Wealth Report H1 2019 | Daft.ie

Ronan Lyons, Economist

26th May 2019

An analysis of recent trends in the premium property market in 2019

"If I were a rich man..." So goes the famous song in 'Fiddler on the Roof'. For most of us, owning a home is the closest we'll get to being as rich as Tevye imagined, with three staircases - one going up, one even longer coming down, and one more leading nowhere, just for show.

Roughly two thirds of Irish households own the home they live in and almost all of these dwellings have valuations that contain six figures: in early 2019, the average property in the country had a value of over €260,000 - and in Dublin, where over one quarter of households live, the average home was worth almost €385,000.

This report is the fourth in a series that looks at the breakdown of housing wealth across the country and how that housing wealth is changing over time. It does this by looking at the housing market in a number of different ways.

The first is to break the country up, as each Daft.ie Report does, into 54 different markets. These are the 25 different parts of Dublin - its 22 postal districts and then North, South and West county Dublin, plus the four other cities, and then the 25 other counties (excluding the city areas).

Splitting the country up this way, the most and least expensive markets contain few surprises. Dublin 6 is the most expensive market in the country, with an average property value of just over €635,000. South County Dublin is the next most expensive market, with an average value of nearly €610,000. Three other parts of the capital also have average property values above half a million euro: Dublin 6W, Dublin 14 and Dublin 4.

These are, it should be noted, the 'all-in averages' and not like-for-like comparisons of particular property types. The ordering would, no doubt, be different if one were comparing just the value of a two-bedroom apartment or three-bed semi-detached across areas. But, when thinking about wealth, it's the type as well as the price per type that matters.

The cheapest five markets in the country remain concentrated in the North-West and in all five, property values are on average below €150,000. These range from Leitrim, where property is on average €137,000 on average, to Donegal, where it is €146,000.

It is possible to compare the ranking of these 54 markets now with ten years ago, when the market had turned and property prices were falling. Doing so reveals what might be termed a 'flight to value' over the last decade. By and large, urban areas that were previously less fashionable have seen the greatest rise up the ladder over the last ten years.

Dublin 10 has risen by ten places, going from 40th to 30th most expensive market between 2009 and 2019. Dublin 17 and Dublin 1 have also risen more than other areas - by five and four places respectively. The other two fastest climbing markets are Limerick city, which has risen nine places, and Westmeath, which has risen by six.

Offaly - which arguably has not gained from the motorway network as much as Westmeath has - is one of the areas where prices have not kept pace. It has fallen four places, to 43rd most expensive market of 54. The largest falls, though, are in Clare (down five places in a decade) and Kildare (down seven).

The report also drills into the 389 micro-markets that form the foundation of each Daft.ie Report. The most expensive market in the country is Mount Merrion, where the average property value is over €850,000. In Dalkey (€842,000), Foxrock (€834,000) and in Sandycove (€752,000), the average value of property is also above three quarters of a million euro. The most expensive micro-markets outside Dublin is, by some distance, Enniskerry in Leinster (€638,000). In the other provinces, that distinction falls to Kinsale in Munster (€395,000) and Kinvara in Connacht-Ulster (€326,000), again in each case the most expensive market in their region by some distance. The cheapest market in the country remains Ballaghaderreen in Roscommon, where with the average property value at just €97,000, it remains the only market in the country where property values are below €100,000.

The Price Register also helps pinpoint Ireland's most expensive streets. Looking at residential transactions of €2m or more over the last 18 months, there are five streets that have a number of homes sell for such amounts. Glenart Avenue, in Blackrock, is a new entrant, following the successful sale of a number of new homes on the street by Bartra Capital.

Ireland's other most expensive streets will be more familiar to those used to browsing the top end of the market, for fun or for other reasons. They include Palmerston Road and Park Avenue, where in each case six homes have changed hands for at least €2m in the recent past. Once again, Ailesbury Road makes the list, with five such transactions and a higher average price point. But the most expensive 'street' in the country currently is Coliemore in Dalkey, where four homes have changed hands for at least €2 million in recent months - with an average price point of €5.5m.

Methodology:

The Daft.ie Wealth Report is based primarily on the output of hedonic price regressions, which reveal average property values for particular classes of property. This can be broken down by period, location and dwelling attribute (such as size or type). To calculate average prices by city or county, these averages by class are weighted by the class frequency to give a meaningful average price by location. For example, Dublin 1 will be more weighted to 1-bedroom apartments than Leitrim, which will be weighted more towards 4- and 5-bedroom bungalow and detached properties. The same methodology allows an estimate of the total number of property millionaires in Ireland, as follows: for each of the 389 micro-market in the country, the average value of 25 main property types, from 1-bed apartment to 5-bed detached, is calculated, giving the average value for almost 10,000 property segments. The number of property millionaires was calculated by focusing on the 43 segment where the average property value was at least €1m and adding up, based on Census information and the Daft.ie listings archive, the total number of dwellings in this segment. The Property Price Register was used to calculate the most expensive streets, with exclusions based on transactions concerning sites for development or containing multiple units.