Declan Woods, Sherry FitzGerald Cavan.

House prices rise by €5,000 in Co Cavan

House prices have risen by €5,000 in Co Cavan over the past quarter, according to the latest MyHome.ie Property Price Report.

The report, in association with Bank of Ireland, shows that the median asking price for a property in the county is now €220,000. This means prices have risen by €10,500 compared with this time last year.

Asking prices for a three-bed, semi-detached house in the county fell by €8,000 over the quarter to €187,000. However, they are still €12,000 ahead of where they were in the same period in 2023.

The asking price for a four-bed semi-detached house in Cavan rose by €5,000 over the quarter to €225,000 - flat compared to this time last year.

In all, there were 242 properties for sale in Cavan at the end of September 2024 - marking an increase of four per cent in terms of available supply over the quarter. The average time for a property to go sale agreed in the county after being placed up for sale now stands at nearly five months.

Declan Woods from Sherry FitzGerald Cavan says there is polarity in the market when it comes to different housing types. “Parts of our county have a stronger market than others; mid to east Cavan for example, places like Virginia, Kingscourt, Cootehill and Bailieborough are places where prices are stronger,” he explained.

“And guide prices there haven’t moved but, in other areas, where there may not be as high of demand for housing, you will see a drop in asking price,” he added.

Mr Woods said there are numerous considerations when a house goes to market in the first instance. “When a house goes to market there are variables to consider,” he continued.

“You could have two houses side by side but with different finishes and one fetches a higher price because of the finish. And, because of mortgage constraints, houses where people can just move in and live are achieving slightly higher than the asking price and this is distorting the market slightly. There are a lot of fundamentals but one core fact is there isn’t enough stock in the market. The other is that good-quality stock that is well presented to a standard where the buyer can move in straight away is doing well.”

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The MyHome.ie report also found asking prices rose by 0.8% on the quarter nationally, by a marginal 0.3% in Dublin and by 1.2% outside the capital. This means the median asking price for new instructions nationally in the quarter was €365,000. In Dublin it was €455,000 and elsewhere around the country it was €315,000.

Joanne Geary, Managing Director of MyHome.ie added: “It is heartening to see housing starts continue to rise as well as expectations that housing completions will exceed 40,000 units next year. This is the kind of trend we will need to see for years to come to redress the imbalance in the market, as epitomised in this latest report by our performance relative to that of the UK.”

Property price inflation

Elsewhere, the official measure of house price inflation based on transactions from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) looks set to peak in the coming months. Residential property price inflation was 9.6% in July, ahead of MyHome figures because homebuyers are increasingly paying over and above the original asking price. Nonetheless, RPPI inflation is expected to fall back in the coming months, and finish 2024 at around 7.75%.