Daft.ie Report Reveals a Sharp Decrease in House Price Growth

2nd August 2006, Daft.ie, Ireland's busiest property website, today released the Daft.ie Report for Quarter 2, 2006. The report shows that annual house price growth has slowed from 14% in April to 6.2% in July. Meanwhile buy-to-let investment yields in Ireland are at an historic low with the average yields now at 3.27%.

While in general there is a slowdown across the entire property market there are significant geographical differences. The average price of a property in Dublin is now €483,000, more than twice the average price of property in Ballina, Co. Mayo which is €220,000.

Meanwhile a new record has been set in south county Dublin with the average price of a four bed property now costing more than one million Euro. Limerick is the now best place to invest in buy-to-let property with an average yield of 4.07%.

Commenting on the figures, Eamonn Fallon, Director, Daft.ie said "Because our figures are based on advertised asking prices rather than on closing prices we can see trends as they happen. This may therefore be the first indication of a soft landing for the Irish property market." He added "While there are still areas where price growth is steaming ahead, many parts of country are beginning to see a much more realistic house price growth which is more sustainable in the longer term."

According to Marc Coleman, Economics Editor of The Irish Times, the property market is overvalued by as much as 15% but we are unlikely to see a downturn. "Despite some over-valuation in the market a downturn is unlikely for two fundamental reasons, namely the expected release of SSIA moneys, which began this May and became bankable as deposit leverage and secondly, more liberal mortgage lending policies introduced by banks at the turn of the year."

The low-density housing policy of the Dublin planners is also having an adverse effect on house prices according to Mr. Coleman. "Use of land within the M50 is highly inefficient: In a land footprint the size of Berlin, we are housing less than one third of Berlin's 4 million population. Unfortunately this is where people want to live."

A full copy of the report is available online at www.daft.ie/report and includes a full commentary by Marc Coleman.

For further information please contact:
Jennifer Mooney, Marketing Solutions,
053 26789, 087 833 6450

Notes to the Editor
Daft.ie is Ireland's biggest property website with the largest selection of residential property for sale in Ireland. It is also the primary online destination for commercial, overseas and residential property to let. Daft.ie was founded in 1997 as an efficient way of finding property and house mates online. In recent years Daft has expanded into all areas of the Irish property market and today has a thriving network of over 1,000 estate agents and over 40,000 landlords.

In May 2006, a report by ABC ELECTRONIC confirmed that Daft.ie was Ireland's busiest certified website with requests for over 27 million pages of information received (Page Impressions) in May 2006, ahead of other well-known sites including; RTE (22 million, May 06), Eircom (22 million, January 06) and MyHome.ie (18 million, October 05).

In 2005, Daft.ie customers applied for over €3 billion in mortgages. The company has won numerous awards for its innovative approach and strong customer focus. In 2005 it won Innovation and Internet Entrepreneur of the Year (IIA Net Visionary Awards), Best International eBusiness Website (United Nations World Summit, Tunisia), Small Business of the Year (Small Firms Association) and Digital Media Brand of the Year.