Northern Ireland house price fall steeper than the Republic’s?

Fascinating piece of analysis from Nama Wine Lake on Northern Ireland’s collapsing residential property market :

…in Northern Ireland, there’s an underappreciated phenomenon unfolding with prices there having declined by 54% in real terms. This morning the quarterly University of Ulster/Bank of Ireland house price series has been released and it shows that the average settled selling price of a home in Northern Ireland in Q1, 2012 was GBP 134,560 (€168,347) which represents a decline of 1.9% from the previous quarter and a decline of 46.3% from the peak of GBP 250,400 (€313,274) in 2007.

On this side of the Border, the publication last week of the Central Statistics Office monthly residential property price index showed that prices here have decline 49.9% from peak and given our peak price of €313, 998 according to the PTSB/ESRI index, that indicates national prices here today of €157,360. So the nominal decline in the Republic is greater than inNorthern Ireland, which might be expected.

But if you consider inflation in the Republic is a mere 1.9% since the peak whilst in the UK it is a staggering 16.7%, the real decline in the Republic is 50.8% and in Northern Ireland, it’s 54% which would appear to be world record, at least according to the Reinhart and Rogoff league table.

Given that Northern Ireland doesn’t have a major problem with vacant property unlike the Republic – its vacancy rate is 7% which is pretty much in line with international norms whilst ours is 14%; given that Northern Ireland has an unemployment rate of 6.8% which is one half of ours and given their banks are no worse and are probably in better condition than ours, isn’t it truly remarkable that their property crash is worse than ours?

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty