Irish residential property continues to decline across the board, though at lower rate

The regular audience on here will know that there is little time for the asking price indices produced by Daft.ie and MyHome.ie. When the only alternative was the mortgage-based transaction index from the CSO, the asking price indices had some relevance because we were in the dark on cash-based transactions. But after the launch of the property price register in September 2012, there is really no excuse for paying much attention to asking price indices because we now know what all property – sold to cash-buyers and sold to mortgage-buyers – sells for.

What we needed of course is for some organization to take the massive list of sales prices on the new Property Price Register and produce a nice clean index. Remember someone needs to look at an individual sale price, work out what sort of property it is – size, location – and relate it to prices of the same type of property previously. That’s not easy, but the good people at Daft.ie have done it. They’re best placed to do it of course because they have a massive database of listing details which allows them to look at most properties sold and see what the original Daft.ie listing looked like. Well done to Daft.ie for doing this, it’s difficult dirty work and they are providing a true public service with analyzing the data in the Property Price Register and turning it into real information. There are drawbacks with the information on the Property Price Register, there are some errors in the data and it is constantly updated, so you might still find new transactions being added for prior months.

This morning, Daft.ie has produced its latest index on the Property Price Register. The index in March 2013 is 94.0, down 8.3% from 102.5 in March 2012. When calculating the annual decline, what Daft.ie do is to produce an average decline from Q1,2012 to Q1, 2013 and this decline was 6.5%.

Daft.ie says that prices in Dublin have fallen 2.4% in the past year, prices in other cities are down 3.7% so that would imply that prices outside cities are falling by more than 6.5%, if 6.5% is the national average.  The pace of declines is definitely moderating, the index stood at 145.0 in March 2010, 120.9 in March 2011, 102.5 in March 2012 and 94.0 in March 2013 representing annual declines of 17%, 15% and 8% in 2011, 2012 and 2013. So prices are still declining but at a lesser rate than in 2011 and 2012.

Interestingly the decline recorded by Daft.ie’s actual price index from Jan 2010 to date is 39% which is greater than the 30% decline recorded by the CSO.

The really good news is that the Property Price Register shows that transactions are substantially up, by a stonking 38% in 2012 on 2011 figures. Daft.ie hasn’t shown 2013 volumes but because of delays in updating the Property Price Register, that omission by Daft.ie is perfectly understandable. But increased transactions show the market is recovering in the true sense that buyers striking more bargains with sellers, even if prices are still declining.

The old media is focusing on asking prices. You’ll find the asking price reports for Daft.ie here and MyHome.ie here, if you’re interested. Lisney and DNG also produce surveys of asking prices. Sherry FitzGerald produces a survey of settled prices from its estate agents.