A report released this morning by the property website Daft has confirmed the emergence of a two-tier housing market of Dublin versus the rest of the country.

Asking prices in the capital rose 10.6 per cent last year, according to Daft’s 2013 House Price Report. The last three months of the year represented the sixth successive quarter that Dublin asking prices rose.

Outside Dublin, asking prices continued to fall in every other county at an average of 5.9 per cent over the year. The final quarter of the year was the 26th successive quarter of falls recorded, with prices now 57 per cent below peak levels.

There are about 37,000 houses for sale in the country, according to the report, a fall of 10,000 over the year.

Average property transaction prices rose 4.7 per cent, the survey says, with the annual rate of change in Dublin reaching 17 per cent towards the end of the year. Market activity levels are still low, however, with just 7,800 transactions completed in the third quarter.

South county
In Dublin, the south of the county is seeing the biggest increase with average asking prices up almost 16 per cent to more than €386,000. Outside the capital, average asking prices fell by less than 1 per cent in the commuter belt of Wicklow, Meath and Kildare.

Laois and Roscommon were two of the worst-performing areas of the country, with asking prices down 16 per cent and 11.7 per cent. The average asking price in Roscommon of just over €90,000 is less than a quarter of the price on Dublin’s southside.