Will house prices ever return to pre Celtic tiger prices

Twoandahalfmen

Do you think houses ever return to the prices of early/mid 90s.
My parents bought a 3 bed in 93 for 30k
And a 3 bed in 97 for 50k

They wernt run down.
They still rent out one and sold the 50k one in 07 for around 450000

Any chance houses will be this cheap again

Melion

There are a lot of 3 bed houses around me going for 70-80k

MMAGirl

There will be many more boom/bust cycles in the future.
People have short memories.
Not only do they not remember the previous recessions, they always seem to think that bad times are the first time there were bad times ever.

But if you want to see house prices that cheap in Dublin, then expect all the other things in life to be much worse than they are now.

Think about it. A 30 year mortgage on 30k would cost you about less than a weeks dole per month.

The_Conductor

You can get 3 beds for 30k now- in many parts of the country- but not our larger cities. Part of the boom mentality was a rush to build estates all over the country regardless of any inherent demand in the particular areas- with a few exceptions. The opposite applied in many of our cities (and a few surprising rural areas) where not only was land not released for residential development- but low density housing continued to be the preferred development type, despite the lack of land.

So- a few sites were released for high density units- but the boom was already largely over- hence the ridiculous sums paid for the old veterinary college in Ballsbridge, No. 1 Ballsbridge Road, the old glass bottle factory and a few other addresses which were to have had high density units.

So- Dublin, Cork, Galway (and strangely enough places like Clare) ended up with a serious deficit of residential units- while the midlands was plastered with estates allegedly within commuting distance of Dublin (if you didn't mind a 2-3 hour commute).

We still have this deficit- a lack of residential units in our cities- and a reciprochal glut of properties in unsuitable areas. The property in unsuitable locations is going to continue to plummet in value- but property in Dublin- even if there was a considerable amount hitting the market from repossessions etc- would not- because we don't have an excess of property in high demand areas.

Irish people never got used to high density living- and government policy has never made a distinction between higher density units, lower density units, property sizes, site sizes, freehold and leasehold. One way to address this might be to be very lenient with property tax on smaller units, leasehold properties, small site sizes etc- but the current property price is instead we're looking purely at property prices, nothing more- nothing less (maybe future changes will address this?)

Will we see 30k 3 beds in Dublin again? No- not a chance. I seriously think your 1997 figures are a bit dodgy- its accepted by Peter Bacon and the Department that house prices were too expensive compared with fundamentals from 1994 onwards (if you're bored google the reports).

Shane