House prices fall 3% in three months, says MyHome.ie

House prices fell by almost 3 per cent to an average price of €268,000 as Covid-19 struck in the second quarter of the year, according to property website MyHome.ie.

The MyHome.ie/Davy property report for the three months from the end of March says that the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic on house prices may not be felt until the third quarter of 2020.

MyHome and Davy’s figures show that the asking price for houses offered for sale in the Republic over the second quarter fell 2.9 per cent on the same period in 2019, to an average of €268,000.

In Dublin, sellers sought an average of €372,000 during the second quarter, 2.6 per cent less than during the same period last year, while outside Dublin, asking prices fell 3 per cent to an average of €224,000.

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Nationally, prices fell 1.5 per cent from the first to the second quarter of this year. In Dublin, the quarterly fall was 2.1 per cent, while it was 0.9 per cent outside the capital.

Conal Mac Coille, chief economist at Davy, who wrote the report, stressed that far fewer houses were offered for sale in the second quarter of this year than during the same period in 2020.

“Our price measure is based on just 3,700 new properties listed for sale over the past three months, down 64 per cent from 10,200 one year ago,” he said.

“Observed prices were therefore clearly biased towards those vendors willing to put their homes on the market despite the enormous uncertainty of the Covid-19 outbreak.”

Market prospects

Mr Mac Coille is optimistic about the property market’s prospects. “The negative impact of Covid-19 could still have a more slow burn impact on the Irish housing market than many participants anticipate,” he said.

“That said, the clear anecdotal evidence is that activity in the housing market is returning to normal levels and with greater confidence than estate agents had expected.”

Angela Keegan, managing director of MyHome.ie, predicted that the full impact of the pandemic on property prices will not emerge until the third quarter of this year.

“With activity significantly down on normal levels for most of the [second] quarter, it is perhaps not hugely surprising that we have seen prices stay relatively steady as many buyers adopt a wait-and-see approach,” she said.

Ms Keegan added that we will have a better sense of how the pandemic has affected house prices in the third quarter.