The price of homes across the State climbed by over 6 per cent last year with Dublin outperforming the market considerably by recording price increases of nearly 16 per cent, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). This trend has continued through the first half of 2014 and we at Mobile Storage Services can’t help but ask “have we learned anything from the past” !!!
Dublin Leading the Way
Broken down by category, house prices in Dublin were 15.3 per cent higher in December compared to a year earlier while apartment prices were 20.8 per cent higher when compared with the same month in 2012.
House prices in Dublin are now 47.4 per cent lower than they were at their highest level in early 2007. The price of apartments in the city have fallen by 54.5 per cent since the height of the boom in February 2007.
The fall in the price of residential properties across the rest of the State is somewhat lower and the CSO put the decline at 46.8 per cent. Overall, the national index shows that residential property prices have fallen by 46.4 per cent since 2007.
Impact on the Self Storage Business
Now we don’t claim for a moment to be authorities on the subject but we have witnessed a particular shift in activity at Mobile Storage Services in the last six months. A significant and growing percentage of our business is being generated by those who want to liquidise their asset before buying a replacement property. The experience of these clients is that they are standing in a queue alongside 15-20 other potential buyers and the agent is asking are there any “cash” buyers in the queue. Such clients are given preference and the percentage of properties being bought for cash is rising significantly. Therefore people are selling their property and putting their belongings into storage and only then are they going in search of a new home. We are more than happy to service the needs of such clients and are thankful for the business but something tells me there is a lot of heat coming into the marketplace and there seems to be an unhealthy sense of panic. The story of meeting the same families viewing the same houses each weekend and sharing a coffee together after the viewing is becoming commonplace to us and the powers that be need to start taking action to free up stock. The Irish tax payer owns one of the largest property management banks in the world and although we don’t have the answers our observation would be that our government needs to handle this situation very carefully if we are to avoid another layer of pain inflicted on those already hurting.
photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dw/79862685/">1541</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>
