Key Post Will Irish house prices rise or fall?

I have attempted in this thread to summarise the arguments on both sides. They are not all my own views. Other than owning my own home, I have no interest in the house market

No one knows the answer to this question. One expert will argue confidently that Irish house prices must crash, while another will argue confidently that they must continue to rise. This post aims to summarise the arguments on both sides.

No matter what level house prices are at, some experts will argue that they are overpriced. Some people have long argued that prices are excessive, but prices have doubled since they began their forecasts of doom. See the links at the end of this post.

However, no matter how optimistic you are about property, most would agree that the risk of a serious fall in property prices has risen recently. This is not a prediction that house prices will fall. It is just a recognition that the level of risk has increased.

Factors which affect house prices
Economic growth, employment and salary levels
Population growth
Interest rate levels
The supply of houses
SSIA maturity may have a temporary effect
Tax changes e.g. increased income tax relief and possible reduction in stamp duty

All of these factors are difficult to forecast. If and when the economy crashes, house prices will probably fall. When the economy recovers, house prices will quickly recover.

What is actually happening to house prices currently?

1) It is argued that house prices are already falling
There is evidence that many vendors are reducing the asking prices of their houses. However, this is not in itself evidence of a widespread fall in house prices. They may have been asking an unrealistic price in the first place. If my home was worth €500k in November, and I put it on the market today at €550k. I get no offers, so I reduce the price to €500k. The house price has not fallen, just the asking price.

There is no doubt that houses in particular estates have fallen. If a typical house in a particular estate was selling for €500k in November and they are now being sold at €400k, then house prices in that estate have fallen.

2) Houses are not selling at auctions
Again, this might be due to unrealistic expectations by the seller rather than any indication of general house price falls. Only a small proportion of house sales are by auction anyway.

3) The statistics show that house prices are not rising significantly at the moment
The permanent tsb/ESRI house price index is the most comprehensive and that shows that house prices are not rising by any significant amount.

Some will argue that these statistics are biased and reflect the vested interests of the publishers.

4) Builders are finding it difficult to sell new homes
There is pretty widespread evidence that builders are finding it very difficult to sell new homes, whereas they used to have huge queues as soon as the show house was launched.

So what about the future direction of house prices?

5) The Irish economy is strong and our population is growing, so the demand for houses is growing and there is plenty of money to pay for them. We must house the immigrants somewhere, so this factor will continue to push up house prices. Of course, if the economy falters, then house prices may crash.

6) Interest rates are rising and so house prices must fall
Interest rates have risen from a low of 2% to 3.75% today. This makes it more expensive for borrowers to meet repayments. It also limits the amounts lenders are allowed to lend. But interest rates are still low compared to the long term trend.

7) Investing in houses makes no economic sense
At the moment, an investor is borrowing at around 5% to buy an investment property. They will get only around 1% or 2% in rent. So a property costing €500k, will probably get only around €10k rent, but will cost €25k in interest payments.

The only way these investors can make money is if they get huge capital appreciation.

8) House prices in Ireland have never fallen for any sustained period of time
In the past, Irish house prices have risen by a lot less than inflation, so they have fallen in real terms.

But even if they had never fallen, that would not be an argument that they can never fall. The same arguments were used in other countries and house prices subsequently fell dramatically.

9) even if house prices do fall, they will recover in time.

10)We are builiding houses at the fastest rate in Europe, so there is bound to be an oversupply. We are building 20 houses per annum per thousand existing units at the moment.
However, the counter argument is that we had the lowest number of houses per head of population, so we are only catching up.

11) Forget all the statistics and analysis. House prices have bubbled up to the present level and, as with all bubbles, this one must burst.

The present price of houses is irrational. They have been pushed up by cheap money, reckless lending including 100% mortgages and massive immigration. Once confidence falters at all, they will come crashing down.

It’s very hard to argue with this. Confidence is a big driver of house prices.

But even if house prices are irrationally high today, they could continue to stay irrationally high and the underlying factors might rise to make them more rational. So house prices won’t fall, they will just wait where they are until the underlying factors justify the prices.

What the independent experts have said

December 2000 Central Bank warns that house prices could fall dramatically

February 2002 David McWilliams analyses the then housing bubble


November 2004 IMF and the Economist predicts Irish house price crash (PDF)

March 2006 Davy Economic Report Dublin house prices heading towards 100 times rent earned

September 2005 US Federal Reserve report on house prices in different countries

November 2006 Central Bank Governor “ even if there is some overvaluation, this should not necessarily mean that house prices would fall; the most likely way that the overvaluation would be corrected is via a period of low and stable house price inflation while the economy continues to grow. Bearing this in mind, a soft landing for house prices is the most likely outcome.”

December 2006 UCD Professor of economics "we may be looking forward to large and prolonged falls in real house prices of the order of 40–50 per cent, and a collapse of house building activity." (PDF)

Posting Guidelines for this thread

We are not allowing a general tit for tat discussion of house prices on Askaboutmoney. When that was allowed, it was a long boring thread, with pages and pages of the same arguments repeated again and again. It generated heat but no light. It is important that buyers and sellers can read the arguments on both sides so that they can make an informed decision.

On many occasions, I have asked for a volunteer to summarise the arguments. As no one came forward, I have done it myself.

Additions and corrections to the above post are welcome and will be incorporated in the summary.

In particular, if anyone has any information on the supply of houses, I would welcome it.

Any good links would be welcome as well.

However, it is meant to be an accessible summary and not an academic treatise. Links to academic treatises are welcome.

Ranting, reports of price falls in particular estates, abusive posts and posts which add nothing to the discussion will be ruthlessly deleted. Inappropriate comments from newly registered posters will be deleted.

Highly personal opinions not backed up by anything will be deleted.

If you make an interesting point which adds to the above post, I will try to summarise it and include it in the above post. I will then delete your post.

There will be no discussion of the Moderation decisions relating to this thread. Please do not bother to post a question or PM asking why your post has been removed.

Brendan said:

1) It is argued that house prices are already falling
There is evidence that many vendors are reducing the asking prices of their houses. However, this is not in itself evidence of a widespread fall in house prices. They may have been asking an unrealistic price in the first place. If my home was worth €500k in November, and I put it on the market today at €550k. I get no offers, so I reduce the price to €500k. The house price has not fallen, just the asking price.

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I'd like to address Brendan's first point here.

I'm in agreement that falling asking prices does not in itself constitute a fall in house prices. In fact, monitoring the asking prices could even end up proving the 'soft landing' scenario, by showing that a happy equilibrium has been reached whereby buyers are happy to purchase with normal volumes, and no vendors have ended up in negative equity.

However, I would say that asking prices are most definitely a lead indicator of where prices are heading in at least the short-term, and should not be ignored.

Cluttering threads like this one (and others) with random asking price drops will not progress debate. However I would invite anyone interested in recent asking price developments to check out http://www.irishpropertywatch.com which is an automated analysis of Irish Property websites.

Could I just tie a number of the points made by Brendan together under the heading Risk.

Currency

We are now part of the Euro so don't have the ability to devalue our currency to get ourselves out of our current uncompetitivie position. This suggests that there is a risk of deflation in wages and assets (including property).

Interest Rates

Interest rates have increased significantly over the past year. While the current rates are still moderate compared to ECB/German Highs, the relative % increase to the 2005 low is high. 1.75% / 2% = 87.5 % increase.

Terms of Mortgages and % of Price Borrowed

Many people are on Interest Only and long term mortgages such as 35 yr. This people are affected more than people on 20 yr mortgages (who's repayments would contain a greater capital component) which were the norm in the past. More people are on 100% and 92% mortgages when 70% was the norm 30 years ago. There is therefore more risk of negative equity in the event of a downturn than in the past.


The increasing of interest rates while house prices are at an all time high versus desposible income has significantly increased risk in the property market. It's not possible to predict exactly which way or by how much property prices will change over the coming years and many have failed in their downward projections over the last 5 years but the risk should be duely noted.

soft landings have been achieved in several developed countries of late. both the UK and Australia have seen their respective housing markets calm down after a boom without a significant knock-on on the general economy (though UK prices are running ahead again).

the problem for Ireland is that construction is one of the largest private sector employers in the state so a slowdown (witness new builds getting more dofficult to shift) could have a disproportionate effect on the economy. whilst we know that the huge infrastructure spend could absorb a lot of the slack should residential construction slow down, how much of this spend will remain affordable if tax receipts in terms of VAT, stamp and income tax take a big hit?

on a fundamental basis residential property in Ireland looks like a very poor investment proposal so i am inclined to beleive that a soft-landing would be difficult to achieve.

JohnBoy said:

soft landings have been achieved in several developed countries of late. both the UK and Australia have seen their respective housing markets calm down after a boom without a significant knock-on on the general economy (though UK prices are running ahead again).

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In both of these countries they can control their own interest rates and rates are still much higher than in Ireland. Irish interest rates would be much higher if we were not tied to the Euro, this is much of the source of the problem IMO, interest rates needed to be 2-3% during the past 5 years to keep costs under control.

Brendan
You did not mention inflation in your initial piece. I think inflation is the single most important factor in the longterm direction of house prices. Houses are a finite good, money is not. As long as monetary inflation continues, buying a house to live in remains the single best store of value open to the ordinary person.
In the short to medium term houses look expensive. The most important factor will be interest rates.
This is somewhat similar to global stockmarkets in 1999. The consensus was that stocks were the best longterm investment and people were buying for that reason without any attention to value.
So we could see falls in prices in the shortterm if interest rates continue to rise but unless we see some extraordinary change in global monetary policy buying a house to live in will remain the single best investment open to the average person.
It's the poor man's gold and you can live in it as well.

tyoung said:

Brendan
You did not mention inflation in your initial piece. I think inflation is the single most important factor in the longterm direction of house prices.
It's the poor man's gold and you can live in it as well.

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hi tyoung, i do not really understand your point here. are you referring to house price inflation or general inflation? high inflation helps erode the value of the mortgage debt but i fail to see how general inflation can aid homeowners. in fact, if house prices fail to keep up with inflation then they fall in real terms are every euro tied up in a property buy progressively less other goods and services.

tyoung said:

I think inflation is the single most important factor in the longterm direction of house prices. Houses are a finite good, money is not. As long as monetary inflation continues, buying a house to live in remains the single best store of value open to the ordinary person.

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I agree that inflation is key to the direction that house prices will take; future wage inflation in particular will be very important. We need to remember that the ECB is very strict about avoiding excessive inflation though so I'd expect them to do everything in their power to provide the price stability that they were formed to achieve. Whether they will be able to fight against inflation successfully or whether it will contract of it's own accord is open for debate.

Also, I fail to see how houses can be considered a finite good. Maybe you can elaborate on this point further? We've increased our supply of houses in Ireland by about 25% in the last 5-6 years alone! On the face of it it doesn't really have the makings of a great store of value as far as I can see.

I want to say that I am impressed with the quality of responses so far. They are all useful contributions.

Only one post had to be deleted.

Brendan

Hi TYoung

I am trying to incorporate the inflation argument into the opening piece.

At the end of the day, the objective of the post is to give potential buyers both sides of the argument on which to make a decision - do I buy now or do I wait a few months or years?

In that context, Inflation ( by which I assume you mean the rate of increase in the CPI?) is probably not hugely relevant?

I absolutely agree that owning your own home is the most important financial objective of everyone. However, what we are discussing is the timing of that purchase.

Brendan

Interesting article giving the historical view of where we are today. Ist part of the article is mainly about Houston but then goes on to our situation.

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10007747.shtml


Murt

I spoke too soon about the quality of the comments.

The objective of this thread is to give a summary of the issues and not to explore every issue in detail.

Please resist the urge to post your opinions on house prices. You can give those on many other websites.

Brendan

Duplex said:

The truth is that the Irish housing market was driven by rampant speculation over the past few years. Estate agents have estimated that 35%+ of demand was from investors; until recently. I believe that this demand has fallen sharply. The markets problems are compounded by a sharp increase in supply as speculators attempt to lock in capital gains. Most investors will freely admit that they bought for capital appreciation not underwater rental yields.

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The problem with generalising is that people see property in very different ways. Rental yields are and have been terrible long before what we are seeing now (whatever that may be!) yet their effect was minimal.
For example, when I buy shares on a company (property) the rental yield (dividends) are not as important as my belief the share price will rise (capital appreciation)
If as suggested last week a majority of investors (65% if I'm correct) are in for the long haul prices should not fall. My point is economic data cannot account for the often irrational Irish attitude to property.
I found this interesting article by Irish Life Investment Managers last night...most of it applies to commercial property however it makes some important points relevant to the residential side of things also.
http://www.ilim.com/inthemarket/viewcontent.asp?LinkName=inTheMarket&id=5

Brendan said:

At the end of the day, the objective of the post is to give potential buyers both sides of the argument on which to make a decision - do I buy now or do I wait a few months or years?

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Brendan, I think that this question is always going to be very subjective and will vary greatly depending on individual circumstances.

If someone can comfortably afford the mortgage of a property that they see themselves living in for the long term, then I don't think there are any great arguments that can be brought up against them buying. Trying to time the markets is a fools game after all.

The question on whether to buy now or wait longer is really only relevant to buyers looking at the purchase as a short term thing (such as those that want to "get on the ladder") or investors which should be looking to maximize their return.

Investing in Irish property in the last few years appears to have been mostly of a speculative nature. Yields are so low that I would really have to question the motives of anyone recommending this as being the best investment vehicle for a person to take.

Regarding buyers looking to purchase a place which they plan to trade up from, I think that the Pros and Cons of buying vs waiting needs to be spelled out. I'm sure that more things can be added to this.

Buying
--------
Pros:
possible capital appreciation*
security of tenure
will eventually own property outright

Cons:
risk of negative equity*
expense of trading up
extra costs for furniture, white good, insurance, etc
loss of FTB status

Waiting
----------
Pros
possible fall in prices*
able to save a lot of money monthly (and diversify)
more flexibility in relocating and adapting to changing economy

Cons:
risk of prices rising above inflation*
no security of tenure


*Based on current markets I think it's safe to say that the risk of house prices rising far above inflation in the coming years is quite low. The risk of a buyer reaching negative equity would primarily depend on the property type and location.

Brendan said:

Hi TYoung
At the end of the day, the objective of the post is to give potential buyers both sides of the argument on which to make a decision - do I buy now or do I wait a few months or years?
I absolutely agree that owning your own home is the most important financial objective of everyone. However, what we are discussing is the timing of that purchase.
Brendan

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If you are buying your PPR & intending to live in Ireland for the next 15 years, it does not matter if you buy at the top of the market, as you will be more than likely trading up when you move, and will want house prices to fall, to close the differential between what you paid for your old and new houses. Most people don't get that. You may overpay for your starter home,and even be in negative equity for a while, but if you tough it out, your next, and much larger home will be a bargain.

Warren Buffet says you shouldn't hold onto anything for ten minutes that you aren't prepared to hold onto for ten years.
I would not recommend anyone to wait, if they are buying a PPR that they want to live in for at least ten years, and they can afford the capital repayments plus 2% stress test.

Rapidly rising house prices are only good for STR (Sell to Rent), Downsizers, & the specuvestor as they can cash out the equity.
They give the Justboughts a warm fuzzy glow, but don't make them any richer.

undersupply said:

If you are buying your PPR & intending to live in Ireland for the next 15 years, it does not matter if you buy at the top of the market, as you will be more than likely trading up when you move, and will want house prices to fall, to close the differential between what you paid for your old and new houses. Most people don't get that. You may overpay for your starter home,and even be in negative equity for a while, but if you tough it out, your next, and much larger home will be a bargain.

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I'm not too sure of the logic of this. How exactly would it work out if you wanted to trade up in 15 years time, yet were still stuck in negative equity? Some of the Japanese that followed the very same advice you're giving here are still in their starter properties after more than 15 years.
[broken link removed]

Undersupply

I am confused by your points.

I am a first time buyer. If I am buying a house in a particular location which is currently available at €400k and which I think is likely to fall to €300k, then I should wait until it falls as it will cost me less to buy.

If I do not know what direction house prices will go, then I should buy my home rather than rent one.

What happens in ten years' time is a different matter.



Brendan

Brendan said:

Undersupply

I am confused by your points.

I am a first time buyer. If I am buying a house in a particular location which is currently available at €400k and which I think is likely to fall to €300k, then I should wait until it falls as it will cost me less to buy.

If I do not know what direction house prices will go, then I should buy my home rather than rent one.

What happens in ten years' time is a different matter.

Brendan

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What if you think it is likely to fall, and wait and it rises another 100k to 500k, you now know prices are even more likely to fall, so do you still have to wait till they fall to 300k, because you may miss out on 15 years of capital repayments if you do so.

Many in the UK were convinced that 2004 was the year of the crash & held off, it doesn't make a crash less likely, rather it makes it more likely, but it means they have missed out on capital or equity payments.
And none of us are getting younger....

undersupply said:

This guy probably did not have a capital repayment mortgage as I suggested, nor did his income rise quick enough to erode his debt, nor did inflation erode his debt, he admits to borrowing nearly all the money so he had no equity to begin with, he bought at the worst time & in the worst place in history and you're asking me why he can't trade up?

My point is if house prices fall 30 % your 300,000 euro starter home is worth 210,000 After 15 years it is hoped that you will have paid back 90,000 euro in capital/deposit, so you can sell your home.If you haven't you have been renting the house from the bank.

The house that you trade up to cost 600,000 15 years ago & now sells for 420,000, so you only have to borrow 210k to trade up as opposed to 300k fifteen years ago.

You are better off trading up in a falling market FACT.

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This person would be better off renting and not suffering the capital loss on the starter home in the first place...the point of the thread is should someone right now buy or not.