Property prices: fluctuating fortunes on three Dublin streets

When house prices started to fall in 2007 few anticipated just what was to come, and talk of soft landings persisted well into 2008 when it became impossible to ignore the reality that the landing was going to be very hard indeed.

A house in Dublin’s Blackrock which would have easily commanded in excess of €1 million in the spring of 2006 could not be sold for half that just four years later as the market collapsed and homes shed at least 60 per cent of their boom-time values.

There was no property price register during the boom so accurate statistics depend on the honesty of estate agents.

Since it came into being in 2010, however, there has been far more transparency in the market and identifying the price rollercoaster has become much easier.

Commanding prices

At the height of the boom in 2006, two-bedroom houses of no more than 700sq ft on Oxmantown Road in Stoneybatter were routinely commanding prices in excess of €400,000.

After the market collapsed, they lost at least 60 per cent of their perceived value. And in June 2010, at what might come to be viewed as the bottom of the market, a house on the street sold for €148,000. It was one of very few transactions recorded in the area on the Property Price Register for more than a year. In December 2012 a house on the same road sold for €185,000. At the end of June of this year, meanwhile one went for €265,000.

Terraced homes

In 2006 many three-bedroom terraced homes in Marino were selling for well over half a million euro. By September 2010 a house on Brian Road – one of the most well-known streets in the area – changed hands for €282,000. A year later several houses on the same road sold with a mid-range property selling for €235,000, while in 2012 one went for €220,000. There was little movement last year but this year two properties sold on the road with one fetching €260,000 and a second doing considerably better attracting €430,000.

When the property bubble was at its most inflated, houses on Beechwood Avenue in Ranelagh were commanding prices of well over €1 million.

In April 2011, a house on the avenue went on the market. The sellers wanted €880,000, which was about €200,000 less than they might have got at the height of the boom.

By August 2011 the price had fallen to €740,000, but the house did not sell until March 2012 and made €605,000.

A house a few doors up sold this March for €805,000.