A Buyer’s Market for Property in Ireland

The Irish Independent has declared that it’s a buyer’s market for property in Ireland in a recent detailed report into the state of the housing economy across the water.

The report in the newspaper discusses property pricing trends in Ireland, and the journalist also looks at predictions for the Irish housing market in the near term - and in this article we too take a look at why it’s a buyer’s market and how you can make use of this time to get in on the next wave of Irish house price growth!

According to the Irish Independent, house prices across Ireland have officially dropped by about 15% from their peak, which they identify as having occurred in 2006.  However, if you look a little more closely at the market in the past couple of months, you can see that desperate sellers are willing to slash up to 30% from the asking price just to off load their Irish property stock.

Fuelling the sell off in part is the buy to let sector – just as in the UK where those who bought speculatively in the last year to eighteen months have found that their rental income will not meet the costs of the property, so those who have bought to let in Ireland are feeling the pinch as well as increases in interest rates have pushed up mortgage costs and tenants haven’t been available in such high numbers as was predicted.

The best advice for homeowners is of course not to sell at the current time.  But unfortunately not everyone can take this advice and some have to sell.  Where people are being forced to put their house on the market in a falling property economy, there are bargains to be bagged by buyers who are not afraid to haggle the price down further and sit on their newly acquired real estate for the long-term.

The short-term forecast for the Irish housing market is very much negative, who can say what the medium-term will bring, but it’s fair to say that over the long-term there will be a re-reversal of Irish property fortunes and once the market has rebalanced and gone right down, it will start to appreciate again.  At which time, those who have bought low now can reap financial dividends.

Finally, there is further good news to be drawn from the Irish Independent report on falling house prices in Ireland.  It states that there has been “a flight to quality” with those who are buying now insisting on purchasing quality stock.  This always happens in a downward period of housing markets and it means that shoddy constructors are forced out of business or forced to improve their standards – which can only be positive news for the future of the Irish housing market.

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