This article is from page 9 of the 2011-04-12 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 9 JPG
A CLARE auctioneer has said that property websites like Daft are “way off the mark” when it comes to how much property prices have dropped. He is calling for a national register of sale prices to get a real handle on the situation.
According to the latest Daft figures, property in Clare has dropped in price by more than 38 per cent since the boom years.
But Diarmuid McMahon of Sherry Fitzgerald McMahon says the shocking truth is that prices have dropped by up to 60 per cent.
“These websites don’t reflect the situation on the ground, the prices that property is actually changing hands for. We see it all the time and we track it and the truth is that, depending on the type of property and the condition and location, prices have actually gone down by between 40 and 60 per cent.”
Diarmuid said that second homes and apartments have been worst hit.
“Holiday homes have really felt the brunt. Houses in Kilkee that would have had a € 250,000 price tag a few years ago are on the market now for € 99,000. Apartments have also gone down considerably. Apartments in town that were selling for € 200,000 are selling now at € 80,000 to € 85,000.”
The Ennis auctioneer said that there are problems with property sites such as Daft and My Home. ie. “There are a lot of poperties sitting on those sites which have not been revalued in two years or more. Those are asking prices not market value and they are pushing the average prices up.”
Sherry Fitgerald have been campaigning to have a register which would record how much is paid for every property sold, similar to the one in the UK.
‘We’ve had the biggest property crash in the western world in Ireland, but we have no real record of it and no recorded information. Instead we have conflicting information from a number of sources and much of it does not reflect reality,” said Diarmuid.
According to the quarterly Daft report, prices for homes in Clare fell a further 3.6 since the beginning of the year.
Since the start of the slide, the price of an average one-bedroom home fell by € 70,000, a two-bedroom is down by € 120,00 and three-bedroom family homes have dropped by € 158,000, according to Daft’s calculations.
However, like the overall calculation of a drop in price, Mr McMahon said these figures are not based on reality.