After what seems like an age of increasing property prices, the luck of the Irish is back as home prices are now seeing a ‘gradual slowdown’ across Ireland.
Northern Irish property portal, PropertyPal recently published its Housing Market Update for Quarter 2, 2023v (Q2). Jordan Buchanan, COO at PropertyPal writes, ‘Market conditions have seen a gradual slowdown in the rate of price growth and transaction activity in the past three months.’
A typical street in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Quarter 2: Property prices update
The average home sale price (excluding new homes) in Northern Island is £200,600. Breaking that down into houses (£206,500) and apartments (£143,200), the market saw an annual price growth of 7.6% and 1.4% respectively. However, in the last quarter (April – June), these figures dropped dramatically to +1.4% for both houses and apartments.
Figure 1 – Northern Ireland Housing Market Update, 2023
House popularity by area and affordability
Lisburn and Castlereagh (just outside Belfast) saw the largest annual increase of 9.9%, with an average property price of £236,700.
The cheapest region according to PropertyPal’s report is Mid-Ulster, which despite an annual increase of 5.0% and a quarterly increase of 1.8%, has the most affordable property price at £163,600.
Belfast completed the most amount of home sales in Q2, with a staggering 1,027 sales from April – June. The most popular council area was Botanic, which accounted for 237 of those sales.
A row of newly built homes in Ireland
New homes
Jordan Buchanan said, ‘On PropertyPal’s index, resale properties prices grew by 1.4% in the previous 3 month period and by 7.6% in the last year. New Homes experienced slower activity in both transactions and prices.’
New homes, also referred to as new-builds or off-plan properties, had an annual price growth of 4.8%, but contracted by 0.4% in Q2.
The average price in Northern Ireland is currently £237,000 for a new house and £211,700 for a new apartment.
Market demand and future outlook
Market demand remains strong, but supply a persistent challenge.
The report showed that the average number of days for houses to reach a point of ‘sale agreed’ was 43 days.
Buchanan writes, ‘The outlook still remains highly uncertain for the market and volatility is expected with each major economic data release. House prices have proved more resilient than perhaps expected given the scale of interest rate rises but transaction activity has fallen and is expected to continue.
House-hunters remain engaged with strong enquiry levels being sent to estate agents for appropriately valued properties and on average are achieving ‘sale agreed’ status over 1 week faster than pre-covid levels.’
Map if Northern Ireland
Renting in Northern Ireland
The report states, ‘Rental property prices have increased to record highs with growth highlighted across all property types and locations. The average rent is now £791 per month, an increase of 9.7% in the last year.
The surge in rents isn’t unique to N.Ireland and is being experienced across the world driven by a demand spike, stronger wage growth, and rising interest rates pushing landlord mortgage costs up. Supply issues continue to be a significant constraining factor with total stock levels down over 50% compared to pre-covid levels.
Against this backdrop, higher tenant demand has equated to an average of 71 enquiries per rental property listed on PropertyPal.’
