Property Prices reached a peak ten years ago, where are we now?

It is now ten years since the peak of the housing bubble in 2007. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) started producing a Residential Property Price Index in January 2005 with a base figure of 100 and by 2007 the Index had averaged 130.3. In fact, the actual peak of the bubble was April 2007 when the Index reached 131.0 a 31% increase in house prices since January 2005. By December 2007 the Index had fallen to 129.2. Although very few realised it (or accepted it) at the time, the crash had started, there wasn’t going to be a soft landing.

By the end of 2008 prices had fallen by 7% in the year but the effect of the banking crisis accelerated the collapse in houses prices in 2009 with a fall of 19.2% in the year. The crash continued for another three years with falls in 2010 (13.5%), 2011 (16.2%) and 2012 (13.8%). The bottom of the market was reached in March 2013 when the CSO Index reached 59.7, a 55% fall from the peak. To give you some local examples, we sold a 3 bed semi with a garage for €300,000 in May 2007 and we sold the same house type in the same estate in September 2012 for €139,500, a 54% decrease.  A standard 3 bed semi-detached fell from €285,000 to €135,000. The higher end of the market was even more severely hit. In one example we sold a house in the summer of 2007 and sold the same house type a few doors away in February 2012 for €420,000 less.

Thankfully the market turned the corner in 2013 and there have been 3 consecutive years of strong price growth since with the CSO index now at 89.8, a 47% increase since August 2012. A typical 3 bed semi in Tramore is now selling at €195,000, a 45% increase, in line with the CSO figures but still 31% down on peak prices.