Second-hand Dublin house prices up 9.5%, claims report
The average second-hand home in Dublin now costs €262,000, up 9.5% from this time last year, according to an estate agent's survey.
Prices are up 3.3% since the beginning of the year, according to the survey of 1,000 homes by Douglas Newman Good, a third consecutive quarterly rise.
Increased demand for starter semi-detached houses, strong sales of southside properties and solid performance of houses in the €250,000 to €350,000 price range all contributed to the rise, according to the DNG Property Price Gauge.
Price increases were not evenly reported in the survey, with properties in the €250,000-€350,000 band recording the highest increase of 5.1% since January or an annual increase of 12.7%, mainly due to the increased demand for semi-detached houses.
Houses in the sub €250,000 category recorded the lowest quarterly increase of 2.8%, reflecting the higher concentration of apartments or less favourably located homes.
Further discrepancy in the housing market is also evident in the strong performance of Southside homes, which despite experiencing the worst of the property price drops from peak, showed an increase of 4.2% in Q1 and 11.2% since this time last year.
Northside homes increased by 3.3% (8.6% annually) while houses in the Westside of the city increased by 3.2% (6.0% annually), according to the survey.
"These price increases should be put in context of 6 years of price declines up to the middle of last year," said Keith Lowe, CEO of DNG.
"House price increases are also not consistently spread throughout the market, reflecting demand preferences but it is encouraging to see three straight quarters of house price increases.
"Properties are still down almost 63% on the peak they achieved in Q3 2006.
"There also appears to be signs of a two tier market emerging in terms of price recovery with the capital and some other high population urban areas such as Galway, Cork and Sligo outperforming the rest of the country.
"Dublin, naturally due to its high population, infrastructure and employment is likely to continue to outperform the rest of Ireland in terms of house price recovery."
