More evidence of growing house price gap between Dublin and rest of country
Property prices in Dublin rose by 11% last year, while the commuter belt counties saw an increase of only 1%, a report on the market has revealed.
Daft.ie said Meath, Wicklow and Kildare saw little change while the strong growth in pockets of the capital masked figures that show prices still coming down in every other part of the country, including city centres.
Despite the continued poor market outside Dublin – a fall of 6% and asking prices down 4% in Galway, 6% in Cork, 7% in Waterford and 12% in Limerick – the property website said overall it was the smallest annual decline in five years.
The average asking price for a home in the country is now €171,000, up 0.2% from the beginning of last year and down 55% from the peak.
That jumps to €384,000 for an average three-bedroom family home in the south County Dublin area, Daft.ie said.
Ronan Lyons, economist with the property site, urged authorities to look at freeing up brownfield industrial land and some greenfield sites for new developments or impose taxes on the value of derelict or empty sites in the city.
“There is plenty of scope for increasing housing supply in the capital, once we as a society not only make better use of empty sites, but are also prepared to re-designate land so that it can be used more effectively and facilitate building up where it pays off,” he said.
“If we are not, we will have to accept that Dublin will increasingly become an enclave for those with the highest incomes.”
Mr Lyons pointed to 170 acres of prime land close to Tolka Valley Park and the Broombridge station in the Dublin Industrial Estate, as well as 600 acres of green fields in the Dunsink area of the city.
Daft.ie said its report was further evidence of a two-tier housing market in Ireland, with all six regions in the Dublin market showing strong increases in asking prices in year on year terms, while outside the capital the rate of change moved from a fall of 16% registered in late 2011 to an average fall of 6% last year.
The area of Dublin which saw the smallest growth was the north county where prices are up 5% in a year.
It also noted that 49% of all properties are sold or sale agreed within four months, up from 39% a year ago.
Kieran Harte, Daft.ie spokesman, said: “The report shows that the areas surrounding Dublin are seeing their prices stabilise before the country’s other city centres. This would lead us to believe that the shortage of available properties in Dublin is not only significantly affecting house prices in the capital, but starting to impact the traditional commuter counties.
“The tale of 2013 was definitely the lack of supply in sales, rental and shared accommodation in the capital. This lack of accommodation across all sectors has had a major influence in Dublin’s asking prices returning to 2007 percentage increases.
“The only solution is to begin planning and building new accommodation in the capital which will cater for the demand created by the creation of jobs there.”
