Louth house prices continue to rise

House prices in Louth rose by 5% in the first quarter of this year compared to a year earlier, according to the latest house price report released today by property website, Daft.ie.

Average list prices of houses in Louth rose to €282,201 in the first quarter of 2024 (Q1), up 5% compared to the first quarter of 2023. They are also up 2.6% on the final quarter of 2023 (Q4). House prices in Louth are now up 121.3% from the trough during the last recession.

The report also shows that the median price of a newly built home in Louth rose to €365,000 in 2023. A breakdown of the average asking prices in Louth and how they compare to Q1 2023 is as follows:

• One bed apartment - €111,000 - down 9.2%
• Two bed terraced house - €158,000 - up 6.5%
• Three bed semi-detached house - €216,000 - up 2.6%
• Four bed bungalow - €419,000 - up 3.7%
• Five bed detached house - €426,000 - up 8.5%

On a national level, having fallen 1.3% in Q4 2023, the average list price nationally rose by 1.8% between December and March, to stand at €326,469, also up 5.8% on Q1 2023. The total number of properties available to buy on March 1st was fewer than 10,500, down one quarter 24% on the same date last year and a record low in a series extending back to 2007.

The median price nationally of a newly-built home in 2023 climbed to €404,950, with 10,907 market transactions involving

newly-built homes, during 2023 taking place.

Commenting on the latest figures, author of the report and Associate Professor in Economics Trinity College Dublin, Ronan Lyons, said that "the main factors driving the trends seen over the last few years – and resuming in 2024 – are an overall shortage, together with the impact of the Central Bank rules.

"It is a feature – not quite a bug but certainly not an intended result – of the Central Bank’s mortgage rules that they shift housing demand out of more expensive areas like Dublin and, effectively, down the motorway network."

Highlighting the shortage of supply, he explained, "Taking the period 2015-2019 as a whole, there were on average over 24,000 second-hand homes on the market at any one point. The critical year was between April 2020 and April 2021, as lockdowns effectively closed the second-hand market.

"During this year, the number of second-hand homes on the market fell from over 20,000 to just 11,600. It recovered in 2022 – rising from just below 10,000 in February to over 16,000 in November. But 2023 saw a reversal in the trend, most likely driven by interest rate increases.

"And that trend has continued into 2024. On March 1st, there were just 9,700 second-hand homes on the market. That’s down one quarter on the same date last year. It’s also the lowest total in a series that goes back to 2007. In 207 months of data, there have only been four occasions when there have been fewer than 10,000 homes on the second-hand market: February 2022 and each of the first three months of 2024."