Meeting called to resolve row over prices

THE ROW about revealing house sale prices rumbles on, with the result that information about private treaty sales has completely dried up.

It can't go on like this, says IAVI (Irish Auctioneers Valuers Institute) chief Alan Cooke - and so the institute has called a meeting in Dublin on June 9th to try to resolve the situation.

Amongst others, it is inviting the yet-to-be-legislated-for National Property Services Regulatory Authority (NPSRA), the National Consumer Agency (which threatened prosecution of agents who don't report accurate sales prices), the Data Protection Commissioner, Valuation Office, various Government departments and fellow estate agents' body, IPAV (Irish Professional auctioneers and Valuers).

The dearth of information about what's happening in the market can't go on, says Cooke, who hopes the meeting will start an urgent process to find a solution - the matter can't be long-fingered till summer's over, he believes. But what solution?

The obvious one would be to establish a national register (and backdate it, says Cooke); another would be to allow agents to publish approximate results (within agreed limitations) legally.

But maybe vendors and buyers would give agents permission to publish prices . . . we don't know, because it seems that none of them is asking.

Meanwhile, concerns over the state of the market didn't deter IPAV members from having an upbeat meeting and a right old knees up at its annual conference at the weekend: new president, Alan Redmond, told the meeting that confidence was returning to the housing market as "the easing back of prices" made housebuying more affordable.

New Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan was upbeat too, but warned agents that he wanted 100 per cent of them (instead of just 60 per cent so far) signed up to the NPSRA's code of conduct before it becomes law (but when?)