IS THERE any hope the Government will heed last week's call by the Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute (IAVI)for urgent action to establish a property price register?
It’s nearly two years since the near total collapse of information about house sale prices, following a spat between Ireland’s auctioneers and the National Consumer Agency (NCA).
It was May 2008, and NCA chief Ann Fitzgeraldargued that it would be better to have no prices than inaccurate prices published.
So instead we have headlines like last week’s about the roughly 40 per cent drop in house prices – based not on hard sales information but on asking prices or semi-scientific surveys by auctioneers’ bodies.
It's not that real information isn't there: the Property Registration Authority (PRA)gets it daily from solicitors and holds within its archives and files a treasure trove of information about property sales in Ireland over the years.
But data protection laws currently prevent anyone publishing prices (agents would have to get vendors and buyers to agree, something that rarely happens).
Contrast this with the UK, where anyone can get “free and instant house valuations on any property in the UK” on a website like mouseprice.com. It’s worth visiting just to see what we’re missing.
The irony is that the information is available. It is just not being released.
It is hard to disagree with the IAVI's president, Aine Myler, that it just requires political will to sort out the issue.
It could give the National Property Services Regulatory Authority (NPSRA), based in Navan, something to do while still awaiting the Government's legislation to reform the auctioneering industry.
