House prices in Dublin have fallen by more than 60% since their peak in 2007, the largest drop recorded since the property crash began.
Estate agents Sherry Fitzgerald say that house prices are now down at levels not since the first quarter of 2002.
The firm’s latest house price index reveals that the average price of a second-hand property in Dublin fell by 6.2% in the second quarter of the year.
From the peak of the market in 2006, Dublin house prices have fallen in real terms by 60.2%, while the national market has corrected by 55.2%.
The figures paint a bleaker picture for property prices than recent statistics issued by the Central Statistics Office which said house prices in Dublin had fallen by almost 46 per cent from their peak in early 2007. Prices for apartments in the region are 53 per cent lower. Since the peak of the property boom, residential properties in the rest of Ireland have fallen by 38 per cent.
And they come just days before a second high profile auction of distressed properties conduction by UK firm Allsops. Among the highlights of the sale are a property on Ailesbury Road in Ballsbridge in Dublin.
The six bedroom house is on sale for just €1.45m, a fraction of what it would have commanded in the boom when similar properties fetched in the region of €8m.
It is the most expensive property in the Allsop catalogue and is bound to set a new floor for house prices on the road where some of Ireland’s richest property developers once rubbed shoulders with ambassadors and one former Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds.
Sherry Fitz economist Marian Finnegan said its house price index showed the current recession was one of the most significant in the post-war era.
She said the outlook for the remainder of the year was challenging.
“The appetite for the volume of transactions required to stabilise the market is hampered by low consumer sentiment and a dysfunctional mortgage market,” she said.
Eight in ten sales were of second-hand homes, but almost one in three homes sold through Sherry Fitzgerald were investment properties, the same proportion as last year.
