200,000 more homes needed - report
The average asking price of a four-bedroom house has reached €275,000 in Waterford, a 6.18% increase on this time last year.
Ireland would need to deliver an additional 206,000 homes this year alone, just to match the housing-to-population ratio in the UK, according to the latest quarterly house price report from MyHome.ie
The report also found that the average asking price of a four-bedroom house has reached €275,000 in Waterford, a 6.18% increase on this time last year. Similarly, the average asking price for a two-bedroom house has surged by 4% in comparison to last September.
With a surging population, the number of houses needed to reach a sustainable house-to-population rate is rising rapidly.
In 2020, Ireland would have needed 138,000 extra homes to match the UK’s market in relative terms, 68,000 fewer than this year.
The MyHome report for the third quarter of 2024 found that annual asking price inflation was 7.5% nationwide. Annual asking price inflation in Dublin is now 6.2% and the rate has accelerated to 8.5% in the rest of Ireland.
Munster has seen high single-digit territory in most areas of the province. In Waterford, prices rose by 7.1% to €225,000. The lowest for a city in Munster, inflation was just 2.8% in Waterford city, with average prices rising to €185,000.
House price inflation hit 14% in Cork City, while both Clare and Limerick have seen prices rise 15% over the past 12 months, to €285,000 and €275,000 respectively.
Conall MacCoille, the Chief Economist at Bank of Ireland, wrote the report in conjunction with MyHome.ie and said that “to ‘catch up’ with the UK’s housing stock would now require an additional 206,000 homes.”
He did note that while the number of houses being listed for sale has risen by 2% in the last year, the listings “remain depressed” and said that his “overarching concern is that the tight housing market is now feeding on itself, with would-be vendors put off by a fear of failing to secure a property once they sell their own home".
He said that despite extremely challenging market conditions, with intense demand and a sustained lack of adequate supply, it was promising to see housing starts rise to 49,000 in the year to July.
Optimistically MacCoille said that based on CSO data, the price of homes “looks set to peak in the coming months”.
Echoing this positivity, Joanne Geary, the Managing Director of MyHome, said it was “heartening to see housing starts continue to rise, as well as expectations that housing completions will exceed 40,000 units next year”.
She said this trend would need to remain stable “for years to come to redress the imbalance in the market”.
