House sales down as supply tightens and prices rise

House sales in the Republic fell last year by 3.5 per cent to 47,175 while the value of all transactions rose by 7.4 per cent to 11.5 million euro - reflecting rising prices.

Dublin, which accounted for around one-third of property deals and over half of the entire value of house sales, wirnessed a 2.4 per cent decline in transactions while Cork, which accounted for 11 per cent of deals nationwide, saw the number of transactions fall by 1.3 per cent.

Availabilty of property fell most sharply in Galway (down 13 per cent), Kilkenny (12 per cent), Mayo (nine per cent) and Limerick (nine per cent). Six counties recording a rise in transactions. The highest recorded were Sligo (up 12 per cent), Waterford (11 per cent) and Laois (5.7 per cent).

Angela Keegan of Myhome.ie (pictured), which produced the figures based on the data in the Residential Property Price Register, said: “We have approximately two million properties in Ireland and in a normal market around four per cent or 80,000 of these would be changing hands each year. As this analysis shows we are a long way short of that. At the moment there are 18,900 residential properties for sale on MyHome.ie, this is 12 per cent down on this time last year when there were 21,410 properties for sale. Clearly it is going to take some time for the property market to return to equilibrium.”

Lack of new build, ongoing concerns over negative equity, reluctance to give up favourable mortgage rates and lack of bridging loans are among the factors leading to the decrease in sales activity.