Major study warns of property crash

Ireland faces the greatest risk of a property crash of any western European country, a major analysis of American and EU house prices has found.

Deutsche Bank analyst Tobias Just found that an over-supply of houses and increasing interest rates in Ireland put the country at the greatest risk.

Overall, his team reported that all west European countries surveyed are at risk from a property downturn in the US or in their neighbouring European countries.

The report found Irish house prices have increased by as much as 300 per cent in the last 10 years, twice the increase in Spain, which is the next most vulnerable property market in western Europe.

Under the subheading "Scary Scores", the report analysed 14 different factors in the European housing market and found that Ireland had a risk fact of 6.4 points, compared to 5.9 for Spain. Germany and France had the lowest risk factors, with 2.7 and 3.9 respectively.

The risk factors were grouped under six areas: general pricing risk, economic risk, supply risk, market structure risk, risk in the mortgage system and contagion risk, which is the risk of a downturn in other countries spreading into the domestic market. Ireland is most vulnerable to supply and mortgage system categories.

"While the Irish market is to be negatively affected by very strong supply growth and the effect of rising interest rates in a flexible mortgage system, the Spanish market is facing particular contagion risk," the report found.