Up 9pc then back down 4pc makes a seesaw for D22 prices
WHILE the early part of 2018 saw values surge by 9pc in Dublin 22, there was some sharp corrections in the second half of the year, leading to an average increase in values over the course of the year standing at about 5pc.
Local agent Paul O’Brien puts this down to an increase in the amount of housing stock coming to the market in Dublin 22 and the fact that the banks’ exemptions had run out by the summer.
“The weather didn’t help either,” he says. “The good summer meant that people wanted to be out enjoying the sunshine rather than trekking around looking at houses. There was a bit of a pick-up in values in the autumn, but not to levels that we would have expected.
“The expectations of vendors are always 10pc ahead of the market, and that slows down the pace of transactions.”
Mr O’Brien expects the market to perform in a similar fashion this year, and is predicting increases in values of a further 5pc this year.
“Our attitude in terms of 2019 will be to get properties on the market and get them sold in the first six months of the year, then we’ll see what happens.
“I’m hoping that what has happened is just a speed bump. There are still plenty of first-time buyers out there who want houses.
“The big elephant in the room is of course Brexit. No one knows what is going to happen and what effect that is going to have on the market.” O’Brien says that the pace of bank sales continues to make the closing of transactions take much longer than they should throughout 2018.
“Those sales can take an agonisingly long time to conclude,” he says.
On a more positive note, he says that some ‘normal’ (ie non-bank) closings happened relatively quickly, and he is hoping that the emergence of new companies offering fast track services to deal with closings will help to speed things up.
“As I understand it,” says Mr O’Brien, “it’s effectively a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system that tracks what everyone is doing and makes sure that everyone involved — from solicitors to surveyors to banks — are doing what they are supposed to be doing at the time that they are supposed to be doing it.”
Mr O’Brien notes that the traditional pattern of house sales in D22, which used to follow the spring and autumn auction season, has now been disrupted.
“Sales are more consistent throughout the year now,” he says, “with activity in the late spring and throughout the summer.”