index and consumer price index refer to the same entity. But these quibbles do not erase your main point — this shows that the Republic of Ireland still has lots of potential downside price movement.
@Gregory, both points well made. Unfortunately the UK does not produce inflation by country within the UK, so all we have is the national inflation rate – this might be addressed if the UK start to differentiate welfare payments by country as has been signalled.
As for Northern Ireland being a region and not a nation-state, it is formally a country with a substantial amount of devolved powers. Given our status as an IMF programme country and our relationship with Europe at present, we’re not a million miles different.
I wouldn’t hold your breath on a proper index based on the register anytime soon. The data is much too messy and there is still entries being added to 2010 in every update.
Worse is when you have multiple properties in one stamp. Some are easy to pick out, others you end up having to exclude based on being outside of the normal range. That becomes difficult due to the low number of transactions.
To further top it off, the price in the register may not actually be the sale price of the property, but the sale price less the cost of fixtures and fittings (or whatever they want to call it), which further pushes prices around.
@Stephen, sadly you’re probably right and there seems little appetite to exceed the very basic requirement imposed on us by the IMF. The Property Price Register seems riddled with errors, the Phoenix magazine – 2012 Annual now on sale at all good newsagents for €4.95 – reports that the purchase of “Woodside” at 18 Shrewsbury Road in Dublin in 2012 by Seamus Fitzpatrick was “understood to be somewhere north of €5m” whilst the PPR indicates €1.7m which the Phoenix says “is understood to be an error”
Minister Shatter has ruled out extending the PPR to pre 2010 transactions and recently in the Dail, he refused to entertain enhancing the PPR with basic information like whether the subject property is a house or an apartment, the number of bedrooms, the square footage, the site area and the local authority area
http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail2012111400030?opendocument