The average price of a home in Ireland is eight times higher than the average income, a report from property website MyHome.ie has said. The housing affordability gap is now at its widest since the 2008 financial crisis.
Irish average annual earnings stood at €52,950 in the three months to the end of June, the property website said in its latest report on asking prices for homes.
Meanwhile, the average purchase price of a home was €426,000 over the same period, putting the house price-to-income ratio at eight to one.
“By this measure, affordability is now back at its most challenging level since the 2008/2009 financial crisis,” said the report’s author, Bank of Ireland chief economist Conall Mac Coille.
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However, MyHome.ie, which is owned by The Irish Times, said the landscape is “very different” to the Celtic Tiger period when house-price growth exceeded rent-price inflation.
Average rents rose 5.5 per cent year-on-year in the three months to the end of March, according to Residential Tenancies Board figures cited in the report.
“The upshot here is that despite rising house prices squeezing affordability, it still makes more sense to buy, with an interest rate of 3 per cent to 4 per cent, than rent, paying a yield of around 5 per cent,” Mr Mac Coille said.
Asking prices for homes surged by 5.7 per cent in the three months to the end of September compared to the same period last year, according to the report. In Dublin, the increase was 4.8 per cent and for the rest of the country it was 6.2 per cent.
However, the rate of increase has slowed, with asking prices dipping by 0.4 per cent in the third quarter of the year from the previous quarter.
Despite the affordability issues within the market, competition for properties remains “fierce”, Mr Mac Coille said, with homes typically selling for 8 per cent above the asking price.
An “eye-catching” fifth of houses were sold at 20 per cent above the asking price in the third quarter, said MyHome.ie managing director Joanne Geary.
Yet, Mr Mac Coille said, the evidence suggests house-price inflation “is finally slowing down”, with the annual rate of increase falling in each of the past three quarters to its softest pace in almost two years.
He said the market remains “extremely difficult”, with just 13,000 homes available for sale on the website in September. This is “well down” on pre-Covid levels of about 20,000.
One “silver lining” for the market is that housing completions have risen this year, jumping to 32,700 in the 12 months to June, the highest level since the Celtic Tiger years, the economist said.
