News today that the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in Ireland is to start producing a new monthly house price series, will be welcome in a country where there is a dearth of real information on actual sales prices. The new series will be unveiled on 13th May, 2011 and will reportedly reveal data stretching as far back as 2005.
Details of the new house price series
(1) It will use data on mortgage draw-downs reported by eight financial lenders under Section 13 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 2002
(2) It will exclude cash transactions, though the CSO plans to include in the monthly release detail on the overall size of the residential property market based on Stamp Duty data supplied by the Revenue Commissioners
(3) The index will be hedonic, that is, it will take account of changes in price on a like-for-like property basis. The opposite of hedonic in an Irish house price series is the information published by the Department of Environment Heritage and Local Government which simply takes the sales prices of all property sold and divides that by the number of transactions to give you an average house price!
(4) There will be a monthly national index as well as three sub-indices (a) Dublin Houses (b) Dublin Apartments and (c) Rest ofIrelandHouses and Apartments
There is indeed a dearth of price information in Irelandwhich is preventing price discovery in what has been the collapse of an almighty residential property bubble. It is encouraging that NAMA is calling for the rapid implementation of a house price register , the legislation for which is wending its way through the Oireachtas at present but at a very slow pace.
The following are the current sources of house price information in Ireland at present
(1) Permanent TSB/ESRI quarterly mortgage-derived average prices. It’s hedonic, produced within a month of the quarter end but only applies to less than 4% of the mortgage market and excludes cash transactions.
(2) Department of Environment Heritage and Local Government series which is produced six months after the period end, isn’t hedonic but is apparently based on all mortgage transactions.
(3) DAFT.ie and Myhome.ie produce quarterly series based on asking prices from their property marketing websites.
(4) Sherry FitzGerald produces a quarterly series based on its valuation of a portfolio of properties.
NAMA Wine Lake 
Is there any metric that measures new home sales or transactions? Looking at volume, I’ve only come across completions, new home registrations and commencements.
@Concord, no there is no metric that measures new home sales. The CSO report today includes in its notes a reference to total transactions but the latest available is for 2009.
Click to access rppi.pdf
Mortgage information indicates total mortgage trans but not broken between new and second hand homes, and excludes cash. The House Price Database will help if and when it is eventually introduced.
https://namawinelake.wordpress.com/about/house-price-database/