Irish house price growth slows

Irish house prices rose by 0.3% in February, according to the ERSI/Permanent TSB House Price Index.

Despite going up, the rate is down from 0.9% in February 2004, and continues a trend of low growth rates experienced over since October 2004.

Permanent TSB said that over the 12 months to the end of February 2005, Irish house prices nationwide rose by 7.9%. The average price of a house in February was ?255,776. The price of a house in Dublin was ?337,535.

The price of a house for a first-time buyer last month was ?223,361, up from ?208,826 the same time last year. House prices for second-time buyers rose to ?288,743 from ?266,708.

Niall O’Grady, Head of Marketing at Permanent TSB commented: “After some extraordinary years, house prices at least appear to be returning to some acceptable level of growth”.

“While the performance of individual sectors of the market is still varying quite a lot, the overall trend suggests national house price growth of just 5% for the current year - almost half of the rate of growth recorded last year and inconceivable only a few years ago when national prices were rising by well over 20% each year.”
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