Clare property prices still going up despite pandemic, report indicates

THE prices being sought for houses around the Banner were 2% higher in the first three months of 2021 than they were during the first quarter of 2020 according to the latest Daft.ie report. The average asking price of a house in Clare is now €191,000, 60% higher than at the lowest point of the market.

Across the country, the average price of a home is now €233,000, up 63% on the worst depths of the crash.
In Clare, prices in the first three months of 2021 were 2% higher than a year previously, compared to a fall of 2% seen a year ago. The average price of a home is now €191,000, 60% above its lowest point.

During the first quarter of the year the average amount sought for a one bed apartment was €79,000, while it was €94,5000 for a two bedroom terraced house and €129,000 for a three bed semi detached house. The average price sought for a four bedroom bungalow was €262,000 and for a five bedroom detached house it was €281,000.

Writing in the Daft.ie report, Trinity college economist Ronan Lyons said that the performance of the property market in the face of Covid has been incredible. “Even in a market blighted by extreme volatility, such as Ireland’s over the last three decades, the last 12 months will go down as remarkable ones in the history of Ireland’s housing market. It’s hardly a secret that if you had asked a bubble of economists – I believe that’s the right collective noun – 18 months ago what the impact of a global pandemic would be on housing prices, the vast majority (if not every single one) would have said that a pandemic would lower prices and possibly dramatically so.

“The logic for such a stance is, at first glance, compelling. The pandemic marks an extraordinary shock to housing demand. Take unemployment, which is estimated to have been above 20% every month since March 2020. Not even in the worst of the post-Celtic Tiger crash – or indeed in the grimmest days of the 1950s or 1980s – did unemployment ever top 20%. So when an economist considers such a shock to demand, they will quite rightly think of a decline in prices, possibly with a fall in transactions. What has happened over the last 12 months has been the opposite. Comparing the first quarter of 2021 with the same period a year earlier, prices on average were 7.6% higher.

“What is perhaps even more remarkable is that this is not the market momentum carrying on a prior trend, regardless of the impact of Covid. Indeed, the counterpart to this report a year ago found that prices had actually fallen 1.7% in the last twelve months – the culmination of over two years of cooling inflation.”

Owen Ryan