Meath Focus: Demand is king in Royal County

It’s a buyer’s market in Meath right now. At least it would be if there were enough houses to buy.

Viewings and offers are more buoyant than last year, according to Padraig Sherry of Sherry Fitzgerald Sherry in Dunshaughlin. But while there is demand for properties up to around €350,000 the biggest challenge currently facing him is shortage of supply.

“I’m not short of buyers, I’m short of stock. Nobody is moving for the sake of moving anymore. What we actually need is new houses,” says Sherry. “I’m pleading with builders to build them, and I can guarantee them sales, but when they look at the figures they tell me the prices they could achieve are too low to encourage them to do it even where they have sites.”

This year has seen a significant reduction in the number of sales falling through too, says Ronan McKenna of Raymond Potterton Auctioneers in Navan.

“There seems to be a bit more confidence in buying and so sales are actually going through. The problem was never about value, it was about people having second thoughts about the market and a fear that prices would fall further. That has changed,” says McKenna, whose own sales volume is up “late single digits” on this time last year.

Turnaround times between going on the market and reaching sale agreed have halved to around four weeks.

“While that’s good for the seller, it’s bad for the market because it is being driven by lack of supply,” says McKenna.

Dermot Grimes of REA Grimes in Ashbourne says the bottom of the property market was reached last August, and there has been upward pressure since then.

“It is already catching out people who have been sitting on the fence waiting, those who looked at properties in the second half of last year and are coming back to them now only to find they have sold,” says Grimes.

REA Grimes is currently selling new builds on a development first launched in 2006, with houses priced then at up to €800,000, called Archerstown Wood. Prices have since fallen to €390,000 despite the fact that builders have added an extra 300sq ft of floor space to those being built now.

“Last year I was selling them at a rate of one a month. This year I’ve taken 11 booking deposits since January,” says Grimes.

Agricultural land is selling at between €10,000 and €13,000 an acre, depending on the site, with good demand, according to John Harrington of Smith Harrington Auctioneers in Navan.

On the residential side, it’s been a solid start to the year in terms of sales, but values remain low. “In the town most sale agreeds are at the lower end of the market,” says Harrington.

This includes two-bed apartments ranging in price from €55,000 to €70,000, sold mainly to people from the town and either already living there or in some cases coming home from abroad.

“Activity wise things are not all that different from last year,” says Niamh Giffney of DNG Royal County, also in Navan.

“A lot of people here are in negative equity and what money there is we find is going out of town to buy small properties, cottages and derelicts, anything for less than €100,000 that people can do up. Value for money is everything now and for that they will get their acre or three-quarters of an acre.”

In Navan town, the county’s biggest, three bedroom semis are available from between €110,000 and €120,000, down from €300,000 at the height of the boom.

The rental market is strong, according to Ronald Duff of DNG Ronald Duff, in commuter belt towns such as Ratoath, Dunboyne, Ashbourne and Dunshaughlin.

Two bedroom apartments are available to rent for €850 per month, four bedroom semis from €900 and detached houses for around €1,300 a month. This represents an increase of between €150 and €200 on two years ago, he says.

“If anything, the appeal of renting is growing, what with no property tax, no maintenance and no management fees to worry about.

“I think renting long term will become much more common,” says Duff.